I am very fond of Anthony Scaramucci, the former (very briefly) Trump spokesman who now co-presents the US version of The Rest Is Politics podcast. He is funny, smart, and very good company.
But he got something badly wrong, when he told me, many, many times, before and during the US presidential campaign, including on election day itself, that Donald Trump would never, ever be re-elected president. In case you hadn’t noticed, the Mooch was way off beam with that one, and Trump will very soon be re-instated ahead of what are almost certain to be another four years of chaos, lies, and what Scaramucci hails as “a golden era of corruption.”
This same man now tells me, with the same conviction he repeatedly told me Trump was toast, that Elon Musk is already banished from the inner circle. It really doesn’t look like that to me, however.
Black tie New Year’s Eve side-by-side Dad dancing at Mar-a-Lago didn’t come over as outer circle ostracisation; nor does the absolute freedom Musk appears to enjoy, to say and do what he likes, despite now being so closely aligned with Trump.
Trump’s chief of staff Susie Wiles has told incoming members of the new administration that their social media channels must “go dark,” and communicate nothing unless it is authorised. If Musk’s vile, unhinged posts about Keir Starmer, Jess Phillips and grooming gangs, or his enthusiastic backing of the AfD in Germany reflect US diplomatic policy under Trump, then we really are in for a hard and bumpy ride.
Musk has turned X into a very loud and personal megaphone, allowing him to create news and/or spread misinformation, any place, any time, any issue he likes, the further to the right the better. He is enjoying it.
An article in a German newspaper dominated the debate there for a while, mid-election campaign; it was Musk, much more than any British figure, who got the grooming gang story back onto the political agenda in the UK.
Such is the newsworthiness now granted to him by the media that ITV, ludicrously, reported Musk’s post calling on King Charles to dissolve Parliament, as though was a serious proposal meriting serious consideration. News it was not, unless the headline was “Musk reveals shocking ignorance over UK constitution.”
It is easy to assume, given the narcissistic megalomaniacal arrogance that now pours through his every utterance, and his clear belief that the label of “the world’s richest man” allows you to behave like a drug-addled toddler with a new toy (closeness to political power), that Musk is in the hubristic phase that so often precedes an enormous fall. Perhaps that is why Scaramucci is strongly of the view that European political leaders on the receiving end of his assaults should not go to battle with him. I am not so sure about that one either.
It reminds me of the chorus of complaints sent my way recently, when it was announced I was appearing on BBC Question Time with Nigel Farage. “Why are you helping to give him a platform?”
Come again! Farage already has a platform with a very large capital P, and one of the reasons is that he is very good at getting the spotlight cast upon him, and that when he does he is rarely properly challenged. Brexit remains the best example. Indeed, it is so rare that he gets challenged over his role in the campaign to get Brexit over the line that he seemed genuinely taken aback when I did so on the Beeb.
Musk has an even bigger platform and is prone to even greater extremism, as seen by his support for the self-styled Tommy Robinson, which Farage has wisely chosen not to echo, for which a man he called a friend on Sunday morning turned himself into an enemy by Sunday afternoon. He is a real and present danger to our politics, and it would be a mistake to think that Donald Trump will defuse him. Sometimes you can ignore your enemies, but Musk is too big a figure, and has declared himself too big an enemy, for the government to ignore. He has to know there will be a price to pay for his lies and misdemeanours, and pay it.
Keir Starmer got the tone on Musk absolutely right on Musk on Monday – calm, factual, steely – and was right too to draw bandwagoning Tory politicians into his line of fire. It won’t stop Musk, it will fire him up further. But at least he knows that no matter how close he may be, for now at least, to the US president, the UK prime minister is prepared to call him out for what he is, and make a rather astute domestic political point while he’s at it. Happy New Year.
Talking of enemies, the Mail and Mail on Sunday have clearly been enjoying digging into my son Rory’s football betting syndicate. It is hard to imagine that they, or indeed any other national newspaper, would be interested in this dispute between gamblers, who know well the risks they take, were it not for the fact that they can stick my name in headlines above stories I am unlikely to enjoy reading.
They have also had pretty much carte blanche to say what they like because they have been briefed by one side taking part in what were supposed to be confidential negotiations, and which my son’s side did not rebut, out of a determination not to break the confidence. Only when the claims became truly outlandish did they engage in any detail.
Also, as my friend Tom Baldwin pointed out, “in normal circumstances the Mail would only be interested in this story (if it was interested at all) as a way of hammering dodgy ‘Oriental’ bookies who had conned an honest, upstanding, white, Oxford-educated British businessman. But when they discover the Brit in question is Alastair Campbell’s son, the world seems a very different place.”
We are coming up to the tenth anniversary of former Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy’s death through alcoholism, and shortly after New Year, Fiona and I made the trek to his beautiful resting place, up a hillside in a remote part of the Scottish Highlands. The Covid years apart, I have always gone there around this time of year, accompanied by my bagpipes, to play at his grave the lament that was played when he was buried. The views are outstanding. Ditto the acoustics.
We met up with one of his old schoolfriends, Davy Corrigan, who told us some real horror stories about the way Charles and his family were treated, both by the media and by his SNP opponents, when his struggle with booze was made public.
My sister Liz was up with us this year, with her super-fit husband Rob, who took the opportunity to climb Ben Nevis, on a bitterly cold, snowy day. On his return, I told him of the time Charles and I were sitting outside having a cup of tea, staring at, and admiring, Britain’s highest mountain.
“How many times have you been up there?” I asked him.
“None,” he said.
“None?” I asked, incredulous.
“I’ve never been to the bottom,” he replied. “You won’t find any constituents up there!”
Miss him. So does politics.
It was TV pundit Gary Neville who introduced me to the concept of a heated gilet, which keeps him warm in cold commentary boxes, and which came in very handy after our morning swims in Loch Linnhe, one of which was shared with a seal, bobbing up and down, possibly bemused to find humans swimming alongside in the freezing cold water.
Once out, you get as dry as you can as fast as you can, get dressed as best you can, then on with the heated gilet, the dryrobe and hurry back to base, dry robe off, in for breakfast.
“What is the red light for?” asked our non-swimming friend Lindsay Nicholson, pointing to the light above the logo.
“It’s my new heated gilet,” I replied. Assuming the former magazine editor would be interested in this new must-have accessory for cold-water swimmers, I added: “You can get heated trousers and heated gloves too.”
“Well I never,” she said, “who said the days of the real man were over?”
