“I thought I’d be a damn good president”

Hillary Clinton fully expected to win last year’s US election, says Christina Lamb in The Sunday Times. She had written her victory speech (which she planned to give dressed in white, the colour of the suffragettes) and prepared a binder full of policies for her first 100 days in power. “I thought I’d be a damn good president,” she says. “I did not think I was going to lose.” And yet, in the early hours of 9 November, she found herself telephoning Donald Trump to concede victory. “One of the strangest moments of my life – weirdly ordinary, like calling a neighbour to say you can’t make his barbecue.” She still can’t get over it: losing to “someone who knows so little, cares even less and is just seeking the applause of the masses. I feel a terrible sense of responsibility for not having figured out how to defeat this person. There must have been a way and I didn’t find it.”

Of course, Clinton faced some unusual “forces” during the campaign – most notably, the tide of fake news that was unleashed on social media by the Russian government. Vladimir Putin, she says, has always disliked her. During her time as secretary of state, Clinton had many meetings with the Russian president. She found him rude, bored and prone to “manspreading” into her personal space – except once, when she raised the subject of wildlife conservation. “He came alive!” she recalls. “He takes me down the stairs – all of his security guys are jumping up, because we weren’t expected – into this inner sanctum with a huge desk and the biggest map of Russia and he starts telling me he’s ‘going here to tag polar bears’. And then he says, ‘Would your husband like to come?’ And I said, ‘Well, I’ll ask him, but if he’s busy I’ll go!’” The invitation never came.