When Alan Turing was pardoned a few years ago there was a sense that justice had been done. But there was also a sense that legal and intellectual logic had been broken. Turing had been convicted according to the laws and mores of his times. He was pardoned by those of ours.

What is done is done. We can look back on history and regret it, but we cannot disown it. Turing’s pardon gave us a warm feeling, perhaps. It also brought his case and those of hundreds like him to our attention – a good thing. Those who are ignorant of history are more likely to repeat its mistakes. The more we know the better we can have a chance to be.

Slavery and its principal facilitator – Empire – were grotesque and shameful. But the scale of what happened and the impact of it was permanent. The countries of the Caribbean are how they are today because of the slave trade and the colonial exploitation of natural and human resources . The southern United States were built on slavery and the racial demographics of modern day America were formed by it.

We need to balance the need to record and understand the past with a genuine need to condemn it if it offends modern day standards. But removing a statue or a memorial does not change the past. Indeed it may mean that we less understand what happened. Out of sight out of mind.

The memorials and statues should stay where they are. Alongside them should be placed clear statements which tell the stories warts and all. The inextricably linked subjects of Imperialism and Slavery need to be better understood – the creation of a “Museum of the British Empire” telling the complete story of imperialism and colonialism is long overdue. Hiding away events from the past so that we do not offend today’s sensitivities is adding delusion and denial to past offences. Let’s seek out and tell the truth.

Preposterous delusions in “The Times” today . “Mr Johnson has an opportunity to deepen the transatlantic alliance by working with Mr Biden” Real Politik will dictate that Britain will be way down President Biden’s list of priorities despite past sentimental attachments. The only “transatlantic alliance” that will matter will be America’s with Europe of which Britain will, to all intents and purposes, no longer be part.

It’s now sixty years since Britain was told by an American Secretary of State that the “Special Relationship” was bunkum (I paraphrase) and that the only option for our future was as active participants in a uniting Europe. The developing idea that our genuine emotional and cultural ties with the United States could help us as a member of the EU be a bridge between Washington and Brussels had some validity, but that of course has been torpedoed by Brexit.

Biden will thankfully have a more rational approach to international relations that his nationalist predecessor. He will know that Europe, Canada, China, Mexico, Japan, India, Brazil, Israel, the Middle East etc. etc. are America’s priorities. Little England will be way down the list. When Angela Merkel is the first of Mr Biden’s meetings it will be to a backdrop which will include the European flag as well as that of Germany.

The whole Brexit disaster was based on the premise that a Britain disconnected from Europe could return to the Great Power status it once enjoyed. It was faux-patriotic bombast – actually laughable and quite sad. Even Donald Trump didn’t buy that nonsense and Joe Biden certainly won’t. Time to get real.

The United Kingdom does not matter much to the United States of America these days – indeed it has not for a very long time. President Biden will be polite and perhaps a bit sentimental. But at a personal level he probably cares more about Ireland than he does about the UK as befits a man from County Louth (albeit a while back!). I suspect that his views of Britain would be the same as those of Dean Acheson nearly sixty years ago:

“Britain’s attempt to play a separate power role – that is, a role apart from Europe, a role based on a ‘special relationship’ with the United States, a role based on being the head of a Commonwealth which has no political structure or unity or strength and enjoys a fragile and precarious economic relationship – this role is about played out.”

I would like to think that Biden won the Presidency because the American electorate rejected the petty nationalism of Trump – perhaps there was a bit of that. But in truth it was simpler. The demographics of the US are changing, and this was a watershed election. A very different America is emerging – one that will be characterised not by Biden’s presidency but by Kamala Harris’s which will surely follow it. Neither Biden nor his “president is waiting” alongside him will want much to do with a Britain breaking itself asunder and drifting offshore from the great economic, cultural and political entity that is Europe. As Acheson presciently put it there is no “Role apart from Europe” for Britain.

The nationalism of Trump had resonance with the nationalism of Brexiting Britain. The first foolishness will now, and quickly, disappear. Britain alone among America’s allies has nationalist great power delusions. When Joe Biden has his first summit with Angela Merkel the European Flag will be as prominent as the German one – maybe more so. That’s the twenty-first century reality for us as well, if only we could see it, not anachronistic memories of Roosevelt and Churchill’s special relationship which was short, pragmatic and successful. Those days are long since gone.

America’s future looks bright now it is no longer polluted with Orange. The move from Vulgarity to Decency and from Disarray to Competence starts today. It would be excellent if these moves could be matched in Britain. But sadly, they won’t be for a very long time. As America returns to global respectability Britain lurches towards irrelevance Losing an Empire may be regarded as a misfortune; also losing Europe looks like carelessness.

