Henry Williams

Old is the new young, which is great news for idlers like me

While many have seen Theresa May’s accession to Prime Minister as striking a blow for feminism, she has also struck a mighty blow for indolence. With George Osborne and David Cameron pushed towards the exit, those of us in our mid-30’s who are still at the thinking-about-doing-something-at-some-point stage of our lives can rest easy a while longer.

This has always been a difficult age. I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that I will never be a rockstar, given that I am well past the maximum age for the 27 club, (at my age Keith Richards was firmly in the Swiss blood transfusion clinic). I also know that even some of life’s greatest proponents of slacking are already well ahead of me. When Roger Waters wrote Time, Pink Floyd’s great hymn to procrastination, ‘and then one day you find 10 years has gone behind you, no one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun,’ he was 28. At 26, Jerome K Jerome was even younger when he wrote, ironically, ‘On being Idle’.

Prior to the Cameroons, there was always politics to have as a vague undecided ambition. This is why Theresa May and her very grey cabinet are such a breath of fresh air. Cameron and Osborne were busy capturing the Tory leadership during their thirties, but at the same age, our new Prime Minister was working blamelessly at the Association for Payment Clearing Services. Admittedly she was also a local councillor but she was hardly exhibiting that single-minded desire for power as shown by her predecessors whose 20’s and 30’s were predicated on ruthless and realised ambition.

The same bonfire of the ambitious is visible on the Labour benches. At 67 Jeremy Corbyn is an indolent’s pin-up. He entered Parliament aged 34 and remained on the backbenches for the next 32 years, Meanwhile for all the trepidation over the candidates in the US elections, gerascophobes of the world can at least rejoice as Hillary Clinton (aged 68) does battle with Donald Trump (looking good for 70).

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