If there's one thing we Brits have to boast about, it's modesty

Times

8 hours ago

I'm the best columnist ever. My articles are the most beautiful in history, better than all the others, in fact. Literally millions flock to read them. They're the reason they buy The Sunday Times: that's what people are saying, I hear. Many, many people.
Nope: I just can't keep that up. God, it must be hard being Donald Trump. As you may have noticed — and as those readers who comment in our digital editions will doubtless point out with speed and relish — the above statements are not entirely true. But for the purposes of this exercise, truth doesn't really matter, because I just wanted to find out what it feels like to be the president for a moment. Answer: exhausting, and a bit icky.
Trump was on his usual self-effacing form last week, only taking a break from blowing his own enormous golden trumpet to receive tribute from that fawning crawler Mark Rutte. If there's one thing that's worse than a braggart, it's an arselicker. The Nato chief sent Trump a series of sycophantic texts, in which he told the sexually harassing compulsive liar how 'extraordinary' he is, and how grateful we should all be for his wisdom and beneficence.
• Call him Daddy … How flattery and fanfare warmed Trump to Nato
When Trump blithely published the texts to the world, Rutte didn't even have the common decency to squirm with humiliation. Instead he engaged the obsequiousness overdrive, and called him 'Daddy'. Remarkably, nobody threw up.
The recipient of the praise didn't see anything embarrassing in it: he just took it as his natural due. 'I think he likes me,' Trump said, in a rare moment of understatement. The other Nato leaders didn't seem to think anything was amiss either: they were too busy doing their own sucking up. And I thought: I must have missed something. When did it become socially acceptable for people to be so very pleased with themselves?
Perhaps it's a national character thing. I come from an age when, by and large, the British didn't like boasting. It wasn't in our cultural DNA. When people were pompous, we laughed at them. To some extent, that's still true. If Keir Starmer reposted a video showing an enormous gold statue of Keir Starmer, the Labour Party would slink away and die of shame. When the president of the United States does it, half his party reposts the repost.
Or take the regular incumbent of this column. For the past four years, Jeremy Clarkson has documented his chosen life as a farmer, in print and on television. Has he spent this time telling us he is the best farmer ever, bragging about record harvests and Making Diddly Squat Great Again? No. He has spent it telling us he is comically useless and incompetent: he buys the wrong tractors, sows the wrong seeds, can't plough for toffee, and is only saved from disaster by the practical and knowledgeable people around him. As a result, his TV show was the most popular thing on Amazon UK. Good-humoured haplessness is our thing.
• Jeremy Clarkson: I'm never starting an other business
That may be changing, though, just a little, as the American love of self-promotion seeps into our daily life. Our fastest-growing social media platform, LinkedIn, is an orgy of boasting and self-congratulation; the burgeoning self-help and wellness industries are built on telling each one of us how special and wonderful we are; and the fact that Nigel Farage is not a notably modest man doesn't seem to have hurt his popularity.
I hope this new trend doesn't go too far. There's a merit in modesty. People who really do great things don't have to tell us they've done great things: the things themselves do that. Einstein didn't go round saying he was a genius: he came up with a theory that changed our conception of the fundamental nature of reality, and left it there. Clement Attlee didn't say he'd personally built the welfare state. Jane Austen didn't proclaim that she was a great novelist: she just wrote Emma. We could do with her now. She would have had enormous fun with the Trumps of this world.
The Bezoses, too. Austen had the keenest of eyes for boasting's bedfellow, ostentation, and The Wedding in Venice this weekend would have given her plenty to work with: the reported 27 outfits for Lauren, the $1 million worth of flowers, the fleets of accompanying private jets and superyachts.
Some Venetians are outraged at the sheer, shameless showiness of it all. Protesters put a huge anti-Bezos banner in St Mark's Square, and expressed disgust that Venice is being turned into a playground for the super-rich.
Hmm. Have they thought that through? Weren't all the city's most wonderful buildings created to be a playground for the rich in the first place? The Doges were not exactly a self-effacing lot: their palazzos were built for the express purpose of displaying their prodigious wealth, and they made them as showy as the technology of the day allowed.
In that sense, Jeff and Lauren are more true to Venice's traditions than any of the protesters. The world's most beautiful city is a monument to more than 1,000 years of bling, and it's only the seductive patina of age that adds such venerable mystique to the baroque facades.
And that's the awkward thing about all this showing off. The fact is that show-offs sometimes really do achieve stuff. The Doges built the world's most beautiful city. Bezos built the world's fourth biggest company. Trump — well, he got elected twice, and invented a previously unknown skin colour. And who knows, he may have done us all a favour in Iran.
Our own national modesty isn't always a virtue: it might even be a self-fulfilling prophecy, one of the causes of our national decline. Still, I'm glad we are the way we are. At least we have a degree of insight. As I'm well aware, my columns are not the most amazing in history: like everyone, I'm just doing my best and muddling through. It's all any of us can do, in the end. How lovely it would be to hear the leader of the free world say that.