Idris Elba’s champagne makes the world seem less troubled

Gloom. Relentless rain out of a sullen sky enhanced an already pessimistic mood. We were talking geopolitics and agreeing that the West ought to brace itself for a hard landing. Try as we might, we could find no good news, anywhere.

Some of us were veterans, one or two of whom had spent time in Washington in 1980, the build-up to the Reagan era and the prelude to the most successful decade in modern peacetime history, in which Margaret Thatcher played a crucial role. By the end, the West had won the Cold War, the Soviet empire was crumbling, Marxism had become a wasm, the UK’s decades-long acquiescence in decline was over, while the Chinese appeared to be taking tentative steps towards membership of the international legal and economic system. It would shortly be possible to proclaim the end of history and herald a new world order.