Will the real America please stand up now?

Polls close in the US election today. The campaigns have ended and now it’s up to voters to choose between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. She is a normal human being and well qualified for the job, a former prosecutor, a US senator and VP to Joe Biden for the past four years. He is a convicted felon, and according to the New York Times, "unfit to lead. Watch him. Listen to those who know him best. He tried to subvert an election and remains a threat to democracy. He helped overturn Roe, with terrible consequences. Mr. Trump’s corruption and lawlessness go beyond elections: It’s his whole ethos. He lies without limit." 

The Tories are headed for oblivion

The Tory party’s direction of travel changed dramatically in June 2016. I think we all know that. It’s safe to assume that had Cameron won the EU referendum it would have spiked UKIP’s guns and headed off any possible threat from the far right. Cameron's position as leader would have been strengthened allowing him to distance the party from some of the more extreme elements. They would I'm sure have continued as moderate and centre-right and perhaps with Osborne at the helm might still be in office. The 2017 election wouldn't have been necessary and they still had sensible men like Philip Hammond, Dominic Grieve, David Gauke and others.

Another Trump presidency would be "perilous"

The decisions by the owners of the LA Times and The Washington Post not to publish editorials endorsing Kamala Harris looks like political cowardice as other newspapers across the USA attack Trump without necessarily recommending Harris.  The latest is the Las Vegas Sun in Nevada, originally a Reagan, Bush Republican state but which voted for Obama (twice) and Clinton and Biden in 2016 and 2020. However, it's still a close race.  The Sun says: Donald Trump’s cognitive decline becoming a troubling concern. It is a measured if devastating piece which begins by telling readers that the nation "must confront the fact that beyond his hateful character, he is crippled cognitively and showing clear signs of mental illness."

Trump: sorry is the hardest word

Donald Trump is an exceptionally stupid person, as must be obvious to any sentient observer. If he hadn’t been given $400 million by his father, he would probably have ended up working for the mob and served time in jail. As it is, he’s in a tight race for the presidency and could easily find himself back in The White House in January. Alternatively, he could be in a cell on Riker’s Island. Given his desperate position, most candidates would try to expand his potential appeal among the centre ground of politics, independents and right-leaning Democrats.

Democracy itself is on the ballot in November

The world is teetering on the brink of a new Dark Age. A few days ago we had the spectacle of Russia holding a summit of the BRICS nations in Kazan, which the Secretary General of the UN, Antonio Guterres, attended giving it totally unwarranted legitimacy. The 33 countries that sent delegations included the 10 BRICS nations (China, Brazil, Russia, India, South Africa, etc.) and others leaning towards autocracy and anti-Westernism.  This is while Russia is involved in a bloody war in Europe which has cost the lives of perhaps a million people and displaced another six or seven million. Putin is set on a course of undermining democracy wherever he can and that means virtually everywhere.

America's descent into authoritarianism begins

The US presidential election gets weirder by the day.  The Wall Street Journal (Murdoch owned BTW via the Dow Jones) reports that Elon Musk has been 'in conversation' with Vladimir Putin since 2022. Musk is as we know, a leading US defence contractor through his SpaceX company as well as owning the EV maker Tesla and one of the world's leading social media platforms, Twitter, which he's using to influence millions of voters in support of Donald Trump. Musk is becoming so rich and powerful that he's rising above governments like some madcap Bond villain.

Trump and Musk: the two most dangerous men in America

Donald Trump is one of the worst, if not THE worst human being, that America has ever produced in any era and in any capacity. I can’t think of anyone else in history that even comes close. His flaws are so numerous, well-documented and obvious that it’s hard to believe there is a single person who could see even a flicker of good in him.  His former personal lawyer and once a New York Mayor, Rudy Giuliani, has been essentially bankrupted by his stupid allegiance to Trump, ordered to pay $148 million to two election workers in Georgia because he wrongly accused them of fiddling the 2020 election result.

Slippery Gove absolves himself over Brexit and the Irish border

Michael Gove, the new editor of The Spectator, has been interviewing Arlene Foster, the former leader of the DUP, about Brexit. He is the slipperiest of slippery characters and not averse to rewriting history when it suits him. Brexit has been an unmitigated disaster as most people in this country now accept. Even Kemi Badenoch who could become Tory leader on 2 November, admits as much when she declares the problem with Brexit is that they embarked on the project without a plan. This, remember, was the greatest upheaval in trade and our constitutional settlement for a couple of centuries.

Brexit, still impacting Britain

The Times reports that a Whitehall source has claimed a US-China trade war would deliver a bigger economic hit than Brexit. This is in fact, the headline to the piece by Stephen Swinford and Chris Smyth. A trade war is potentially what we'll get if Trump wins on 5 November, with his plan to put tariffs on virtually everything in the insane belief that the exporting countries will somehow bear the cost. Personally, I don't think it will ever come to that. Trump will eventually be forced to accept that the US consumer will either pay the tariff or be deprived of the choice of goods and forced to buy inferior or more expensive domestically produced alternatives.

Trump: the US election barrels on

I think it’s clear by now that the US election in under three weeks will go down in history as the weirdest ever, and by some margin, whatever the result. One of the two candidates, the former president Donald Trump appears to live somewhere between a dystopian, parallel universe and total insanity. At 78, he’s the oldest man ever to stand and by far the stupidest. I’ve been following a lot of anti-Trump commentary on Twitter and some of it is well past surreal, even by American standards.