Politics

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

Wednesday

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Donald Trump is Ursula von der Leyen’s worst nightmare

The first European leader to tweet their response to Donald Trump’s victory was Emmanuel Macron of France, pipping Giorgia Meloni to the prize by a matter of minutes. ‘Congratulations,’ declared the President of France. ‘Ready to work together as we did for four years. With your convictions and mine. With respect and ambition. For more peace and prosperity.’ Macron tweeted his congratulations in French and English, whereas Meloni stuck to her mother tongue. ‘Good work Mr. President,’ said the Italian Prime Minister. ‘Italy and the United States are “sister” nations, linked by an unshakable alliance, common values, and a historic friendship. It is a strategic bond, which I am sure we

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Donald Trump and the revenge of the deplorables

So now we know what happens when you sneer at voters as ‘garbage’. When you view them as ‘deplorables’. When you treat them as the dim stooges of demagoguery, the playthings of powerful men. When you brand them ‘low information’ and chortle in your coffee houses about how Donald Trump is ‘preying’ on their ‘hazy understanding’ of political affairs. What happens is that they don’t vote for you. Kamala played the ‘fascist’ card, breezily unaware of what a grotesque slight it is to the voters The past 24 hours in the United States have been nothing short of extraordinary. This is the revenge of the deplorables, to borrow the slur

Steerpike Steerpike

Six Brits who had a bad election night

So Donald Trump is heading for the White House once again. It’s a result that has stunned much of the British commentariat, many of whom fawned over Kamala Harris when she was unveiled as Joe Biden’s successor. Yet, just like in 2016, Harris could not live up to her cheerleaders’ hype. With both Keir Starmer and David Lammy now forced to issue statements expressing their delight at working with ‘the Donald’, Mr S rounds up the usual suspects who had a particularly bad election night… Carol Vorderman Once the nation’s sweetheart as the beloved star of Countdown, poor old Vorders seems to have gone off the deep end in recent

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Will Democrats blame Israel for Kamala Harris’s defeat?

One of the few western nations where public opinion was in favour of Donald Trump returning to the White House is Israel. Israelis trust him as the man who recognised Jerusalem as their capital, moved the US embassy there, recognised Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and said that settlement-building was not per se against international law. So most Israelis regard a second Trump term as good news for their country, its security and its relationship with the United States. That might be the case in what we see from his new administration, but Trump’s re-election could prove in the longer term to be a fracture point between the United

Donald Trump

Full text: Donald Trump’s acceptance speech

Thank you very much. Wow. Well I want to thank you all very much. This is great. These are our friends. We have thousands of friends on this incredible movement. This was a movement like nobody’s ever seen before. And frankly this was, I believe, the greatest political movement of all time. There’s ever been anything like this in this country and maybe beyond.  And now it’s going to reach a new level of importance because we’re going to help our country heal, we going to help our country heal. We have a country that needs help and it needs help very badly. We’re going to fix our borders, we’re

Daniel McCarthy

How a Latino wave carried Trump to victory

Donald Trump’s victory this time may not be the surprise that his 2016 win was, but for his critics it’s even more of a shock. Trump has been impeached, arrested, convicted, shot at, and relentlessly demonised as a ‘fascist’ over the last four years. None of that was enough to stop him. Just the opposite: Trump is more popular than ever, and appears to have won a national majority of the vote for the first time. Just how this happened is a question that will be analysed for weeks and months, or years, to come. But one intriguing possibility suggested by exit poll data is that multiculturalism committed suicide. Trump

Matthew Lynn 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