A failure of British statecraft on a scale unseen since the Suez crisis.” You might think the former transport minister Jo Johnson’s parting shot at Theresa May stood a fair chance of attaining immortality in the A-level history exams of the future.

To my 19-year-old son, the First World War — which ended 100 years ago today — is as remote an event as the Congress of Berlin was to me when I was 19, Lloyd George as distant a figure as Disraeli.

Unlike presidential elections, it is usually quite easy to predict who will win the mid-terms.

At the beginning of the Cold War, the artist wife of the physicist Alexander Langsdorf came up with the image of the “Doomsday Clock”.

It was the week identity politics ate itself. It was the week we learnt that the Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren is between 1/1,024 and 1/64 Native American Indian.

There are autocrats. Look around. According to Freedom House, a quarter of the world’s states are “not free”.

Hoax academic papers expose the intellectual malware in our universities.

Ford v Kavanaugh throws a can of petrol on the bonfire of the legalities.

The president’s tariffs are widely mocked but he has found Xi’s weak spot.