There are many politicians who are awful because they espouse terrible policies. But there are others who are truly odious because they coat their evil actions with a veneer of smarmy smugness. I cannot bear to hear or see those people when they appear in the media which they often do because they love to be before the microphones and TV cameras and have a talent for harnessing attention. Their very appearance, voicing whatever view happens to serve their own interests of that moment, is enough for me to switch off.

Former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman was one such person and I will never forgive Al Gore for picking him to be his running mate in the 2000 presidential election, so elevating his profile so that we could not avoid constantly seeing him uttering his unctuous moralizing.

South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham was another such person. He was a total warmonger and one of those Republicans who was a harsh critic of Trump when he first ran for the presidency but when Trump won and he saw the size of the Trump cult, he became one of his biggest ass-kissers, supporting Trump in everything, even when he reversed himself as he often did. Graham was also mean and would impugn the basest motives to his critics.

Today came news that Graham had died suddenly. We will now see the usual dreary ritual of other political leaders paying tributes to him as some kind of statesman because of the longevity of his career in the US senate and trying to find some nice things to say about one of the most unprincipled people in Congress.

I will not be one of them. When I heard this morning that he had died, my first feeling was one of relief that I would no longer have to read or hear or see him in the news as he promotes the latest views required by his sycophancy to Trump.

His passing, like that of Lieberman or Henry Kissinger, seems to suddenly make the air feel cleaner and fresher and the sun shine more brightly.