Politics

Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.

Wednesday

Matthew Lynn

Why the market reaction to Trump 2.0 has been muted

Truth Social rocketed. Bitcoin soared in price. The dollar rose, and bond yields were up, while Chinese equities wobbled. Over the course of last night, as it became clear that Donald Trump had won the US presidential election, the markets responded to the news. The trouble is, no one really knows what Trump 2.0 means for the global economy.  Investors will have no idea until he forms an administration in January The initial price moves were very obvious. With the backing of the main crypto tycoons, a Trump White House will be a lot friendlier to digital currencies, although even that had to be kept in perspective. A 7 per

Ross Clark Ross Clark

The reason Kamala Harris lost

Whatever you think of Donald Trump, watching the mood change in the BBC’s election studio has been delicious. It was like a New Orleans funeral in reverse – a carnival turning a corner and transforming into a wake. This was supposed to be a historic night. But then it wasn’t just the BBC. The liberal media have been at it for days. There was supposed to be a last-minute surge in support for Kamala Harris, driven by record turnout of women coming out to fight for their rights. The idea that American voters would be steered by anything other than their own personal economic circumstances was foolish This was pure

James Johnson

Why Donald Trump is winning

Trump is headed to the White House. As I write, that is the consensus of almost all political experts, including the New York Times’ Nate Cohn, who puts Trump’s chance of victory at greater than 95 per cent. Trump is set to pick up at least one – and possibly all three – of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. It is not confirmed yet, but it looks likely Trump will win all seven swing states. Cohn also projects a Trump lead in the popular vote, by 1.2 points. That would be the first time a Republican has won the popular vote since George Bush in 2004. There will be many postmortems

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Donald Trump is set to win the presidency

In the run-up to the US election, it was expected that the count could take days, possibly a week. Now, it looks like the 2024 election will be decided in a matter of hours. Swing states North Carolina and Georgia have been called for Donald Trump. Fox News reports that the most crucial swing state in this election – Pennsylvania – has been won by Trump. The surprise Selzer poll from over the weekend, showing Kamala Harris three points ahead in Iowa, proved badly wrong: Trump has won the state. The Republican candidate is now only a few electoral votes away from clinching the presidency. The prediction market Polymarket at

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell baffled by Trump’s victory

Donald Trump is on course to win the US election – and it’s safe to say that Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell aren’t thrilled about the news. On a livestream of their Rest is Politics podcast, Stewart – who earlier this week said he hadn’t ‘changed my mind on Kamala Harris winning comfortably’ – struggled to process the news that the US election was far closer than he may have hoped. Stewart suggested that Trump’s success in winning the two key swing states of North Carolina and Georgia was difficult to comprehend given how good the Democrats’ ground game was during the campaign: ‘When a result happens, you rewrite history.

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Election night: early signs suggest it’s Trump’s to lose

21 min listen

Results are coming in across the United States, and the early signs (though it is still very early) look good for Donald Trump. At the time of recording, the betting markets are with him and the famous New York Times ‘Needle’ has swung to a ‘likely’ Trump victory. It is still much too early to call in an election that could drag on for days to come. No media outlet has called it for either candidate yet. To give you the latest updates from the States, Kate Andrews is joined by The Spectator’s team on the ground: Amber Duke is in battleground state Michigan; Matt McDonald joins from Washington DC,

Steerpike Steerpike

New York Times ‘Needle’ leans Trump

Over the past half hour, the famous New York Times ‘Needle’ has moved out of the ‘toss-up’ range, and into the ‘Trump range’. As of 2.47 a.m. UK time, the Grey Lady gives Donald Trump a 69 per cent chance of returning to the White House. The model estimates Trump will get 286 Electoral College votes (he needs 270), whereas Harris will get 252. The ‘Needle’, according to the NYT, is the product of ‘nearly 100 Times journalists, engineers, statisticians, data experts and researchers’. The paper says: ‘As more votes come in, the Needle becomes more “confident” in the final outcome.’ It’s still pretty early, as results go. Counting in

Ben Domenech

It’s a grim start to the night for Kamala Harris

This is a grim night so far, in terms of every piece of data that we have about how Kamala Harris is performing. Of the four different possible situations, one was obviously a big win for Harris, one was a small win for Harris, one was a small win for Trump, and one was a big win for Trump. I was putting my chips on the last option as the likeliest. I just think that given the dynamics involved, it’s a lot more likely that we are underestimating the fundamentals than that we are missing some big gargantuan upheaval that we haven’t seen. So what do you end up with?

Tuesday

Charlotte Henry

A Donald Trump victory would not be ‘good for Israel’

As Americans prepared to head to the polls, I heard from lots of Jews in the UK and elsewhere that a Donald Trump victory will be ‘good for Israel’. By this, they generally mean that Trump will be less critical of the Israeli government and the military action it is taking in response to 7 October than both his successor (and potential predecessor) Joe Biden, and opponent Kamala Harris. That may well be true. However, Israel has already been able to strike Iran directly, something it surely could not do without at least implicit American support. Indeed, there are reports that American fighter jets were on standby should anything go

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

The American election question the pollsters couldn’t answer

In retrospect, it’s easy to justify any election outcome. This election won’t be any different. In fact, it will be easier than ever to explain the result.  He hadn’t won an election since 2016. He ran a campaign of fear and division. Between elections, he was convicted of 34 felonies. He picked a Vice Presidential candidate with narrow appeal. He struggles with rambling. He isn’t popular. He never has been. Of course Kamala Harris won the election. On the flip side: she couldn’t break through into double digits in her own party’s primary polling. She’s held both sides of almost every public policy position – and refused during the 2024 campaign to

Coffee House

Donald Trump declares victory

Donald Trump has declared victory in the US election after winning the key battleground states of Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia. ‘America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate,’ the Republican candidate told supporters. ‘This is a magnificent victory for the American people, that will allow us to make America great again,’ he said at the rally in Florida. Trump has still not secured the 270 Electoral College votes he needs to confirm victory, but the path to the White House looks increasingly narrow for his Democrat rival Kamala Harris. The Republicans have taken control of the Senate from the Democrats, having turned seats in Ohio and West Virginia.

