Hello everyone
Happy New Year!
I hope you had a enjoyable festive season and that 2026 is off to a good start.
Today, I want to talk about old men. Six old men in particular.
The Old Man’s Club
In descending order of age, these old men are:
- 79-year-old Donald Trump, President of the United States
- 76-year-old Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel
- 75-year-old Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India
- 73-year-old Vladimir Putin, President of Russia
- 72-year-old Xi Jinping, President of China
- 71-year-old Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, President of Turkey
To be very clear: I don’t want to talk about these men’s politics, their achievements (for good or bad), their democratic legitimacy, or the political system of their respective nations. I want to talk about the craziness of having six septuagenarians as head of state/head of government, particularly for these countries.
Shape the world
Apart from their age, these six men—individually, and collectively—are notable for their ability to shape the world. Their decisions in their own countries have impact, and because of the influence and the position of their country, their decisions have international impacts.
six men run the world
There are other septuagenarian leaders, such as King Charles III (the King of the United Kingdom), Prabowo Subianto (the President of Indonesia), and Friedrich Merz (the Chancellor of Germany). However, none of these men can exercise power in the way, and to the extent, that the six can do, and their countries do not have the global impact/significance that the countries of the six do.
Equally, there are other dominant leaders, but none is from a country that has the global significance of the six countries led by these septuagenarians.
Elections and time limits
When each of these six old men ascended to their present role, there was an element of democracy. Even where the voters were of a highly limited number, these individuals were kinda/sorta/in some ways, elected (or, at least, appointed by consensus).
And they were “elected” for time-limited terms.
However, since their appointments some of those time limits have fallen away and others have suggested they may serve longer than the laws of their respective country would conventionally allow. Indeed, for many, this appointment looks like a lifetime appointment. And a lifetime appointment where they then seem to have sought to acquire further power.
Biology
For all the power acquired by these individuals in seeming lifetime appointments, there is one thing none of them can stop: biology. To put it bluntly, at some point, each of these individuals is going to die.
each will die: there is no debate here
The matter that is up for discussion, is when they will die.
Life expectancy is frequently misunderstood. One of the most common misunderstandings arises when looking at figures projecting life expectancy at birth. If you’ve seen figures projecting life expectancy in the developed world in the range of late-seventies to early-eighties, then you’re probably seeing figures projected at birth.
The projected at birth figures include infant deaths which have a disproportionate weighting on the figures: when you remove infant deaths from the figures, life expectancy is longer. But there’s a secondary factor where, as an individual lives longer, their life expectancy increases (in other words, a seventy-year-old has a greater life expectancy than, say, a twenty-year-old). This is the basic mathematics of averages and has little to do with biology.
So, to be clear, just because these old men might be near the average life expectancy at birth in their respective nations, this does not mean that they are near death or that their lifespan is an abnormality.
now we know who wants to live forever
They’re also not near death, because these six men can be expected to have the very best medical treatment available. And let us not forget that some of these men have discussed organ transplants as a way to prolong life.
Equilibrium
With the death of any of these old men the equilibrium between the survivors will be unbalanced, plus there will be a new person (almost certainly, a new man) scrabbling to fill the void left by the old man, bringing a new element of chaos.
Somewhat concerningly, none of these old men has an obvious successor. And here I don’t mean someone obvious who will take their place (like a deputy)—I mean someone who might plausibly fill the role, and take control of the machine that has been created by the old man, to serve the old man and his family and cronies.
Why does a novelist care?
So, why does a novelists care about these septuagenarians?
If I can ignore the consequences of the reality (which is hard, given the instability), this situation is inherently dramatic. Sure, it is bizarre and it is unprecedented to have such a global gerontocracy seizing and clinging to power, but it is dramatic. And unlike with, say, the build up to a world war—where one did not know whether a war would actually happen—we know that these old men are clinging to power and are going to die at some point.
There is a rich seam—in novels, TV, and films—of historical fiction where the prevailing situation was inherently dramatic. Think how much drama there is set in Roman times, with the Victorians, during the World Wars, or through the Gilded Age. Less fiction is set in historical times when “nothing” happens in the back drop.
So run forward twenty, thirty, fifty, or one-hundred years from today and think how many stories there are in today’s age that will become the fiction staples for future generations, and that’s before the biopics.
The global situation we’re living through is a gift to future dramatists…assuming the old men don’t blow up the world first.
Until February
I’m sorry to start with a rather gloomy take on world affairs. Hopefully we can all be a bit more cheerful in February.
Until then.
All the best
Simon