I don’t recall having a single conversation with my late father about politics – where did my boys get their views from?
My wife and I have tried our utmost to keep our children unaware of our personal politics. I remember at school hearing children say things about Tories and Labour that even then stood out as opinions they were parroting from home. My parents were always ambiguous about their political views, and I don’t think they were firmly entrenched on either side. I don’t recall having a single conversation with my late father about politics.
This all came back to me when our second son showed us a TikTok he had made. It was him with a Trump filter on, which made him look like my wife and Donald’s lovechild, and he said, “Hi, I’m Donald Trump and I am going to win this election because I’m a big racist.” Or something like that. Leesa and I were taken aback by two things: one that he had formulated views on Trump, and two that he had decided to move into character comedy rather than stand-up. I asked him why he thought Trump was racist, and he said that everybody knows that, before our eldest piped up and said, “He denies climate change and thinks disinfectant cures Covid – he’s an idiot.”