Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State, is not a MAGA groupie, but a believer in the Nato alliance. He knows about working with allies. Yet he says that the Americans should go right ahead with Russia, the murderous aggressor, without bringing Ukraine, ally and victim, or the Nato member states, into the talks. This is President Trump’s will, he says. Compare with the Middle East. Would Rubio – or Trump – say that Hamas, the murderous aggressor, was the key player, and should therefore have bilateral talks with the US whereas Israel, ally and victim, should just sit and wait to be told later what is happening? Trump helped bring Hamas to heel by announcing, before his inauguration, that they would have all hell to pay if they did not release the hostages. In the case of Vladimir Putin, however, he has issued no threat, and no condemnation of the invasion or of hostage-taking (though Putin has taken more than ten times the number of hostages held by Hamas, most of them children). What has Putin got that Hamas have not? Well, nuclear weapons, for a start, of which we deprived Ukraine by treaty when the Soviet Union broke up. But that does not seem to be the motivating factor in Trump’s mind. Like Joe Biden in the Gaza case, he seems to believe in the magical power of a ceasefire. As in Gaza, that would benefit only the aggressor.
At this difficult time, it is a great pity that Ukraine has no senior spokesman here. The Ukrainian ambassador in London, General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, is perhaps the greatest hero of this war, but he is effectively exiled by President Zelensky, with whom he fell out. The general speaks no English and hardly says anything in public. He might as well be under house arrest. The case for Ukraine needs to be made urgently, publicly, privately, daily. Otherwise, the Trump version passes unchallenged by the people who really know.
Last Friday, I set off from home to go hunting in Dorset. It was almost the first sunny day for a month. As I drove round the M25, I suddenly heard a great thump and the airbags in my car enveloped me, so that I could not see out. I felt the car veering out of control and then another bang against what may have been the central reservation. Then more veering, and a third, lesser bang. The car stopped, full of fumes. Now I could see again. I was on the hard shoulder. About 150 yards ahead, a car lay upside down. The road was strewn with objects including, poignantly, one of those Valentine’s Day bunches sold at service stations. Finding I could open the door, I climbed out on to the bank. Very quickly, police and ambulance arrived and attended to the driver of the overturned car. Then they came down to me with the good news that his injuries were minor. They escorted me to a second ambulance for various tests. All were clear, but they rightly insisted that I come to hospital for a scan. I had to recover my luggage, which was embarrassing and heavy since it contained two pairs of hunting boots in their trees, hat, whip, spurs etc, a hunting coat as yet unbrushed, and three bottles of champagne, miraculously unharmed, for my hosts. ‘What were you off to do?’ asked the young paramedic with a stud in her nose. I felt nervous, since the NHS has been known to take it out on hunting persons. ‘Riding,’ I mumbled. ‘I know what,’ she exclaimed as she handled the kit, ‘you were going hunting!’ I made a gruff sort of noise. Then she declared that she played polo, show-jumped and was terribly interested in hunting though she had never done it. I wanted to kiss her (but didn’t). I sat in A&E with coat, boots and bags for four hours, and was treated and discharged without any adverse discoveries. For all this, I thank the Higher Power, all my rescuers, especially the horsey paramedic, and Audi’s sturdy car. I am afraid, however, that it is declared by the insurers to be ‘beyond economical repair’.
In her new book about her mother, Pamela Berry, Harriet Cullen recalls the embarrassing year of 1956. After the Suez debacle, the prime minister Anthony Eden – for whom Pam had it in – went to Jamaica to convalesce. On his return, the tabloid headline read ‘PM visits Britain’. As Sir Keir jets off yet again, I suggest it be dusted down for his return.
Sad news of the premature death of Joe Saumarez Smith. When very young, he was my education correspondent at the Sunday Telegraph, before going on to higher things as a tremendous gambler on the horses, making (and sometimes losing) fortunes in various gambling-related businesses. Eventually, he ‘gave something back’ by becoming chairman of the British Horseracing Authority. Joe will always have a place in my heart because of an incident when he was a grumpy adolescent, for which I must first set the family context. His father, John, was the distinguished manager of Heywood Hill bookshop in Mayfair. John was a true bibliophile, but also considered a bit of a snob. One day, when a friend of mine was working there, two of his ideal people entered the shop separately but simultaneously. One was Sir Alec Guinness; the other was Debo Devonshire (wife of the proprietor). John was in an agony of welcome because he wished to defer equally to each. As a result, he went into such physical contortions that he actually fell over among the piles of books. Now back to Joe: another friend of mine had Joe’s parents to stay in the country and they brought their teenage boy. As they left, they signed the visitors’ book, with sullen Joe adding ‘Crap weekend’. The joy of the story depends on knowing the difference between father and son.
The village quiz in aid of our parish church in Sussex recently took place. One round of questions concerned Sussex. The following question raised the biggest cheer: ‘How many hours has the Duchess of Sussex spent in the county whose name she bears?’ The nearest guess was two and a half. Most unfair: the right answer is six.
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