Why does the Prime Minister think it does her good to be seen with that global embarrassment, Donald Trump? Why do politicians and media commentators in Britain prattle about how the ‘Special Relationship’ between Britain and the USA is still flourishing?

This is dangerous fantasy. The United States is not, and never has been, our special friend. Sometimes it has been our ally. Sometimes it has been very close to being our enemy, especially in Ireland (almost all the time) and during the Suez Crisis in 1956, when the US Navy’s chiefs discussed opening fire on the Royal Navy.

I don’t complain about this. The USA does what we should do. It looks after itself first. It is a separate country with different interests from ours. It is not a Big England. We owe them a lot of money. We defaulted on our enormous First World War debts to the US (£866 million at the time, worth about £225 billion at today’s values) back in 1934. Contrary to popular belief, we have never paid this back. We only very recently paid our Second World War debts to America.

For the best explanation of the relations between the two countries, read what President Woodrow Wilson said at a banquet at Buckingham Palace on December 27, 1918, soon after our joint victory over Germany six weeks before.

If we told Donald Trump we were in fact not very keen to host a visit by him, he would give us more than if we abased ourselves before him

‘You must not speak of us who come over here as cousins, still less as brothers; we are neither. Neither must you think of us as Anglo-Saxons, for that term can no longer be rightly applied to the people of the US. Nor must too much importance in this connection be attached to the fact that English is our common language… no, there are only two things which can establish and maintain closer relations between your country and mine: they are community of ideals and interests.’

I do wish that everyone in British politics, journalism and diplomacy would read and remember these words. Wilson was a fairly nasty piece of work who made a terrible mess of Europe and pretty much caused the Second World War. But he spoke the truth.

And it seems to me that France’s Charles de Gaulle, who was always prickly and unhelpful to the USA, and who was disliked by them in return, did a far better job for his country than our post-war leaders did for ours.

Our endless sucking up to Washington gets us very little worth having. If we told Donald Trump we were in fact not very keen to host a visit by him, he would give us more than if we abased ourselves before him. Doormat diplomacy, such as we now engage in with the USA, will always end with them wiping their feet on us.

Who'd be brave enough to tell this story today?

The Vietnam War was the background noise of my young manhood, and I am now amazed to find that I, a poorly informed teenage troublemaker, had a better idea of what was going on than the US government’s official spokesmen. Mind you, they were lying, as governments so often do.

I can also remember when the newspaper business was still in its raucous prime. I loved the gleaming process by which words were set in metal, forged into huge curved plates, clamped on to enormous presses and sent out into the world by fleets of midnight vans. I can remember my desk beginning to tremble as those presses accelerated to top speed, many floors beneath.

Tom Hanks portrays Ben Bradlee (left) while Meryl Streep plays Katharine Graham (right) in The Post

And I once had the great privilege of living in Washington DC, that beautiful white marble graveyard of ideals. Plus, I could happily watch Meryl Streep doing the dusting, she is so good at what she does.

So I am perhaps the ideal audience for the new film The Post, about The Washington Post’s very brave decision in 1971 to publish the truth about Vietnam in face of a real danger that they might be shut down for ever by a vindictive Richard Nixon. But even if you don’t share my taste in films, consider this.

The days when newspapers had that sort of concentrated power to defy authority are coming to an end. The internet, all too easily censored and manipulated, is taking over. Without strong newspapers, all the forces of liberty and law are weaker. Is it nostalgia to wish their decline hadn’t happened?

Wandering through a world of silent tragedy

Are old people our real underclass? I am distressed by the small coverage given last week to an all-party parliamentary report on hunger. It dwells on the plight of the old, lonely and poor, and suggests that 1.3 million older people in this country are malnourished. This isn’t always caused by poverty alone. Sometimes it is the result of loneliness.

The report tells of one woman who was found by a visitor not to have eaten a proper meal for nine weeks, another who had shrunk to 6st over months of quiet suffering. It says some pensioners are turning off their lights and heating, except when they know they are about to have visitors. A Meals on Wheels volunteer recorded the case of one old man who switched off his Christmas tree lights as soon as the meal service staff left his flat.

Are old people our real underclass? I am distressed by the small coverage given last week to an all-party parliamentary report on hunger

Perhaps most distressing of all is the case of a man in his 90s, banned from his local supermarket because he had twice suffered falls there. They said he was too much of a threat to their liability insurance.

This last case is a study in miniature of the institutional callousness of much of modern Britain, and the general terror of lawsuits caused by the Thatcher and Major governments’ shameful licensing of ambulance-chasing lawyers.

But the whole report made me wonder how often I pass people in the street who are concealing this sort of desperation, and how close I myself might be living to such silent tragedies. We tend to assume that we have some sort of safety net for all. Increasingly, I think this is no longer true.

The Russians are coming! They’re going to make us all starve! Or they’re going to cut all our cables! Are they?

I’m glad if this stuff makes people think about our neglected conventional defences, which badly need money. But the Russian threat is a foolish bogeyman. Despite irresponsible headlines, which give this impression, Russian planes do not fly into our airspace, and Russian warships don’t violate our waters, nor do the RAF or the Navy ‘scramble’ to ‘intercept’ them. They just go and look at them, going about their legal business.

Unless we cause it by provoking it, there is no conceivable reason for a war between this country and Russia, which couldn’t afford to be an aggressive power even it wanted to.

On a visit to the fascinating historic dockyard in Chatham, I stopped for a cup of tea and had one of those moments when only a KitKat would do to accompany it.

Who’d have thought this would be a problem in such a thoroughly British place? But no, there were no KitKats – just a selection of quinoa bars, which I have only just learned to pronounce (keen-wah) and did not want. A word to whoever’s fault this was. I’m very happy to try to be reasonably healthy, but you can keep your quinoa bars. I bought and consumed a revenge KitKat as soon as I could, just to spite the health police.

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