Freddy Gray

‘Calling someone crazy or hysterical completely dismisses their experience,’ says Meghan Markle in her strangely throaty professional podcast voice. ‘It minimises what they’re feeling. And you know it doesn’t stop there. It keeps going to the point where anyone who has been labelled it enough times can be gaslit into thinking that they’re actually unwell. Or sometimes worse to the point where real issues of all kinds get ignored. Well that’s not happening today.’ Cue the intro music – ‘I am woman, I am fearless, I am sexy’ etc. – to the latest episode of Archetypes, the Duchess of Sussex’s Spotify series. ‘I feel pretty strongly about this word crazy,’ says Meghan. She does.

Under Joe Biden, the longstanding American policy of ‘strategic ambiguity’ vis-à-vis Taiwan has taken on a curious post-modern quality. The official US position on arguably the biggest international question of the moment is now so ambiguous that even the president of the United States doesn’t appear to know what it is. In a long interview with CBS 60 minutes this weekend, president Biden was asked if US forces would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese attack. ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘If in fact there was an unprecedented attack.’ The White House promptly clarified that, in fact, the US position has not changed, suggesting that America still might not commit to defending Taiwan with its own troops. The same thing happened in May.

What is going on in America? A celebrity eccentric known as ‘the Pillow guy’, his real name is Mike Lindell, claimed yesterday that the Federal Bureau of Investigation seized his mobile telephone. Lindell, a former crack addict turned successful entrepreneur who is now a major supporter of the Trump movement, says he was returning from a hunting trip when ‘cars pulled up in front of us, to the side of us and behind us. I said, “those guys are either bad guys or the FBI.” It turns out they were the FBI.’ Lindell is a wacky guy, and his claims should be treated with scepticism.

There's a funny thing about humans: when we want to help people, we often end up hurting them — and vice-versa. Take the ‘ThickLizzie’ hashtag that has been trending on social media. The new Prime Minister is, according to large numbers of Tory-loathers, a moron. There is an undercurrent of sexism here, yes. There’s also an overcurrent of stupidity. It’s just clearly not true. Truss may not be the most dynamic public speaker. She can be awkward. She may have poor judgment. She may turn out to be a disaster as Prime Minister. How many of the people calling her stupid on Twitter today got into Oxford to read Philosophy, Politics and Economics? But thick?

Here she is, then. Liz Truss is Britain’s third woman Prime Minister and she’s already suffering from the not-so-soft bigotry of low expectations. Almost everyone is looking at this woman the Tory membership has chosen to lead us all and feeling glum. She is someone widely seen in political and media circles as a lightweight and an embarrassment. The overly drawn-out and stale leadership battle between her and Rishi Sunak hasn’t helped either. Can Liz Truss ever hope to win a general election? But most new leaders enjoy a popularity bounce upon entering high office. Remember May mania? She experienced a five per cent surge in the polls in her first month in No. 10. Well, get ready for Liz mania.