Compare and Contrast and other stories

 More great work from Saint Dominic last night. He's hardly flawless but he can be candid about many of his inconsistencies, some of which would have been admired by Machiavelli himself. But during the night I heard a Times Radio item about Michael Wolff, author of Landlside, the Final Days of the Trump Presidency, which provided an opportunity to compare the two chaotic, incompetent vanity projects.

Trump always seems the more terrifying, not least because he was 'in charge' of a more powerful country but at least perhaps he was in charge whereas it now turns out that Boris regards the Daily Telegraph as his 'real boss'.

While Laura Kuennsberg was her usual excellent self and pressed Dominic when she thought she had him in difficulties, her disbelief was taken quite lightly by Dom. What he said about Boris only filled in the first-hand witness detail of what we thought we knew all along and, while shocking, it no longer shocks. Yes, that's what he's like and always has been.

The difference between Trump and Boris is that one doesn't listen while the other listens but doesn't understand. The similarity is that they both suffer from a kind of maniac locked-in syndrome of being themselves. While Wolff said there is no other, hidden Trump, he only exists in the one-dimensional avatar that he presents, Boris is slightly different in that he can shift between convenient beliefs, ideas or policies almost by the hour if need be. There is nothing of any substance inside either of them but while Trump cannot be anything other than his awful, destructive, solipsistic self, Boris is malleable, forever shifting, very shifty and prepared to believe whatever suits the moment.

They both live in the moment.

While Trump is unchangeable and has to have facts, figures and history altered to suit him, Boris is like something that I noticed long ago in the fashionable left and capable of supporting whatever it looks worth his while to. The likes of Jeremy Corbyn seem generally well-intentioned but their righteous support of the Palestininan cause line them up with the anti-Semitic far right. 40 years ago, at University, the campus Marxists were in favour of the ayatollahs against the aristocratic Shah and supported Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe.

What we can do is follow Tyrone Mings, the footballer who someone pointed out is 'surely no Marxist', and monitor those things that politicians, or any of us, fail to condemn.

A highlight of Dominic's analysis was his daignosis of the broken system of 'democracy' that gives us a choice between Boris and Corbyn, as well as a system that puts the likes of him effectively in charge. One of his possible solutions was a 'new party'. We did try that before with the SDP which flattered to deceive and effectively went into the Liberal Party. I'd like to know more from Dom about this new party and whether it would be sensible, centrist and try its best to do the right thing or if it would be made up of the sort of sinister goons that he so expertly plotted the referendum and last General Election for.

He's a clever lad and his expertise is something you'd like on your side. The suspicion that he wins like Don Revie rather than like Brian Clough remains, though, and at present he's only admired for being the enemy of one's enemy. That doesn't make him one's friend.

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Reading oneself over the last 40-odd years is more interesting than it might have been. Starting to put together the Collected Poems, I find I have 133 poems for it since the late 1970's, which is where it is likely to start. I'm surprised how much I like some of the old ones which I haven't looked at for years. It's not obvious quite where to draw the line but I've thrown out less than I thought I might so far. 133 poems from 40 or so years is not far off the rate of 4 a year I've long assumed is what I did.

I wonder if it might be called Pluperfect, contuining the theme of my titles and looking back twice, as it were. I might need to extend my computer expertise to make a kindle of it but there is time. I'll provisionally set myself a date of 17/10 to have it done by. One has to eventually accept that the bid for the rights to it from Faber or anybody else is looking unlikely and, no, I don't want to go out to try to sell copies by reading from it and being there to append my signature at festivals. It's not a commercial enterprise. It matters little to me whether anybody reads them or not. But the simple fact of having a 'project' to think about and do has immediately improved my quality of life.