I don’t remember ever subscribing to The Daily Telegraph web version, but its front-page headlines come up on my computer every day. What strikes me is how many of these have to do with money: how to make more of it; how to avoid tax on your pile of it; how to manage your children’s school fees now that Labour is planning to end the independent schools’ tax exemption; the nicest places to spend your expensive holidays; and how to protect your lucre generally from the coming assaults of those socialist villains, Starmer and Reeves. These are clearly the major topics of the day for what I assume has always been the Telegraph’s core readership; together with the ‘culture wars’ issues that have entered in – to add some spice to the mixture – more recently.

The Telegraph used to be better than this: good solid journalism, intelligent commentary, biased, obviously (as is The Guardian’s); but never so narrowly and selfishly mercenary as it is today. For pity’s sake: the world is in as dangerous situation as it has been in for half a century, with a third-world and possibly nuclear war threatening, Gaza and Ukraine under existential threat, starvation all over, national and international inequalities deepening, health systems collapsing, and climate change looking like destroying everything if we don’t do something about it soon. And all the Telegraph’s readers can think of is their own bank balances, and profits, and luxuries, and privileges, and holidays: money, money, money, all the way.

At least I don’t see them obsessed – or as obsessed as many Americans seem to be – with clowns like Trump (that came and went with Boris), baby-killing abortionists, pet-eating immigrants, Marxists, childless cat ladies, and the like. Maybe Nigel Farage will bring some of that back with him from the far-Right jamboree he’s currently visiting in Chicago, in the company of some of America’s – and Europe’s – worst. Hold the front page.