Blue tsunami: what does it mean for Britain?

0:00This podcast is sponsored by Raymond James. In an increasingly standardised wealth management industry, Raymond James' high-touch, service-first way of working sets it apart. It puts people at the heart of everything it does. Advice that's as unique as you. That's the power of personal. Please remember, investing involves risk and you may get back less than you invested. 500 orders a month was manageable. 5 ,000 is madness. Embrace intelligent order fulfillment with ShipStation, the only platform combining order management, warehouse workflows, inventory, returns and analytics in one place. What used to take five separate tools, ShipStation does in one.

0:40Automate fulfillment and rate shopping to ship up to 15 times more with up to 90 % savings. Go to ShipStation.com and use code audio to try ShipStation free for 60 days.

1:01Hello and welcome to Coffeehouse Shots. I'm James Heal and I'm joined today by Tim Shipman and Freddie Gray. Now overnight we've had a rough result coming in from the midterms of America. Freddie, is it fair to call this a blowout? I think so, yes. I think it's a pretty devastating night for the Republican Party and the extraordinary Trump coalition that was assembled in 2024. for it that has shattered and it looks as though it's going to be very hard to put it back together again if you look at all the different demographics hispanic voters massive shift to the democrats women voters shift to the democrats further shift towards democrats black voters young voters and most worryingly of all i think for the republican party non-college educated whites which is really the core trumpist demographic moving towards the democrats now so on all fronts across the country geographically, demographically, a really bad night for the Republicans.

1:54And any races that particularly jump out to you, any results that are coming in? I mean, Texas, the sweep in Texas, Democrats winning there, that's historic. And then the other red states where the polling was looking very bad for the Republicans, but most people couldn't quite convince themselves that they would lose in Kansas. But they have. And so, yes, not just those swing states going against them, but what you'd think of as deep red states like South Carolina going to the Democrats. So the sort of the south looking a bit more red is a bit more blue, sorry, I should say, long night is really the thing that stands out to me.

2:29And what does this all mean for us here in Britain?

2:31James Heale: Well, look, I think the interesting thing to me is there are some parallels here. But with, you know, what has happened in this country, I think, you know, as Freddie was saying, you had a situation where Trump built sort of pulled this remarkable group of people together two years ago, a little bit like Keir Starmer did in 2024. But what seems to have happened is kind of what happened with the Starmer government, is that in the end, Trump has managed to sort of almost repel all of those groups, you know, kind of the traditional Republican kind of base, the sort of MAGA people who came to him who were offended by the fact that, you know, he went to war when he said he wasn't going to.

3:09James Heale: You know, he won on cost of living, and now the cost of living's gone soaring, and he's paid the price for that. But equally, I think there are probably lessons for the Democrats in the same way they probably might end up being for the Labour Party, which is that, you know, don't just assume because you've swept in on this huge kind of wave of public revulsion at the people in charge that that necessarily means everybody loves you. And I think the Democrats make a pretty serious error if they came in on the back of this and said, oh, great, everybody loves us now. Let's run AOC for president. We want radicalism and all that kind of thing.

3:43James Heale: This is a vote against Trump, it would seem, rather than a vote for a lot of the Democrats. I think that's exactly right. And I think if you look at how the Democrats have succeeded in this election, it's because they have said as little as possible. What they've done is they've focused, and some of them have been incredibly disciplined, Abdul El-Sayed, in fact, in Michigan, very, very disciplined on just focusing on cost of living message, not trying to get caught up in the culture wars, not trying to get caught up too much on Israel-Palestine, even though that's a very important issue for him.

4:10And so after the midterms, now that they are in Congress and looking ahead to 2028, whoever emerges as the likely runners, people talking a lot about Senator John Ossoff from Georgia at the moment, they will have to start speaking about other issues. And I think there they will meet resistance again from the American power.

4:28James Heale: I haven't completely ignored your question, though, James. I mean, this does obviously have implications for Britain. And to a degree, what happens in US midterm elections probably has more impact on what happens here than certainly than the budget did. And however excited Andy Burnham might be about his 10-year plan, you can see a world in which, you know, the way Trump responds to this can have a big impact. And I've written this week about the potential that he might fancy another crack at the Iranians almost to distract attention or make himself feel a bit better about all of this. Clearly, the White House, State Department, everybody's quite divided on this.

