Us politics

American politics seem particularly febrile in 2024. The sitting President has withdrawn from the election, days after his predecessor was shot campaigning at a rally in Pennsylvania. But American democracy is by nature restless and tumultuous. It’s worth remembering that 50 years ago this week, Washington was in turmoil over the question of whether Richard Nixon was going to resign. Those early days of August 1974 seem like yesterday to those of us who became swept up in them. At the time I was a 31-year-old MP, five months into my first parliamentary term as an opposition backbencher. My summer recess took me to the home of a hospitable Anglophile

If Donald Trump does return to the White House, then another restoration could soon follow. Woody Johnson, a confidant of the president since the 1980s, served as his man in London from 2017 to 2021 and is now tipped for a second spell as ambassador. ‘What I know about President Trump is if he asks you to do something, you probably do it,’ Johnson says. ‘So, it depends on what he would want me to do, if anything. If he would want me to do something, of course I would consider it.’ When we meet at the Republican National Convention in the splendour of Milwaukee’s Pfister Hotel, it is just

For the past decade, the basic lines of conflict in American public life seemed clear. Donald Trump was pitted against the establishment, the ‘basket of deplorables’ who supported him against the elites. The reality was more complicated. Yes, plenty of rich and powerful Americans supported Trump and plenty of poorer Americans on the fringes of society were against him. But in a certain section of society the disdain for Trump was unequivocal. Among the country’s elite – at Harvard and Stanford, at Google and Goldman, near the beaches of the Hamptons and the mountains around Aspen – anyone who defied the anti-Trump consensus could expect swift consequences for their social

Joe Biden has bowed to the inevitable in withdrawing from the presidential race and endorsing his Vice President, Kamala Harris. Only now has the presidential race become interesting as the 59-year-old Harris, who is more than likely to receive the Democratic nomination, prepares to face off against Donald Trump. Suddenly the Republican candidate has become the old codger while the probable Democratic one represents generational change. Trump, you could even say, has become yesterday’s news. This is why Republicans would be wise not to underestimate Harris, a former federal prosecutor and California senator whose early years as Vice President were marked, among other things, by public scrutiny of her staff

The dullest assertion you can make about Donald Trump is that he’s a narcissist who has no interest in the American people and only cares about himself. Competent pundits don’t waste wordage on such an over-obvious observation. Less obvious, though more so since last week’s dog’s dinner presidential debate – in the aftermath of which dubbing the encounter ‘elder abuse’ went from droll witticism to exhausted cliché in a few hours – is that Joe Biden’s narcissism rivals Trump’s and may even exceed it. The Bidens’ decision to contest this race was arrogant and criminally oblivious to the country’s future Early in his 2020 run, Biden indicated to apparatchiks in

The Democrats dare to hope that this week will be a study in contrasts. On their side stands President Joe Biden, the veteran statesman, using all his diplomatic experience to stop a third world war breaking out in the Middle East. On the other, in the dock in Manhattan, sits Donald Trump, facing 34 criminal counts in a case relating to porn stars, adultery and hush money. As Biden urges Israel to ‘think carefully’ as it considers how to respond to Iran’s attack last weekend, Trump is, as ever, ranting away about himself. This speaks to Biden’s 2024 re-election pitch: it’s democracy (him) vs chaos (you know who). Trump can