This week, US Republicans lost both the House and the Senate in a crushing midterm defeat. Ron DeSantis, Republican Governor of Florida, broke ranks just before the vote to criticise President Trump’s agenda, putting himself back in contention for the GOP’s 2028 presidential nomination. James Price argues the British Right should rejoice. They’ll get along with DeSantis much more easily than Trump. But, he asks, who will be our DeSantis? It’s my piece of the week. Find out more below.
Also at CapX this week, John Penrose argues that if Torsten Bell really wants to reform pensions properly, he should switch anyone aged 22 and under to an upgraded NEST, gradually replacing the state pension. This slow-motion savings revolution would transform Britain into a capital-owning democracy – and allow the scrapping of National Insurance, to boot.
Matthew Sinclair says the Chancellor should steer clear of rules blocking the AI rollout. If the country adopts AI quickly, it could be game-changing for the public finances. Meanwhile, Maxwell Marlow warns that, as Andy Burnham cosies up to the EU, any move to rejoin the increasingly sclerotic bloc would be an economic disaster. Britain has Europe’s largest AI sector, he notes, and the EU would only strangle it with regulations.
We cannot allow ourselves as a polity to be sidetracked by politicians seeking to distract from the mess they have got us into, by suggesting another referendum
Elsewhere, Stephen Pollard takes issue with Chief Secretary to the Treasury Emma Reynolds, who claimed that employers aren’t working people. Pollard says it’s worrying that someone at the heart of British economic policy appears to hold the views of a 19th-century Marxist. David Clement writes about the cost of tickets for the upcoming Oasis tour. He says that Ticketmaster needs competition, not a resale cap.
On The Capitalist this week, our Editor Marc Sidwell spoke to veteran journalist Ross Clark about his new book, Britain is Bust: The coming sovereign debt crisis and what it will mean for you. They discussed why Ross thinks neither tax rises nor growth alone can get us out of the hole, and why he would cut the state pension by 10% to unwind the effect of the triple lock.
Oscar Gill-Lewis
Deputy Editor, CapX
Why the British Right should be cheering Trump’s midterm defeat
James Price
Ron DeSantis chose his moment with care. The night before the US midterms, the outgoing Governor of Florida appeared on a sports podcast. On election eve, DeSantis admitted that the Iran war had been ‘a big, big drag’ on Republicans, that the party had been ‘gaslighting’ voters by blaming Joe Biden for the price of petrol and that making Kristi Noem Secretary of Homeland Security had been ‘a mistake’. It wasn’t quite Khrushchev’s 1956 denunciation of Stalin, but it may well prove to be just as well-timed a play for political power.
Within a day, the results bore him out: the Republicans were routed, as the Democrats took the House and the Senate, flipping Texas for the first time in decades, and even electing a radical leftist like Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan.
The British Right has a much better chance of ‘vibing’ with a future DeSantis administration than it ever could with Trump
Beyond the personalities, what effect will a Democratic Congress have on the economy? The incoming Speaker Hakeem Jeffries has a list for his ‘first 100 hours’: reverse the Medicaid cuts, restore the Obamacare subsidies, take back Congress’s authority over tariffs and vote to end the Iran war.
The spending is already truly eye-watering. Just as the Tories had spent too much in Britain, only for Labour to say, ‘hold my beer’, Democrat spending plans will be even more disastrous than Donald Trump’s. The United States already borrowed $2 trillion in the fiscal year that ended in September, with the interest bill alone heading past $1 trillion for the first time.
Then there are Trump’s big, beautiful tariffs. The Supreme Court struck down the President’s emergency tariffs in February, and the administration simply rebuilt them under older trade statutes that give the president the power to impose tariffs without Congressional approval. Congress can vote to take that power back. Trump can veto the vote. No change there, yet.
Then there is Iran. Trump himself conceded on election night that Iran was ‘a part of it’, which is the closest the Donald comes to an admission of any kind. It is still too soon to tell what will actually happen there. But given the Democrats spent the Biden term pushing a ‘Green New Deal’ that made energy prices higher and more unstable, it seems unlikely they will want to push for cheaper ‘gas’ at the pumps, as our transatlantic cousins call it.
This brings me back to DeSantis. The Republican Party has two years to decide who will be their next presidential candidate, and DeSantis’s exquisitely timed intervention puts him in pole position. He is untainted by the MAGA circus, clean from Iran or tariffs, and the machine he built in Florida held the line and got a clean sweep for the GOP across the State.
He may not have mentioned tariffs, but he has echoed Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ recently. But this time it was a Liberation Day from borrowing and spending. By criticising congressional stock trading, and highlighting how he never even took a congressional pension, he also puts clear blue water between himself and the Trump family’s dodgy deals.
So, while this all looks like a bad few years for the American Right, odds on DeSantis becoming the next president should now skyrocket. Imagine if the next administration pledged to stop taxing its own consumers and start cutting the deficit. It would find the bond market, the Federal Reserve and every mortgage-holder in the Western world on its side. Treasury yields actually fell on Tuesday night. The market’s verdict on gridlock in Washington is that gridlock would be cheaper than Trumpism, a damning verdict on the American fiscal position.
What does this mean for Britain? It is a reminder that the cost of living remains an enormously important factor for all voters. And CapX readers will know the only way to get that down, while not bankrupting the country, is through free market policies. Robert Jenrick’s 64-point growth plan was superb, but there are lingering fears that Reform UK might flirt with nationalisations and state interference in the economy.
With Shadow Chancellor Andrew Griffith in the Tory hot seat, and Jenrick’s advisers coming from places like the ASI, however, the British Right has a much better chance of ‘vibing’ with a future DeSantis administration than it ever could with Trump. Let’s hope America’s Right learns its lesson. The bigger question for the British Right remains, who will be our DeSantis?
And if you want more…
– Why Britain’s decline is only a choice (Lawrence Newport)
– How socialist is Reform’s Poundland plan? (Gawain Towler)
– The UK must focus on its real Commonwealth friends (Sean Ridley)
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