5:00James Heale: You know, J.D. Vance needs another war in Iran like he needs a hole in the head in terms of getting the MAGA people back on board for a tilt at the White House in a couple of years' time. But if that does follow in the way that a lot of people are predicting, you know, the cost of living issues in Britain could easily get worse. I mean, I spoke to someone this week who said, you know, John Healy left 15 billion pounds of headroom in his budget. That could all be gone in a fortnight, essentially. So Andy Burnham, Ed Miliband and all the others, they don't want anything to do with Donald Trump. They would keep their heads down on any rerun of Iran.

5:37James Heale: But that doesn't mean it won't come and bite them as well. And, you know, this is why, well, at least this is the excuse that those of us that are fascinated by American politics always give for paying undue attention to it. which is that, you know, America catches a cold. We all tend to be sneezing pretty soon. And, you know, how Trump responds to this, how the rest of MAGA world responds to this, you know, they've got two years still in charge. And, you know, and I think as Freddie has written himself before, you know, there isn't any such thing as a lame duck presidency when it's Donald Trump.

6:07James Heale: You know, he's still got two years of dominance of the political scene where he can do all sorts of things. I mean, how will Trump respond, Freddie, given the earlier indicators today? Well, I mean, he's been answering the phone to any reporter that calls him as usual. and calling to Fox News quite a lot. And he seems to be flitting between the predictable line, which is, if I'd been on the ballot, of course, none of this would have happened, and a slightly more emollient tone, you know, congratulations to the Democrats, they did a good job, conceding to the Wall Street Journal that the Iran war played a part in what has happened.

6:39So I think Trump is sort of predictably unpredictable. And then responded to Politico, just phoned him up live on this. Yeah, I mean, you know, and he hates Politico,

6:47James Heale: But even the message there was, well, I've been on the phone to the Democrats, I won't tell you who, but I can't just sit here vetoing everything for the next two years. We've got to do business. Though on that, he was asked about Iran and he did sort of say, well, if we see an opportunity, then off we go, essentially. And I still think it was the right thing to do for America and for the rest of the world. And I think he may find not having a very slender Republican majority in Congress is sort of liberating to him, not just in terms of foreign policy, but also in terms of he can do very dramatic things that will upset the old Republican establishment but might appeal to some of the new Democrats coming in.

7:23He might actually work with Congress more now that he doesn't have the majority than he did in the previous two years. And of course he does reflect his style, doesn't he? He wasn't a particularly great legislator. He was great at signing executive orders or doing things, as you say, uprooting the table without actually building consensus. He finds it very boring, which is why he shoved it all under the one big beautiful bill, a massive piece of legislation. That's pretty much the only significant thing he's done with Congress in the first two years. And it's quite interesting, I think, the results coming out from Florida, which seems to be somewhat resistant to this blue wave.

7:49Ron DeSantis, very quick out of the blocks, Florida governor, potentially signaling a 2028 run. Yes, absolutely. I mean, it's very, very interesting to see some of the reactions to DeSantis' podcast that he did yesterday, where he did this big song and dance about, you know, you can't imitate Trump. Trump's Trump. He's the only person who can get away with it. You have to be your own guy. And what he's saying there is, I'm my own guy. Vote for me in 2028. Unlike this Vance fellow who's been sitting in the building for the last few years. And I think, you know, a lot of Republican eyes will now be turning to him because he has because he doesn't get on with Trump.

8:20They fell out pretty badly. He has been isolated from this White House. And that may now be an advantage. One man's disaster is another man's opportunity. And that's the joy of politics. And of course, the two frontrunners we keep hearing about the Republican nomination next time are Rubio and Vance. But they're both tethered to the administration, I guess, Tim.