Limor Simhony Philpott

Why Netanyahu sacked his defence minister

Benjamin Netanyahu dropped a bombshell this evening when he fired Defence Minister Yoav Gallant. Outside observers might wonder why the Prime Minister would fire the only member of his government with meaningful military experience when Israel is engaged in a prolonged and complex war on several fronts. Israelis however, have been expecting this to happen for some time. It was no secret that Gallant and Netanyahu had a fractured relationship from the moment the government came to power. Netanyahu fired Gallant in March last year because of his criticism of the government’s judicial reform that threatened to undermine Israel’s democratic institutions. He backtracked on his decision after tens of thousands

Steerpike Steerpike

Who do Spectator readers think will win the US election?

With polls open across the United States a new President is about to be elected. But who is it going to be? Steerpike has already taken a look at the betting markets who have Trump down as the winner. But do Spectator readers agree? For the past fortnight Mr S has been asking new subscribers to guess who will win the US election and the results are in! The winning guessers receive a cash prize so there was added incentive to tell Steerpike who they really think will win and not just who they’d like to win. It was a tight run thing with Speccie voters breaking neck and neck

Edward Howell

North Korea isn’t scared of the UN

It surely comes as no surprise to hear that North Korea does not like the United Nations. The hermit kingdom has long derided the organisation as espousing ‘double standards’ in what Pyongyang has believed to be an unfair demonisation of its ‘sovereign rights’ to test missiles, conduct satellite launches – a euphemism for testing ballistic missile technology – or blow up roads and railways linking the communist North with the capitalist South. So when North Korea’s sharp-tongued ambassador to the UN, Kim Song, announced yesterday that the country would accelerate its nuclear and missile development the timing was anything but random. The reasoning, he said, was the ‘nuclear threat of

Steerpike Steerpike

Brits predict a Kamala win as Americans go to the polls

In a few hours, US election results will start to roll in, and while Britons this side of the pond have no say on the outcome they’ve been keen to give their opinions to prowling pollsters. New YouGov polling of 6,520 UK adults has revealed that almost four in ten Brits expect Kamala Harris to emerge victorious in this year’s election – regardless of who they would personally prefer to win. The survey shows that 38 per cent of participants are predicting a Harris victory while just under a third of Brits (31 per cent) think Donald Trump will be elected president a second time. Not that the gamblers quite

Ross Clark Ross Clark

More evidence that the Budget raises taxes for workers

Six days on from the Budget, and things don’t look any better for Rachel Reeves’s claim that her Budget won’t negatively affect working people. Today and tomorrow, it is the turn of the Commons Treasury Select Committee to pick through the wreckage. What have we learned so far? David Miles from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) doubled down on the effect of the rise in employers’ National Insurance (NI). The OBR has already estimated that three-quarters of the effect will be on wages – thereby contradicting Reeves’s claim that working people will not suffer from the rise. Miles went further, saying that many economists would argue that 100 per

Mitchell Reiss

The danger of America’s long presidential handover

As the US presidential race rollercoasters towards its finale, many Americans are already bracing themselves for a close and highly contested vote. The uncertain outcome of the election is just the beginning of what could be a fraught period for the United States and the world. There are 76 days for mischief, or worse, between this year’s election date and the transition to a new president being sworn in on 20 January. Traditionally, this period has been used by the president-elect to piece together a cabinet, reward staffers and large campaign donors with senior positions, refine policy priorities, entertain foreign officials eager to ingratiate themselves, and studiously avoid any hard

Druin Burch

Labour’s hospital smoking ban is doomed to fail

I have spent a quarter of a century caring for people dying from smoking. Deaths of this sort are not only premature but often horrible. My mother’s death from lung cancer was both. The puritan nature of my medical heart should, therefore, leap up at the new restrictions of the Tobacco and Vapes Bill, introduced to parliament today. Smoking, Labour have declared, should be banned outside schools and hospitals. How they intend to police the ban, they haven’t said. Self-righteous pleasure at seeing other people’s freedoms being reduced – unhealthy freedoms one disapproves of – should come naturally to a practising doctor. Instead, I’m struggling to feel even a frisson of

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Donald Trump’s ‘counter-cultural’ gamble

23 min listen

Last night, Donald Trump appeared for what will be his last-ever presidential campaign rally, for a crowd of about 12,000 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He stuck with tradition and ran through many of his greatest hits – dishing out insults, talking about his scrape with death, and dancing to ‘YMCA’. But he did also hammer home his pitch as ‘Trump the fixer’, and the one who can undo four years of Biden–Harris. In the crowd was Spectator World’s Washington editor, Amber Duke, who joins Kate Andrews from Michigan to discuss what she’s seeing on the ground as Americans go to the polls in this key swing state. Which issue will be

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

The Trump-Harris election has broken America

‘Nothing matters very much, and few things matter at all,’ said Balfour. Tell that to the American political class on the day of the 2024 presidential election. After months of the Trump–Biden–Harris drama – the criminal indictments, the disaster debates, the President dropping out, the assassination attempts – the nation is in a state of nervous exhaustion. Team Harris and Team Trump have both been clear: 2024 is existential ‘I just want this to be over,’ America’s politicos almost all say, as they tell you in the same breath that their country could, in fact, be on the brink of a long and possibly violent civil conflict. Team Harris and