The Obama win doesn't mean that a thousand years of peace and love (Guardian style) are upon us quite yet. Steyn and the Pub Philosopher on the Proposition 8 vote, in which Californians who voted Obama also voted to keep marriage heterosexual.
Obama's chief of staff is a chap who's dad was an Irgun terrorist against the British , and who volunteered his services to the Israeli military in Gulf War II (i.e. the first American Gulf War - Gulf War I was the far bloodier Iran/Iraq conflict). Whatever that tells us, I think we can assume that Obama's unlikely to be proposing the dismantling of the State of Israel in the near future. He will stick to the two-state solution which has been so conspicuously successful to date.
Domestic politics post-credit crunch are increasingly unpredictable. Gordo has indeed recovered somewhat in the polls - and it looks as if, after years when Labour would attack the Tories for proposing "unfunded, uncosted tax cuts", asking rhetorically on which hospitals the axe would fall, the two parties are in competition to see who can promise the biggest unfunded tax cuts.
Back to Obama - my best scenario would be for the US to enter upon a period of military and economic isolationism - not good for 'the world economy' but perhaps good for us, making us face problems which we're going to have to face sooner or later anyway. The US security blanket has infantilised the nations of Europe - perhaps they need a bracing period of chill. If Obama was serious (which I'm not at all sure he is) about rebuilding US industry, maybe a UK government might get the hint and do something about UK manufacturing. We've been dismantling it for 30 years under both parties. They would fail in their efforts - but at least they'd be acknowledging a problem. Diagnosis is the first step to treatment.
It's all terribly interesting.
Trimmed
11 hours ago
