From my perspective, and I imagine that of most people, it has been a fascinating week on the news front, with a bevy of world leaders visiting the President of the USA, from Macron to our own PM, Sir Keir Starmer, to President Zelensky of Ukraine.
As observed by GB News’ Christopher Hope in his faultless coverage of the events, Donald Trump loves the stage, especially his High Office and the locations it affords him. To be both fair and accurate, being PM of the UK also gives you an entrance to the action, but Sir Keir Starmer is less of a natural performer, and how he looked, acted and came across was as much a part of the scorecard which commentators and reporters had drawn up for him. So too though were the issues of trade, the Chagos deal, the issue of trade tariffs and the war in Ukraine.
Starmer and his team hoped the pledge to increase UK defence spending by cutting overseas aid would play well with Trump. It did. But it has subsequently cost Starmer a ministerial resignation and resentment in the old Labour ranks is strong.
Trump is a master of these occasions and he evidently loves it. To coin a phrase, ‘all the world’s a stage and all the leaders are merely players, they have their entrances and their exits…’ Much of the action was in a city I love and lived in for a little over a year in the early 1990s and it played out in buildings I am pretty familiar with too.
As an avid observer with a sharp and keen interest in news and current affairs, I love the detail and the content of these meetings. As someone with dementia, they are also a good test of my memory, locations and events.
Even nuances, fortunately, still fire-up what Poirot calls the little grey cells of my brain. It is exciting and reassuring when it still works. Sir Keir and his party stayed at the UK Embassy, a stunningly beautiful residence in the heart of Washington's Diplomatic quarter, which bristles with Embassies none as delightful as ours at 3100 Massachusetts Ave NW.
Alastair Stewart reveals how his keen interest in news and current affairs keeps his brain sharp in this week's Living With Dementia
GB NEWSIt was designed by the brilliant architect, Sir Edwin Lutyens. Sir Edwin decided to make it look like a classic English country manor. Outside, looking over the US Capitol, is a striking statue of Sir Winston Churchill. Sir Edwin is also the architect of the Cenotaph in Whitehall
There was a big reception in the lovely ballroom and the cameras captured the new resident, his excellency Lord Mandelson, His Majesty's Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the United States of America. He was scanning the room, as Peter always does, even when he is talking to you. To be fair, he is a master of detail and seldom misses a move; it is what he does.
His job was to make this visit perfect for his boss and his country - a country in which only one person pulls rank on the Prime Minister: HM the King. It was fitting then that one of the PM’s first duties was to act as Postman Pat for His Majesty, pulling a letter from his suit jacket inside pocket with a magician-like flourish,
One of those “Black Spider” memos – so-called because of the King’s scrawled handwriting, had invited President Trump on a State visit. This is the only time a Head of State had been invited twice, the lawyer Starmer declared it was unique and he helpfully repeated it had never happened before.
It reminded me of the first time Trump had that honour with the late Queen as his hostess when he muddled up who walks first and that you don’t pat her on the back. I am sure take two will be better…..
Other visiting leaders are often put in Blair House, nothing to do with Tony, but a coincidence, I’m sure Starmer was relieved to escape. The British burned down the original White House on August 24, 1814, during the War of 1812, so this White House is the second to bear that famous name. The action unfolded in the Oval Office in the President’s study, which I have often been in, as it heaved with hacks from across the world. It was always an accomplishment as part of the foreign media to get a question into the President, so Chris Hope did well.
Something I’m sure New Yorker Donald Trump knows is that following his April 1789 inauguration, President George Washington occupied two private houses in New York City but no US President would give up the White House. As the UK PM also has Chequers, the US President also has Camp David as a country retreat. I vividly recall this was where George Bush Senior hosted President Gorbachev and German Chancellor John Kohl in part of the post fall of the Berlin Wall process of mapping out the post war world and its relationships. It all came flooding back to me…. I had also been in Iceland when ‘Gorby’ and Reagan had made real progress in disarmament.
Talking of disarmament, we had an odd scare at the start of the week, our eldest son and his wife were on their way to see us when he phoned to say we appeared to be in an exclusion zone and they couldn’t get through. It seems in a house nearby, an unexploded piece of second World War munitions or a bomb had been discovered in the house, which used to be a smoker, but fortunately the disposal team did their work, and there was no explosion.
This week we also learned the interview we did for Alzheimer's Research UK was a finalist in some charity media awards. Fingers crossed as these things really help the all-important dementia charities.
