Is running a country just too big a job for anyone?

You don’t expect people to take their political inspiration from Jon Bon Jovi. Or at least I don’t. Maybe that’s terribly presumptuous of me. Maybe some people do. ‘Tommy used to work on the docks/ Union’s been on strike/ He’s down on his luck, it’s tough/ so tough.’ Maybe that’s what got Tony Blair up in the morning. A decade of New Labour, ‘Livin’ on a Prayer’. It’s not entirely impossible, although I did always think that New Jersey’s most accessible rock star was more about bouffant hair and catchy guitar solos than hardcore political philosophy. Mind you, I always thought much the same about Tony Blair.

He was in a colour supplement this weekend, anyway (Bon Jovi, not Blair) wearing what seemed to be a newish hat as the head of his own philanthropic foundation. So there’s politics there, obviously, but that wasn’t what caught my eye. No, it was something he said about Barack Obama.