Why you shouldn’t bet on elections

The skies above Europe

On a human level, I probably should have felt some sadness watching Sleepy Joe chew his way through the first debate like he had been on Hunter’s pipe. But professionally I was full of burning rage. Two weeks previously I broke a story about the precarious president horrifying allied powers with a somewhat avant-garde performance at the G7 summit in Italy. In fifteen years as a hack, I’ve never dealt with a ruder or more dishonest press operation than the Biden White House; they went public with their criticism of the story and privately ranted at me like Joe on a particularly bad evening. Yet now their lies were coming home to roost on the podium. Given how pious American journalists can be about the tabloid press, at least we had the balls to say it and not bow to bullies.

America would have to wait, however, as the UK’s own utterly awful general election campaign was entering the final furlong. Five long weeks of bickering was reaching its inevitable red dawn, with a grubby row about insider trading. A bunch of Tory clowns using their knowledge of the election date to make a quick buck might yet ruin the fun for us all. I have to give up listening to the BBC for a few days as it becomes an endless sermon on the perils of gambling — you give the puritans an inch, eh? For the record, if any nannying government inspector cared to look at my book, an insider’s edge would be the last thing they would find. After four and a half years, three prime ministers, five chancellors, a pandemic and a war or two, it seemed I had almost every outcome covered. In the end, I clawed back enough for a half-decent lunch. Which was lucky because a few years ago I bet my colleague Hugo “a delicious seafood platter” that Trump would win in ’24, but so would Boris Johnson. Maybe he will go dutch?

“There’s something happening out there” became Nigel Farage’s refrain as he blew up the Conservative Party with a shock return to frontline politics and an eighth crack at a seat in the House of Commons. After five weeks stuck at a desk coordinating a brilliant team of reporters scouring the land, I decided to sniff the air myself and drive up to Birmingham for his final rally of the campaign. The heaving arena of 4,500 fans had a touch of an enormously camp gender reveal to it, with pyrotechnics and blue streamers. Like MAGA but fabber… At times of heightened tension, political editors become mines of gossip for cabinet ministers rather than the other way round. Sadly there are only so many ways you can avoid saying, “well I hear you’re buggered” before you just start saying “there’s something happening out there.”

The last days of any campaign mess you up — this time we have also been shooting a daily politics show at the crack of dawn, so I’ve been particularly Bidenesque by the later afternoon. But on the eve of polling it felt remiss not to raise a glass with some old Conservative contacts after a long and bloody fourteen years in power. The Sun was coming out for Labour the next morning, but we were all too British to fall out about it. Everyone always laments that politics is a tough old game, but no one ever thinks of the journalists. Landslide elections are a total bonfire of the contacts. In one swoop everyone goes, from the most loquacious ministers, down to the all-seeing bag-carriers with a soft spot for moderately priced Chablis. As our victorious new prime minister Sir Keir Starmer declared, it is truly time for a period of renewal. I better get lunching.

There is no tedious transition, president-elect and months to appoint a cabinet in Westminster. I’m writing this from 40,000 feet traveling at 475mph in the defense secretary’s zippy private jet. We’re somewhere over Eastern Europe after a flash visit to Ukraine — the new Labour man’s first official engagement. Forty-eight hours earlier, he had been standing in a leisure center in South Yorkshire watching his vote be counted. Yet on just his second full day in office, we were forced to take cover in a Soviet-era bomb shelter thanks to a nice welcome present from Mr. Putin. I know which system I prefer…

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s August 2024 World edition.