Next week, if the polls are right, Americans will hand Donald Trump’s presidency a near-mortal blow in the November 3 midterm elections. Trump’s approval rating, near the lowest of either of his terms, averages about 37 percent after his still unresolved war with Iran spiked gasoline prices and compounded voters’ anger over the cost of living. Forecasters make Democrats heavy favorites to win the House and narrower ones to take the Senate.
Polls have erred before, and may again. But a blue wave is likely coming in some form, be it a baby swell, a tsunami, or somewhere in between. This is a signal of changes beyond America, however.
The political moment Trump embodied when he won in 2016—nationalist, populist, scornful of institutions and allies alike—is ebbing across much of the democratic world. Its grievances over immigration, stagnant living standards, and remote elites have not gone away. Trump leaves a permanent legacy on all those.
What is fading is Trump’s model. His allies are losing power, and the populists still rising increasingly keep him at arm’s length. Britain was the harbinger 10 years ago.
In June 2016, four-and-a-half months before Trump beat Hillary Clinton, the mother country voted for Brexit. That August, a victorious Nigel Farage, Brexit’s loudest champion, shared the stage at a Trump rally in Mississippi. This spring, as the referendum’s 10th anniversary approached, Farage’s Reform U.K. party led Labour by seven points, on course perhaps for Downing Street with a MAGA-esque project for nationalist revolution in Britain.
It has since slumped to third, behind even the Conservatives. (In a symbolic mix-up over a "prayer card" to reserve a seat in the House of Commons, Farage had to watch Wednesday's Budget statement by the Labour chancellor—and the response by Kemi Badenoch, leader of the Conservative opposition—from outside the chamber.) Labour’s Andy Burnham, who replaced Keir Starmer as prime minister in July, now says Brexit has done "more harm than good" and has opened the door to rejoining the European Union (EU). Public opinion shifted before Burnham’s position. Britons now tell YouGov, by two to one, that leaving was a mistake, and almost a third of Leave voters have recanted or harbor doubts.
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