After what feels like 4 years of build up it’s Election Day in the US today and, from 1am UK time, their polls will start to close and we might get an idea of the result.
Or the result might be really close and take days of recounts before anyone can call it.
I’m sure it’s not just me who’s feeling stressed out about the whole thing and the global consequences! I tried, and clearly failed, to ignore it until tomorrow morning.
I’m more concerned in the lead up to this than I was in the lead up to our own election and subsequent budget day.
If Trump get’s in I honestly believe it’ll have bigger impacts on us than those two days.
The scary version - and I think we’re in an 18 screening - is that results might start coming in from tomorrow morning, but the result, the ‘who is President of the US’ result, that’s not going to be solid till the end of January.
And you’ll note I didn’t say democratically elected according to the laws and constitution of the United States…
I think that person will be Trump (Vance…?), that there’s unlikely to be another Consequential presidential election in the US for many years.
I also that that NATO will be dead by February, and that we’re going to have to come up with a way of keeping the Trident rocket bodies in service really quickly…
I’m fairly confident that the election result will lead to the elected person being President, because the alternative is an armed coup or civil war and I’m (fairly) confident that US civil society and armed forces would prevent that eventually. Sadly, whatever the result, I think there will be violent disturbances.
I agree that the global consequences of Trump winning are really serious. Our last chance to prevent catastrophic climate change would be gone when he shreds all environmental controls. NATO would be weakened and the risk of war in Europe, Middle East and Pacific would increase with his America first/love for dictators foreign policy. It’s a scary time.
The advantage you’ve got this time is that you don’t have the lunatics running the asylum able to try and persuade their own VP to overturn the result.
If it is Harris on paper you have no chance of her being persuaded to start discounting votes as they tried to tell pence to do last time.
I’m fairly confident that Trump or his supporters will attempt another coup if they lose, although from a more difficult starting position not already being in office. There’s a lot of sites online that have been spinning rhetoric and “evidence” of how the result of the vote will be unsafe for several weeks already.
I’m also fairly sure that, if the above happens, someone will take at least one more potshot at him to try to prevent any further coup attempts, but end up strengthening the support for him within his base and leading to retaliatory attacks instead.
If the giant Cheeto wins, he’ll reform institutions to make it easier for him to win next time - potentially attempting to change the constitution to ensure he can remain in power beyond 2029. He’s also come across as pretty vindictive so far, so I question what that means for his political opponents.
Ultimately, the direction of travel for US politics appears to be begining to mirror that of the rest of the Americas. Their Armed Forces could prevent them from backsliding democratically too far, but consider how many members of the forces will like what they hear from Trump, and potentially feel safer with him given he has already shown with Afghanistan that he’s willing to unilaterally withdraw troops from overseas battlefields.
Im so looking forward to being in Florida in January for 2 weeks 
(Fortuantely i leave 2 days before the inaguration)
Sadly, final say comes down to the supreme court, not VP. If it gets to that point it’ll be a constitutional nightmare!
There was an interesting podcast the other day that said, compared with the same time year, there has been a 100% increase in gun purchases and a 125% increase in ammo sales across states in the south/east of the country.
But what effect will it have on JL 
I have faith Kamala will get in and she can address the ‘Reply All’ emails some of us may have received recently 
Democrats don’t have a great track record when it comes to emails!
Nuclear co-operation with the USA comes under the Bermuda Agreement, but nuclear weapons are subordinated to SACEUR at Nato and the British PM or designated deputies for release.
Read it properly bro…
The nuclear warheads are under UK control, as is the firing chain.
However the rocket bodies are jointly owned by the UK and US, and maintained/refurbished by the US, in the US.
If our orange friend decided he doesn’t like that - and given who his master is, why would he - then our ability to keep the rocket bodies in serviceable condition, and therefore maintain the viability of the deterrent, is, err… compromised.
Fortunately course, Trump neither has a history of pulling out of international agreements, nor of promising to do so again.
Oh, hang on…
In which case I can see trump ramping up the cost of leasing them rather than put right refusing.
Hear me out…
Part of me favours Trump, so that Musk comes in to run this new department for government efficiency.
Milei has cut masses of the state in Argentina and it appears to be working?
It’ll be interesting to see the same occur in a more developed nation.
When you look at the UK and the national debt, we can’t tax our way out of it, there’s not much left to tax! The only long term way to resolve it is to make cuts, which will no doubt be unpopular, success of some changes in the US would make it more possible here.
To address part of what you said. Musk’s business genius hasn’t been great for Twitter. He paid 44 bn for it, current estimated value 9 bn, based on the mark down by another shareholder. He’s becoming a right wing extremist, not someone who should be responsible for other people’s welfare or lives.
The same is true for Trump. He would be a disaster for the US and the world.
Edit: typo
And will come under the Bermuda agreement, maybe we should be building WE 177s again. DJTs problem was with NATO countries not putting their 2% into defence of which the UK were only one of the 4 to do so.
Musks business genius is exceeded only by Bankruptcy Trumps.
