Lisa

I met Lindsay Graham several times. He mattered to the Foreign Office and the British Embassy as a wise-cracking, reliable friend, committed to maximising Western power in an hour that has lost its allure for the new generation in Congress. Both in opposition and in government, I had a chance to encounter some two dozen odd Senators and Congressmen, interested in foreign affairs. But really, regardless of Left or Right, I was meeting two generational cohorts: that of the Lindsay Graham the Boomer and that of the Millennial JD Vance. The foreign policy Boomers, that older, fading, generation, relished being the go between for countries like Britain, France, Israel, Ukraine, Saudi Arabia or whoever the ally of special concern was in their district, when it came to the White House or unlocking the Senate floor. Graham was a true majordomo of that role. He found personal excitement, real influence and a sense of moral grandeur in his campaigns to mould the world with America power. Allies mattered to him because he saw them as tools, not drains, enhancing American strength. In this he was quite unlike the Millennial generation, who like J.D. Vance, see allies as mostly freeloaders and the quest for primacy on every continent as a fools errand. Its practitioners undermining American security with their campaigns. And many of those allies, such as Israel or Ukraine, as now essentially suspect to a chunk of one side of the aisle or the other. Whilst friendly, the foreign policy Millennials in Congress take none of the relish, that Graham did, in acting like a Roman consul, pitching clients, supplicants and expeditions to the Emperor. What the passing of that generation means I found was a subject of some angst to most allied ambassadors from Europe and the Middle East. In the meetings I joined with Graham, he was focused on pushing sanctions on Russia through MAGA and finding a way forward for Israeli-Saudi normalisation. I was struck by the glint in his eyes of a man who truly lived for this kind of politics. Quite unlike most politicians you meet who, overburdened and overwhelmed — like the dog that caught the car — never give the impression of liking the top that much of that greasy pole. But what most struck me most was when it came to diplomacy, he had the kind of accumulated experience and contact book that only an imperial Senator could have, not a provincial European legislator. Texting Bibi and MBS and half the EU leaders. A reach way surpassing, on this continent, most of our heads of government. The truth is we simply don’t have that many figures like this in Britain anymore — perhaps Tony Blair comes closest — and they are not in Parliament.

An even much betterer better question is what are you doing on the ancestral land of Nacotchtank tribe, you filthy colonial terrorist genocider? Get out of DC and go back to London, where you belong.