Churchill’s famous aphorism about democracy is worth keeping top of mind when we see that in practice it can and sometimes does take a nation towards disaster. Where they are is where they chose to be. And when any of us chooses to repeat mistakes, no matter how venal they turned out to be, we have nobody to blame but ourselves. Adolf Hitler won power in January 1933 with if not a totally clear electoral mandate certainly a democratic legitimacy.

In celebrating Joe Biden’s ultimate comfortable victory we should not take our eyes off the fact that it was actually much closer than it might seem. The Washington Post analysed the vote and found just three States Biden won narrowly made the difference:

• Arizona: 10,457
• Georgia: 14,028
• Wisconsin: 20,565
• Total: 45,050

If Trump had managed to get those 45,000 votes, he would have won 37 more electoral votes, making the electoral college a 269-to-269 tie!

So Donald Trump, a man who had proved himself to be totally unsuited to high office, won over 70 million votes in the 2020 US Presidential election and came agonisingly close to being re-elected.

That the election was nearly a repeat of 2016 tells us that each of the two Americas is not going to be told what to do by anybody in the other one. Many thought that Hillary Clinton was so flawed that it was she who was the main cause of the election of Donald Trump. We can now see that wasn’t the case. Then, as now, the tribe of which Trump is the personification polled strongly.

The two American tribes are separate in virtually all the key demographics. They do not overlap at all – there is no common ground. Even their patriotisms are different – as well as that other American touchstone their religiosity. The one Tribe is evangelical, tub-thumping, flag-waving and raucous. The other tribe is traditional, cerebral and measured. Their homelands are utterly different, even though in some cases they may be physically close, and so are their attitudes.

When Trump spoke to his tribe he did so in their language – he is the quintessential populist politician. He did not talk down to them or patronise them – that much of the time he talked arrant nonsense doesn’t matter. A Trump rally is not intellectually robust political argument. It’s rabble rousing. He keeps the message simple and instinctively knows who to blame, true or not – and it works. He never minds adopting the blame culture or the language of the trailer park.

Victory is everything in politics and that is why very few Republicans broke ranks and turned against Trump in 2020 as in 2016. The “Lincoln Project”, noble though it was, probably made very little difference. The rich families of Palm Beach benefited from the votes of the much poorer voters of West Palm Beach. Trump got many of the votes of poor white America despite his personally being of and for Wall Street and the millionaires.

Polls have indicated that the economy was the voters’ main preoccupation – “It’s the economy stupid” was on Bill Clinton’s study wall – it worked for him – it also almost worked for Trump. Changing the distribution of national wealth is a noble aspiration but to the poor white in the trailer park it is incomprehensible theorising and when Trump calls it “Socialist” he agrees. Many of those who could have benefited from the fairer tax and spend policies that Biden offered voted against him, and Wall Street rubbed its hands, prematurely, in glee.

Perceptions are reality because people believe them to be true. And if Trump voters perceived that Donald Trump was more in their interests than Joe Biden they voted accordingly. You could argue that after four years there was ample evidence to dissuade them but this would have required them to move tribes. So they didn’t do it.

In most walks of life competence is prized but in politics, certainly recently, electorates seem to prefer show and bluff and bluster. Trump and Johnson certainly both have plenty of that. Populist policies that don’t require us to think too much but to which our inner prejudices respond. Three of four word slogans which sell the policies to us – “Get Brexit Done”, “Make America Great Again” – help the selling of the President or the Prime Minister as a brand of choice. Job done, off to the pub.

But in a time of unprecedented crisis brought on by the pandemic bluff and bluster don’t work and we spot what we might have missed earlier – that our Government has no idea what it’s doing and even worse that it’s lying to us. The U-turn on lockdown was maybe the quickest of Johnson’s Strictly Come Twisting moves but it was far from the only one in this Year of Living Dangerously.

There is competence around – from Ireland to New Zealand and dozens of stops in between countries are managing things better than Britain and America. But the too little too late bias of Trump and Johnson, combined with denial and a disdain for experts , has been deadly. Thousands of people are dead and thousands of families bereaved due to sheer, culpable incompetence.

Back in 2014 Britain was tootling along quite happily under Cameron’s Coalition despite the political Right despising him and his chummy partnership with Nick Clegg. Then a golden opportunity to make mischief occurred – the European elections. And the standard bearer of the forces of right wing mischief, Nigel Farage, emerged from the swamp big time. UKIP mopped up many Tory voters, one or two Tory MPs and eventually slew the Old Etonian dragon – the rest, including the precipitate fall of Dave is history.

