When did you become older than the Prime Minister?
Almost no-one was older than the Queen. And not many people are older than the King. But how old were you when you became older than the Prime Minister?
But before we get to that, I’ve recently updated this substack to include a page about my fiction (this used to exist on my old website but, like a wounded caribou, didn’t survive the migration). There you can find details of my fantasy novel, Imperial Visions, and book of short stories, Fragments of a Vision. Both are available in paperback and on Kindle.
This is also the place to say I’ve now (after more than a decade!) finished my sequel, Visions in Exile. I’m currently incorporating comments from beta readers and I will put out in the first half of this year.
OK, but how old was I when I became older than the Prime Minister?
The chart below gives the answer. To read it, find your date of birth, and read up to find the age at which you became older than the Prime Minister. For example, someone born in 1940 would have become older than the Prime Minister at the age of 50, and would have done so when Major became Prime Minister (i.e. 1990).
The chart assumes someone was born on the 1 January in the relevant year (in practice, this only makes a difference for people born in the same year as the relevant Prime Minister).
A few points of interest:
No-one born after 1980 has ever been older than the Prime Minister.
No-one has ever been older than the Prime Minister when they were less than 40.
Prime Ministers are getting younger, though not monotonically so1.
For the benefit of Americans and any other strange and wonderful creatures who may be reading, we'll also look at US Presidents.
The chart is interestingly different:
The US has had the occasional young President followed by a string of older ones, so we only have four points where people become older.
All four of these are Democrats. In the UK there was no real correlation with party.
Presidents are not getting younger.
And not while actually being Prime Minister.