Who will replace Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell?

The announcement by Mitch McConnell, Minority Leader of the United States Senate, that he will step down in November came in anticipation that he would be bounced from his role regardless of the outcome of the 2024 election. Either Donald Trump’s victory would be deemed by populists as a chance to remake the Republican party, or Trump’s failure would be laid at the feet of an intransigent establishment that McConnell has come to symbolise, in every way imaginable, deserved or not.

McConnell is hated by many, but also respected. He is a man with a significant legacy, borne from the before Trump times, of maintaining a position just to the right of what was achievable. He owned the judicial battles. He was stubborn and intransigent. He hated the reform minded members of his coalition equally, whether they came from right or left. And he has, as his greatest legacy, a reworking of the Supreme Court judiciary that will last for a generation.