It may be happening again. It’s a different Old Etonian in Number 10 but the same smell of faux-libertarianism is in the air. The Tory Right, including the same “Usual Suspects” are jumping up and down again. And, right on cue, along comes Nigel Farage to cause mischief. Again. Shortly the coincidence of “Events” will be overwhelming – mismanagement of the pandemic at the same time as Britain struggles with the immediate impact of Brexit. In the New Year, even if a last-minute EU Deal is cobbled together the Faragists will be in the ascendency. If there’s a deal it will be a “sell out” – if there isn’t the chaos will be Johnson’s fault. His days are numbered. Donkeys led by donkeys.

My first instinct is to quote Doctor Johnson though no doubt the newly populist Matthew Syed, writing in The Times today, would reject his aphorism about patriotism being the “last resort of the scoundrel” as too Metropolitan smart. But the reality is that a much more internationalist world, and much better educated populations, should be rejecting simplistic appeals to “national identity” like his. The other reality is the trend towards devolved decision-making which gives cities and regions more power to govern themselves.

Britain is three nations plus a bit of post colonial carryover which gives us a presence on what was once “John Bull’s other island” (which we need to shred). Wales and Scotland and to a lesser extent Northern Ireland have the identity of nation states that make them credible. So, on the sports fields of the world, does England. I’m more than happy to cheer on English sporting teams whose identity is clear. But Britain (the Olympics aside) does not give me the same opportunity and Britain’s collaborative alliance with the Celts has surely seen its day. How can you wave the flag of a nation which doesn’t even play in the Football, Cricket and Rugby World Cups?

The United Kingdom’s time is running out. I am no English Nationalist but the move towards Scots and Welsh independence and Irish unity looks unstoppable. And what’s left, the coherent and historic nation of England, will have the opportunity to rise again. The Union Flag can be consigned to the dustbin of history.

England will need to find a role. The anachronistic membership of the UN Security Council as a permanent member will disappear as the U.K. breaks up. But otherwise England is large enough to inherit some of the international status which Britain currently has. It has every opportunity to prosper as a viable large/medium-sized european nation – more so if we re-embrace our fellow Europeans, put our toys back in the pram and rejoin the European Union. The Irish are already there and will be boosted by their return to the colours of the lost province. The Scots and the Welsh will also no doubt quickly join the Union and be welcomed. The U.K. may have left the EU but there should be few hurdles in the way of Scotland, Wales and England joining it as independent “nation states”.

I doubt that the “patriotic” working class will worry much about the break-up of Britain – the reality is that their patriotism is far more English than British and many of them have adopted the flag of St George already. For most of the last two Millennia it was England not Britain of which my ancestors were citizens. Normality will be returned.

History cannot be abandoned but our new national identities as English, Welsh, Scots and Irish would give us an opportunity to draw a line under the past. The “British Empire” would join the Roman, Russian, Soviet and Ottoman empires in history – and Britain would also be in the history books, and nowhere else. No more “Rule Britannia” – Hooray !

Matthew Parris in today’s “The Times” shows how adversity can be a precursor to success and has been for many famous people from Abraham Lincoln to Edith Piaf and many others.

One of the pleasures of biography – I’ve written two full length ones, dozens of published biographical sketches as well as read hundreds – is the element of surprise. There are some patterns but cause and effect is unpredictable. Ian Kershaw’s fine biography of Hitler gives no clue that his subject’s rather ordinary childhood would be that of a future monster.

I see three main drivers of a life – privilege (or the lack of it) , intelligence/ability and ambition. Include the very rare phenomenon of genius and you begin to assemble the building blocks. Matthew Parris writes about deprivation (of various sorts) which is arguably the flip side of privilege. Lincoln was deprived from an underprivileged background – but he was smart and ambitious.

Privilege can be given or earned as a consequence of an individual’s conformity to norms and denied because of his or her nonconformity. Sammy Davis Junior succeeded despite (in his own words) of being “the only Black, Puerto Rican, one-eyed, Jewish entertainer in the world.” But the brilliant black, female composer Florence Price struggled solely because of her gender and colour.

Serendipity and chance also plays a part. The grotesquely improbable, contemptible and dishonourable presence of Donald Trump in the White House cannot be explained by any rational biographical study. There was nothing in the first sixty plus years of his life that suggested his suitability for the highest office in the land. He literally ticked none of the boxes shared by previous presidents.

The environment in which an individual grows up and lives can mould or restrict a life. A genius like Alan Turing had his life ultimately destroyed because of the prejudices and the mores and laws of his times. But Noël Coward, no less homosexual than Turing, found a way to overcome this in society that Turing could not. It wasn’t that Coward “got away with it” in a way that Turing couldn’t . Perhaps the establishment protected Noel, who became happily one of them, whilst nobody protected Turing who never became any sort of establishment figure.

