Nancy Pelosi went rogue in Taiwan

Old leaders can be among the best. Just look at Konrad Adenauer, who became German chancellor when he was 73 or Ronald Reagan who was days off 70 when he became president. But the United States’s political leaders are at risk of taking it too far. President Joe Biden has already regressed to childhood.

Nowadays even the Democratic party do not consider him fit for purpose; he has lost credibility and authority. The 82-year-old US house speaker Nancy Pelosi, who arrived in Taiwan yesterday to much trumpeting by the West and much harrumphing by China, simply ignored Biden’s limp statement: ‘I think that the military thinks it’s not a good idea right now.’

Pelosi wears her age well, albeit she has had more repair work than a British motorway. Sadly, cosmetic surgeons cannot work on her brain. At a time when cool heads are required on all sides, Nancy Pelosi has ignored warnings from all sides, including her own, that the visit by the most senior US government official for a generation, would raise geopolitical temperatures in the South China Sea.