Last night, President of the United States of America, Joe Biden, finally caved in to mounting international pressure and dropped out of the race as the Democratic candidate for re-election to the White House this coming November.

In the current state of affairs, this is the best thing that Mr. Biden could have done.

Biden is already a history maker: at the time of the election he will be 82 years old and it’s just daft to consider reelection for a four-year term at that age, especially given the fact that he has shown symptoms of almost every age-related condition in the last few weeks alone. I feel very sorry for him.

It must be simply dreadful to have to surrender to age when ambition still burns in your soul; and what’s worse, you have to do it in front of billions of people. Furthermore, you must listen to countless advisors, politicians and journalists, all of whom have an agenda of some kind, telling you to step down while at the the same time trying to pretend to the public that, don’t worry, everything’s just as normal, nothing to see here, etc. etc.

I think that’s the worst thing about politics; it’s the sheer amount of fakery involved. It’s all about what the public can or is allowed to perceive. Honesty goes right out of the window. If you do this, the public will think that. If you do that, the public will think this. And of course the vehicle by which that so-called “information” gets to the public is our old friend the news media.

Former UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher used to say that the makers of the sit-com Yes Prime Minister had somehow managed to get the relationship between politicians and civil servants exactly right. Spot on. She should know. She was prime minister for eleven-and-a-half years until that glorious day in November 1990, I shall never forget it, when she was brought down by her own ministers and booted off to retirement.

The media can’t wait for a news story. I just cannot fathom why any politician would want to go on TV to be interviewed by, say, that awful Laura Kuenssberg, who addresses the political elite with such venom and red-eyed vitriol, that it must make them want to tell her to, er, clear off or words to that effect. But what it does show is that the news media has a death grip on the political classes that is so tight politicians will say anything just to get out of it.

Politics is cutthroat, nothing less. My experience of it comes largely from the UK, but from what I have seen, there is very little difference in the US, Canada, Australia, France, Germany; you name the country, their press and TV news will have that death grip on their politicians.

Which is why, in a roundabout way, President Biden is in no way fit enough to run for reelection in November. He can barely walk. He’s fallen over repeatedly during his presidency. He’s stumbled over his words, got mixed up, and even simply wandered off.

The question now is whether Vice President Kamala Harris has the charisma to take on Donald J. Duck in the election. She’s been endorsed by Biden, but in truth he could have endorsed nobody else. I’m not so sure if she’s the right one for the job, but please God no more Hillary Clinton! x