Donald Trump turned 80 this week, a milestone that landed like a custard pie in the face of a society that prefers its elder statesmen to fade gracefully into the golf course. Instead, the former president’s refusal to retire has reignited a peculiarly British anxiety: the octogenarian workforce. While we cluck our tongues at American gerontocracy, we must confront our own demographic time bomb.
The number of over-65s in UK employment has doubled in the last decade, and the Tories’ plan to push the state pension age to 68 feels less like a policy and more like a dare. On the street, the reality is less ideological: the man stacking shelves at Tesco is often the same age as the man who once stacked nuclear codes. We are living longer, but are we living better?
The cultural shift is subtle but seismic. The grey pound has become the grey paycheque, and the retirement dream of seaside leisure now looks like a luxury pre-rehearsal for the care home. The human cost is not just in aching knees but in dignity.
We fetishise youth yet demand that the old keep working; we admire Trump’s stamina but balk at his relevance. The question isn’t whether he should step aside for a younger model, but whether a society that refuses to let its elders stop working can call itself civilised. As the candles on the cake flicker, we might ask: what are we celebrating?
The survival of the fittest, or the endurance of a system that has confused labour with life?