The truth about all this is I think that lives sometimes defy definitive explanation. Yes to overcome difficulties can be defining, for some. And chance plays a part. And we do tend to admire those who succeed despite their difficulties rather more than those born with a silver spoon in their mouths. But deep down, as I say, it’s about intelligence, ability and ambition – with a fair sprinkling of luck thrown in.

James Forsyth in The Times today explores the extent to which political Systems and culture have affected nations’ record in dealing with COVID. The article is remarkable for not mentioning an example of a liberal democracy which has managed COVID better than any other nation but without surrendering the freedoms which lie at the heart of its constitution – New Zealand. Indeed it has actually held a General Election during the crisis. The Kiwis have surely shown that it is not ideology, (Eastern, Western or whatever) which matters, but competence.

New Zealand is culturally the most “British” nation in the world, outside Britain itself, and it is also an island nation. So why have they done better than us ? The demographic and way of life comparisons are precise as is the benefit of not having contiguous borders with any other country. So why have they succeeded whilst we have dramatically and fatally failed?

New Zealand is much smaller in population than the U.K. , and that arguably made it easier. Perhaps – but to apply the same methods and gross them up was perfectly feasible. Closing its borders almost from day one was one of New Zealand’s key decisions. We could have done that , and should have.

My experience of New Zealanders is that they are a no more conformist and regimented a people than Britons are. But they don’t spout on about their freedoms much, they don’t need to. There is no equivalent of our Hard Right know-alls opining about the need for libertarianism or “freedom of choice”. There are no petty nationalists or anti-maskers. When Arron Banks visited the country before their election to try and stir things up he got nowhere. His preferred Faragist party got one percent of the vote. The Kiwis manage to be proud of their country without being nationalist xenophobes.

But ultimately it’s about leadership, consistency and doing the right thing. Jacinda Ardern gave that leadership and made the right choices. She is no more medically qualified than Boris Johnson but unlike him she listened to those who are and followed their advice. Even in an election year she did not surrender to populism, and the electorate instead of taking to the streets gave her overwhelming support and re-elected her in a landslide. An important part of this was Ms Ardern’s communication skills – she told the people the truth and was believed. And if you believe a leader you’ll do what they say.

It is true that some cultures are more respectful of authority than others and that authoritarian governments can sometimes enforce policies more easily than those with democratic checks and balances. But New Zealand surely tells us that a democratic state can get things right with competent, credible leadership. And that a predominately Anglo-Saxon and Celtic nation can protect its people rather better than Britain has.

Children of my baby boomer generation were brought up to believe that whilst sticks and stones might break our bones words would never hurt us. When at school I was name-called constantly for various perceived defects of character or appearance. I didn’t believe the aphorism then, and I don’t believe it now.

There was nothing “preposterous” about the claim that the the murder of Jo Cox was in part a consequence of the febrile political climate of the time. The language and lies and, especially, the images used by the “Leave” campaign created a context within which the semi rational preached “Sovereignty” but the malicious xenophobia – or worse. A deranged person felt empowered by that climate to murder an MP. There was clear cause and effect.

Language matters. There are words in common parlance fifty years ago which if I used them in the “Comment” section of The Times would lead to the whole comment being removed. But the Prime Minister can attack those of us who argue for greater fairness in society as “Do-Gooders” with impunity. Words do hurt , sometimes fatally.

Freedom of Speech needs rules and laws to govern it – as most social media realises when they moderate public postings. It’s called “moderation” a handy word actually. You can be strong in your messages but moderate in your language. Persuade me of your views with reason and logic without insulting me or name-calling.

“Few of us would have guessed, a generation back, that faith would exercise such a pernicious influence upon the 21st century.” Max Hastings in The Times today.

It was a bit naïve to think that the 21st century would be different from all the preceding ones. All faiths require us to suspend our critical faculties, or at least to confine our use of them within the prison walls of dogma. Some faiths are blinder than others of course – you don’t have to believe that wine turns into the blood of Christ when you take communion. But many parts of the world require us to tow the religious line – on pain of death in some cases.

It is possible, indeed quite likely, that our next Prime Minister will be a Hindu – something that would be unthinkable in America’s Head of Government. It was a stretch to elect a Catholic in 1960.

That the church should be disestablished in Britain seems inescapable to me and to have Bishops in the House of Lords is a preposterous anachronism. To proselytise you have also to deny – the “one true faith” syndrome. In a modern multicultural country to have institutionalised in the constitution that one religion is the norm and the others are (consequently) heathen is a preposterous anachronism. If King Charles does declare himself “Defender of Faiths” (plural) that needs formally to be followed throughout society. A move towards the secularisation of education would be a good start.