America now has a lame duck President. With the Republicans losing both the House of Representatives and the Senate to the Democrats in the Mid Term elections Donald Trump is going to find it extremely difficult to impose his ideas on America, especially domestic policy ideas.

Anything he may wish to do, any policies that the President may propose can now be easily blocked by Congress as Congress is now out of the control of the Republicans. President Trump is blustering about using his power of veto to some of the more deranged ideas that might come from a Democrat dominated Congress but the US Constitution states that some vetos can be overturned with two thirds of Congress’s approval. If he uses the power of veto he will have to use it a lot to catch up with President Franklin Roosevelt’s record of 635 vetos. Presidential vetos can be overturned but often are not. Also the President has to give reasons to Congress why they object to a particular piece of proposed legislation. American politics could be about to get a whole lot more messy.

So why did the Republicans lose? Looking at this election from my vantage point over 3000 miles away I’d say one reason for the loss is ‘it’s the economy, stupid’. Tariffs on imported goods in order to bring back to America industrial production have hurt Americans in the pocket and not brought as much industry back at least in the short term as some might have hoped. The ordinary American has also been hit in the wallet by rising fuel prices for petrol, diesel and other fuels a problem that has been exacerbated by the Iran War that has impacted fuel availability and therefore price. As for the Iran War itself it’s quite possible that the failure to bring this war to a conclusion where the Iranian Mullahs were put back in their box has also played a part in turning Americans against Trump aligned Republican candidates.

But foreign policy failures and economic woes were not all the factors that have afflicted the Republicans. There’s the image painted by the Democrats of the Republicans of being the handmaidens of the tech bros the has not helped. Democrats appeared to catch onto public disquiet about the building of AI Data Centres and their impact on local communities and resources that is very much out of step with the amount of jobs these Data Centres will create. Finally I think that there’s been a lot of disenchantment among Americans with the President himself. The President’s failure to carry out his self stated mission to make America better for Americans has had a big impact in my view. Donald Trump is very much a ‘Marmite’ sort of character, you either like him or you don’t but a lot of Americans tolerated him and his many foibles because they thought that he would make a positive difference to America and he and his party did not. Yes his Administration managed to get a handle on America’s border problems, managed to hit back at the worst excesses of ‘woke’ and neutered the very left wing USAID organisation but it didn’t put Americans into jobs, didn’t tackle inflation, didn’t reform America’s education system and didn’t make life better for Americans.

The Americans have looked at what has governed them and have decided that it’s time for a change. Maybe the task of the Republicans now is to examine why they lost so badly? What was it about their policies or their candidates that turned off the voters so much? They should do what Britain’s Conservative Party has failed to properly do and work out why and where the party went wrong.

Much will depend now on how the Democrats will govern. Will their policies be sensible and help the average American and encourage growth in the economy and better undertake the necessary task in my view of re-onshoring American industry? Or will as some suspect America be governed by nutbags. There’s certainly some nutbags in the Democrat Party but there’s also sensible people in that party as well. We must wait and see what faction of the Democrats emerges with the upper hand.

Whilst American elections are the sole preserve of American citizens alone, it would be foolish of me not to acknowledge that American elections and Administrations have effects elsewhere. I certainly believe that this election will have an effect, maybe not a good one, on Britain. There are many in Britain’s Labour Party who will wholeheartedly welcome the result of these Mid Term elections. They will welcome them on the grounds that on a lot of policies and attitudes there’s very little difference between some Democrats and those at the higher levels of the Labour Party. This is not good news for those Britons who are opposed to identity politics, woke, open borders and for Britons favourable to the idea of Britain having national sovereignty over is own affairs.

I expect that the new Congress will be favourable to Britain rejoining the European Union, will back or not oppose Labour’s plans to eviscerate what is left of the free speech rights of Britons, will come down on the side of the ‘refugees’ who are streaming across the English Channel and much more. Those Britons who are against such things can no longer look across the water to the USA and expect any help, we are on our own. There is no help coming to Britons from an America with a Democrat dominated Congress and a lame duck President who cannot get his proposed legislation through Congress.

Despite what the mainstream media are saying the situation in the USA where you have Congress of one Party and the Presidency held by another is not unusual, Harry Truman, Bill Clinton and Donald Trump himself during his first Administration faced hostile a Congress. It’s something that the American Constitution can manage but it makes it difficult for a President in peacetime to get the things done that they might like to get done. I think we may be in for a period of political instability in American politics but we must wait and see how things turn out. Much will depend I’m afraid on the calibre of Democrats who have been elected.