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We’re all holding our breath, braced for potentially alarming developments across The Pond, and expensive ones here at home. Alongside the Chancellor putting finishing touches to her budget, there are real fears the US presidential election could light the blue touch paper. To the detriment of all.
Both in Britain and Stateside there’s a lot of talk about what words mean. Over there, how do you define a fascist? Over here, what exactly is a working person?
And in their way, the two can be neatly joined up. Elon Musk, for example, the world’s richest man, would say he works jolly hard for his money. But if he were a UK taxpayer, the Treasury would be telling him to cough up.
The point here being that Sir Keir Starmer got elected on a promise not to raise taxes on working people. But in the budget coming up this week that term will become immensely flexible.
In what’s surely one of the most heavily trailed fiscal packages ever, it’s become a given that bosses will have to fork out more in National Insurance, but their employees won’t.
It’s also looking increasing likely that those same employers will find their pension contributions a tad dearer too. To the dismay even of some stalwarts of the Tony Blair New Labour era.
But the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, is on a mission to make her story stick – that the Tories’ slippy-slidey calculations left her with the immediate need to find an extra twenty billion pounds.
Plus another twenty to save our public services from staying pretty much as they are in the longer term. Dire by any yardstick. Look no further than our record waiting lists for healthcare, prisons in crisis and crumbling schools.
Though Labour’s poll ratings have tanked, and much of its voter support was lent rather than given anyway, she has got time on her side.
And one lever she’s now confirmed she’s pulling is changing the way debt is calculated in a manner that should gift the government an extra fifty billion pounds.
This won’t go into easing day-to-day spending pressures. But it will be divvied out on on things people will notice in the next few years, like more roads, hospitals and social housing.
The Tories, predictably, are crying foul, but the plan does have the firm endorsement of the rather less partisan former governor of the Bank of England.
It’s likely this budget will be a defining feature of this administration, and its broad outlines are already as clear as the strategy behind how comprehensively it’s being trailed.
There will be some painful cuts to public services, which have already provoked rows at Cabinet level, but the bulk of the extra money needed will be raised by tax increases, squarely aimed at the better off.
And nearly all of it, it seems, really is out in the public domain. This is to ensure there’ll be no shocks to rattle the markets come the day. Nor is anyone expecting any rabbits to be pulled out of hat.
All this is in deliberate and obvious contrast to the legacy of Liz Truss, whose package of untrailed and unfunded tax cuts came close to wrecking the economy – as well as her tenure in Number Ten and her party’s election prospects.
Not that any of that’s put her off telling anyone who’ll listen what a fine chap that Donald Trump is. Reform leader Nigel Farage has also been cheerily banging the drum for the man.
This seems to have warmed the cockles of his heart, unlike the efforts of volunteers from the British Labour party to do their bit for his Democrat rival Kamala Harris.
Oh dear oh dear. This has made his team so ever so cross they’ve lodged an official complaint with the election authorities.
In it they say that: ‘When representatives of the British government previously sought to go door-to-door in America, it did not end well for them.’
This, believe it or not, was a reference to the American War of Independence, which concluded with the surrender of the British forces in the Battle of Yorktown in 1776.
Arguably not quite the same level of interference this time round. As one senior Labour figure who was at the Democrats’ convention in Chicago wryly put it, delegates: ‘Could not give a monkey’s about us.’
All this would be funny if it weren’t so, well, not funny.
With the outcome on a knife-edge, a YouGov poll for The Times found that more than a quarter of Americans believe that civil war could break out after the presidential election on November fifth.
Which brings our very own Gunpowder Plot terrifyingly up to date.
Certainly the stakes are alarmingly high. If Trump does make it to the White House then vital US support for Ukraine’s war effort might suddenly drain away. Then where might the Russians turn their attention?
The Wall Street Journal has revealed that the same Elon Musk as referred to earlier has been in regular contact with President Putin for the last two years.
Legal experts also suggest Musk is trying to buy votes for The Donald via his million-dollar-a-day giveaway wheeze. The two men are certainly besties these days.
Meanwhile, the anti-Trump accusations continue to pile up. Kamala Harris has now echoed the assertion from his own former chief of staff, General John Kelly, that he’s a fascist, and once said Hitler did good things.
Next to all that, it’s obvious that Trump’s diehards aren’t likely to be too fussed about last week’s accusation ¬– the latest in a very long line – of alleged sexual misconduct.
Former model Stacey Williams says the groping and inappropriate touching was part of a ‘twisted game’ between him and his old chum Jeffrey Epstein, the late abuser of countless women.
But, back to the politics from the British perspective.
Clearly Trump was deeply riled by anyone from Labour’s support base so much as lifting a finger in the Democrat cause. And his capacity for bearing grudges is legendary.
Yes, doubtless with a view to perpetuating the Anglo-American so-called special relationship, Starmer had a nice dinner with The Donald a little while back, and it seemed to go well.
Then again, Oscar Wilde once had a nice dinner with his boyfriend’s dad, the Marquis of Queensbury. And though that also seemed to go well it didn’t stop the man from destroying him later.
So, if The Donald does secure a second term in the White House, how much damage might Starmer have accidentally done by letting any of his people anywhere near the Democrats’ campaign.
Given Trump’s volatility and unpredictability, oft-quoted words of one-time US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld spring to mind.
‘There are known knowns … there are known unknowns … but there are also unknown unknowns.’
He maintained it was that last category that you needed to watch for. And, as with so many elephant traps that Starmer has already tried, all too often unsuccessfully, to dodge, this one looks as awkward as any.
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