8:35James Heale: Yeah, exactly. And it'll be interesting to see how they both play it, particularly if Trump goes and does something in Iran. And Vance clearly is not in favour of that. Rubio is slightly more bullish about it. But it'd be interesting to see. I think people are always wondering what Marco Rubio thinks. And Marco Rubio seems to have a brilliant ability to be in line with whatever it suits him to think at a given time. So it will be interesting to see what he thinks it suits him to say now. And also, I think, watch how Vance handles the corruption stuff, which is going to come thick and thug fast with a democratic...

9:06Because that was the third issue, wasn't it? Essentially, it was cost of living, war and rump and corruption. Yeah, I mean, one exit poll had 90 % of voters citing corruption as a major factor in their vote. And Vance has sounded a little, a few notes of sort of ambivalence about it. He said D.C. is a corrupt place, but I've never seen anything like that from the president. He might dial that up a bit, I think, as he looks towards his own presidential run. I was going to ask, what happens now with this Democratic Congress? You've got some who are suggesting, you know, they need to lawyer up the Republicans.

9:38And the other question, of course, is we've talked about the executive, we've talked about the legislative. There's the judicial branch as well. You potentially have two Supreme Court judges who now face a decision, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas. Do they quit now or do they try and hang on to 2032 potentially? I think they probably try and hang on as long as possible, but they might not. That's the real worry for the Republicans. And this sort of, you know, I mean, it just shows you how quickly things can change in politics. I mean, this is 2024. We seem to be talking about a Supreme Court, Congress, Trump.

10:06You know, he's realigned American politics. Now looks like he's realigned it in a completely different direction. Yeah, a reminder that maybe not all reliance is permanent. Well, tell that to Boris Johnson and the Conservative Party. And it was Luke Trill making this point today as well, wasn't he? He was suggesting, you know, a few years ago it was demographics as destiny and Obama were going to be a Democrat forever. And then it was Trump and then it was going to be that sort of new Rust Belt coalition. And then it was back to Biden and now it's back to Biden.

10:28James Heale: I have to say, as a cynical hack, I do get rather weary of all these sort of bold statements that something is never going to happen ever again. You know, I mean, it's, I mean, it's bollocks, isn't it? I mean, anyone who's covered politics in any detail for the last 20 years knows that, you know, 18 months on and things can look very, very different. So I try and resist ever saying this is the last of this or this party's dead or whatever it is, because particularly in a two party system in the States, you know, you don't have to shift much for it to sort of swing back the other way. And even in this country, it feels a little bit like things are beginning to align a little bit how they used to align.

11:05And on that note as well, Tim, this is a final question. We had Prime Minister's Questions today. It was the first time that... Well, not even that. Deputy Prime Minister's Questions. Deputy Prime Minister's Questions. First time as Alex Burkhart as Deputy Tory leader, officially. And going up against Louise Haig. The age-old question, who won?

11:18James Heale: I mean, I think on balance, both sides would have left with a degree of satisfaction. I think Burkhart clearly won the sort of exchanges and the Tories very much got the sort of soundbites they wanted on welfare and all the rest of it. But Louise Haig went in with a handbag swinging and kind of survived. And the important thing from her point of view is she didn't make some pledge on welfare that number 10 would have to then go in and pick after the event. In fact, she showed herself rather better at holding the line than either the prime minister or the chance of the exchequer. So she was quite cruel to Paul Alex Burkhart.

11:53James Heale: But there was certainly a decent rash of Labour people I've been in touch with since who were, I mean, let's be frank, they thought she did all right. Mr Speaker, this government is committed to bringing the benefits bill down and committed to dealing with a mess left behind by the previous Tory government on whose watch welfare rose by£88 billion in a decade. There is a certain species of male MP on both sides of the House that responds to a strident woman, shall we say. Thank you, Tim. Thank you, Freddie. and thank you for listening to Coffee Hour Shots.

12:58Still waiting in line? Again? That's time you'll never get back. Save time and money with Stamps.com. Over 4 million businesses have skipped the line with Stamps.com. Join them to save up to 90 % off carrier rates from your computer or phone right now. Print postage for certified mail, registered mail, and packages in seconds. Then schedule a pickup right from your home or office. For a limited time, go to Stamps.com and use code podcast for a free welcome gift. Taxes and fees apply.