I tried to lose interest in UK politics but when you have been following events in that country for literally decades, it’s hard to withdraw. To say that the Tories in that country were a disappointment is to understate the point – completely pathetic, I say.

I was neither surprised nor particularly disappointed when the Tories were slaughtered at the recent early election brought on by Rishi Sunak, who acted like the turkey voting for an early Christmas.

To be sure, Labour’s Keir Starmer didn’t actually get a mountain of votes, proportionately speaking, but with first-past-the-post voting, he now has a commanding majority in the House of Commons. There is not one Tory-held seat left in London.

(By the way, I’m no fan of first-past-the post voting, although it’s very easy to understand. How is it defensible that the LibDems could get over 70 seats when it polled proportionately less than Reform which secured only five seats? The best option is voluntary preferential. Voters can mark just one candidate but if there are other candidates that they don’t mind, they can mark them 2, 3 etc. I’m also OK with compulsory voting because that takes the extent of turnout out of the equation.)

Of course, by the time Sunak received the baton, it was too late to rescue his party from its dire position. Years of bossy left-leaning dictates coupled with a complete failure to control immigration, both legal and illegal, had well and truly put paid to the Tories’ electoral prospects.

It’s hard to pin the blame on just one person but I’m sticking my pin in Boris. He was the man who had campaigned for Brexit; he was the man who had won a landslide electoral victory by capturing all those Red Wall seats that had never been held by the Tories; he was the man who blew it all up.

His love affair with the green hoax led to a series of bizarre decisions that alienated many ordinary voters. To see him prancing around the Cop climate conference in Glasgow with the equally appalling Cop Minister, Alok Sharma (who has been rewarded by being made a member of the House of Lords) was a dismal sight. (I blame Boris for convincing ScoMo to commit the Coalition to Net Zero 2050, a strategic political mistake if there ever was one.)

All that crap about electric vehicles and phasing out of petrol/diesel ones; about replacing perfectly adequate gas boilers with noisy and inadequate heat pumps; about subsidising extremely expensive offshore windmills; and about eating less meat and cycling or walking everywhere. The list goes on.

Let’s face it, most adults have had a gutful of being told what to do by their parents. They don’t appreciate having another version of their parents bossing them around and imposing additional costs on them.

Of course, the obvious point here is that the Keir Starmer government will be even worse on this score. He hardly had time to get his feet under the desk when Ed Miliband, new Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero – pause for groan here – cancelled new oil and gas projects in the North Sea.

Mind you, the Tories had dragged their feet on this, going for years without approving any new projects before finally relenting towards the end of their term. Miliband has also approved some massive solar factory on England’s green and pleasant land.

But when voters have had enough of an incumbent government, their main concern is to boot it out rather than carefully analyse the alternative. In due course, the British public may become equally appalled by the Labour government that has clear bossy tendencies, possibly even worse than the Tories. For example, Starmer has already pulled forward the date of exit for internal combustion cars to 2030. But this realisation will take a little while to emerge.

It is interesting to take a look at what has happened over the ditch – not our ditch, their ditch (the Channel) – after the snap parliamentary election called by President Macron. If single-round/first-past-the-post voting is bad, the French two-round system is even worse. Having secured the most votes in the first round, the conservative Marine Le Pen – hatefully called ‘far right’ by her enemies and the press – was dudded when the ragtag team of left-wing parties ganged up to work the system to their advantage.

Of course, playing electoral games doesn’t alter the opinions of the very large number of French voters who want to see the borders controlled and common sense policies introduced, particularly on climate.

In the meantime, the left is likely to engage in a fight to the death for electoral spoils given that not everyone can be a winner. These sorts of coalitions have a habit of falling apart, often over quite minor issues. At this stage, no decision has been reached about who should be the prime minister, with Macron’s man offering up his resignation and Macron refusing to accept it. In other words, things are not going well, even from the start.

What is perhaps even more concerning is the suite of policies that the left regard as non-negotiable: a reduction in the retirement age; a massive lift in the minimum wage; more public servants; and price freezes on food, energy and transport. And these are just the main ones.

Given that France has not run a budget surplus since 1973, when I still wore my hair in pigtails, this list of demands is absurd. The current budget deficit France is running – well above 5 per cent of GDP – is in clear violation of the EU fiscal rules, which is really saying something given Macron’s love affair with the EU.

It will be a case of being alert to the political and economic instability likely to overcome France in the coming months and years. As Henry Ergas has pointed out, it’s likely to be a return to the volatility of the de Gaulle years and the possible end of the Sixth Republic.

I can’t finish without mentioning that doddering octogenarian, old Joe, in the great land of Uncle Sam. At first, it was quite funny, like watching the first two episodes of a comedy series. But let’s face it, it’s not really funny; it’s surely close to elder abuse.

What I can’t get over is the number of people who have been covering for Biden, including his wife, advisers, the broader party and most of the press. Who did they think they were kidding? It is surely just a brazen case of self-interest on their part.

In the meantime, having miraculously survived the attempt on his life, the Trumpster may as well enjoy a few more rounds of golf. For all that vitriolic invective about Trump being a threat to American democracy, the US currently has a president who should be in a nursing home. Spare me the hyperbowl, I say.