Everyone who has followed this blog will know that I’m not a great one for attributing big events to individuals: what used to be called the ‘great man theory of history’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_man_theory). That ‘theory’ of course is more favoured by ordinary folk – it’s simpler and makes for easier story-telling – than it is by us professional historians, who are happier with complexity, and are generally more sophisticated in our analyses.

But what can we say in the age of Donald Trump; who in such a short time, and in defiance of the intentions of the American Constitution, as well as of most people’s understanding of ‘democracy’, has accrued so much power into his own individual hands? (‘Great men’, of course, can be evil too.) Some of that power – his ‘executive orders’ – may be challenged in the courts, and be whittled away at the edges. And those of us who remain reluctant to believe in the ‘great man’ idea still need to look at the wider historical factors that put this particular one into power.

For my part, the inexorable rise of unrestrained capitalism must be one of those underlying factors, personified today by the property developer tycoon with his techno-billionaire courtiers, and – on what used to be the ‘other side’ – Putin and the monied villains surrounding him. It used to be ideology that divided the ‘West’ from the ‘East’; now it’s a single ideology that is bringing them together. (That’s irrespective of whether or not Trump was ‘compromised’ in the 1980s by the FSB.) Putin is a dictator; Trump a wannabe one. They’re both bullies. Vide Trump’s openly-expressed support for Putin, and his grotesque public onslaught on Zelenskyy the other day.

But all credit to Keir Starmer for hugging Zelenskyy afterwards, ostentatiously but quite un-Britishly; and for showing leadership in spearheading Britain’s response to Trump (and the serpent JD Vance) the following day.