For the first time in my life I am older than an incumbent prime minister. Liz Truss is 47 and I am 51.
The reason I am so shaken by that four-year gap is that I had long operated under the assumption that those in positions of leadership and power were grown-ups with more knowledge and wisdom than the rest of us. This assumption, which admittedly took something of a battering during the Johnson years, was based on the understanding that those who aspired to govern had more expertise and experience than everyone else.
I also expected them to be older than me.
It’s something I suspect that was a hangover from childhood — as children, we look to grown-ups to have all the answers. The politicians from my childhood — the likes of Tony Benn and Denis Healey, Ken Clarke and Nigel Lawson — were substantial figures. They were adults. I disagreed with almost everything Margaret Thatcher believed but even her fiercest critic could not deny she was a grown-up.
I couldn’t ever imagine being a grown-up when I was a young boy. Adults existed in an entirely separate universe. I relied on them to pay for things, to fix things and make things better. I trusted that they could do all this because they were grown-ups and I was not.
And then a funny thing happened. I grew up. I got married and had children and suddenly I had two small people who look to me for all the answers. They ask me to pay for things, fix things and make things better. They assume I am capable and competent because I am a grown-up.
The truth is that while I am doing my best, I really have no idea what I am doing. I make rules up as I go along, backtrack when forced and hope I am not found out. Those parenting tricks, I now realise, are also what our leaders routinely employ.
That’s why the older I get the less faith I have in politicians — I can see through their tricks because I use them myself. Truss may have a fancy job title and live at a famous address but the fact that she’s four years younger than me makes me suspect that most of the time she is faking it until she hopes she makes it. The country faces challenges on so many levels but the arrival of Truss serves as a reminder that all the real grown-ups have left.
There is a place for youthful passion and idealism in politics — of course there is — but right now I so wish there were a few older and wiser heads around: leaders who had accumulated enough miles on the clock to reassure us that we are travelling on the right road.
Instead I look at those now tasked with governing and it reminds me of when my children would ask me to sort something out and how I would momentarily look around for an adult — and then remember with mounting horror that now the adult is me.
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Sam Fender has cancelled a string of live shows and said he is taking time off from touring to look after his mental health. “It’s exhausting feigning happiness and wellness for the sake of business,” the 28-year-old singer songwriter said, “and it’s not going to get better unless I take the time to do so.”
The fact that Fender issued his statement is a sign that sometimes things change for the better. It is hard to imagine artists from previous decades — such as Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse — releasing anything similar, which might help explain why they are no longer around.
As a fan of Fender I am pleased he felt able to be open about his struggles, and that it was met with support from fans and the media. It suggests times are changing and we are no longer expected to silently struggle while trying to keep calm and carry on.
