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Election-wise, it's not very difficult: were the cost of gas and diesel what they were on February 27th, the opposition party would be the issue; when they're what they are today, you're the issue.

That's nothing to do with this or that lousy poll, just a basic law of democratic politics. Such realities are further exacerbated by the underlying cause of the pump prices. As I mentioned on Wednesday, in the 2024 election the UK government was felt to have betrayed its base. So over a quarter of 2019 Tory voters sat on their hands, and half of the remainder voted for other parties. Fortunately for Republicans, America has very few "other parties", but if twenty-five per cent of its voters decide they'd rather shampoo the cat on Election Day it's not going to be pretty. And yes, Sir Keir Starmer gave it to the Brits good and hard, but a sense of betrayal is difficult to overcome, as GOP internal polls will confirm.

My position these last eight months has been consistent even as events approach their dénouement:

For those of us whose admiration for the brilliant Trump 2024 campaign was near boundless, the self-bollocksing of the forty-seventh presidency is profound and tragic.

The pom-pom girls who cheered on the shock'n'awe of early March have mostly fallen silent, but to his credit Victor Davis Hanson is going down with the ship:

IRAN WAR UPDATE: Is the Regime Nearing Collapse?

Just to clarify, he means the Iranian regime, not the American one. My old friend argues that oil through the Strait of Hormuz is now back to February 27th levels. The World Trade Organisation feels differently, but what do they know?

Be that as it may, Victor continues:

The problem is not oil; it's making up for the dearth of distillery. The distilleries in Russia have been hit by Ukraine.

Why, those dastardly Ukrainians! No wonder we're on the side of the plucky little Russkies! No, wait, hang on...

So American taxpayers have coughed up $130 billion in weaponry, training, intelligence and logistical support in order that Zelenskyyyy can double the cost of their commute? Good luck selling that ingenious plot-twist to voters in critical swing states like, er, Kansas and South Carolina.

Speaking of South Carolina, as I noted back on Day One, Senator Lindsey Graham was already at if-erection-persists-for-more-than-six-hours levels of priapic frenzy:

The biggest change in the Middle East in a thousand years is upon us.

If this were a conspiracy thriller, it would be too crude and implausible to have the President self-detonate his breakthrough game-changing 2024 coalition in order to hand the fate of his administration to a psychologically maladjusted Evan McMullen-voting blood-drenched warmonger who enjoys bottoming for trannies. But in real-world DC it apparently makes perfect sense. So, to take the late senator more seriously than he deserves, how's that biggest change in a thousand years going? From The Wall Street Journal:

Vance Reaches Out to Iranian Hard-Liner in Bid to Restart Peace Talks

This isn't one of those imaginary Iranian friends who are always dialling the Oval Office begging to make a deal, but an actual named individual - indeed, one currently under US sanctions:

Vice President JD Vance is engaging one of Iran's most powerful hard-liners to revive peace negotiations even as President Trump threatens to restart the war after next week's midterm elections, U.S. officials and people familiar with the matter said.

Vance sent a letter to Mohsen Rezaei, the secretary of Iran's top security body, the Supreme National Security Council, and previously Iran's longest-serving commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps...

General Rezaei appears to be in no hurry to respond. Why would he? President Trump, for his part, is said by insiders to be contemplating another round of leadership assassinations, because replacing cancer-riddled octogenarian mullahs with spry fiftysomething hardcases worked out so swell in February. So come Wednesday morning General Rezaei may not be in a position to respond to the Vice President's billets doux. Still, Mr Vance is so anxious to take the call he has cancelled today's appearance in Minnesota - just as President Trump has called off his weekend rallies in Iowa and Kansas and will instead hold a "virtual rally", which sounds an awful lot like "phoning it in". (UPDATE! They're back on.) It's almost as if this year's inversion of Teddy Roosevelt - speak loudly and carry a small twig - is no longer working for him. I see the White House has quietly walked back many of its tariffs against Canada. For example, the President has reversed his ban on Bombardier after belatedly learning that the Quebec aviation collosus employs thousands of Americans in suddenly purple states like Kansas and Texas. I hope those updated maps showing "Lake America" were worth it.

If you regard, as I did, the victory of November 2024 as America and the wider west's last best chance, the comprehensive self-bollocksing of 2026 is infuriating - perhaps not an "epic fury", but certainly a cold intense fury. I said way back at the start of this thing that listeners to our Hundred Years Ago Show may remember the aftermath of the Greco-Turkish war, when the six senior figures who'd led Greece into its humiliating fiasco - three former prime ministers, two other senior ministers and the commander of the army - were executed by firing squad. At the time, it was just a throwaway gag, as is my wont, but eight months on, if we have to televise executions, that's the one I'd like to see.

I trust the many pre-announcements of Shock'n'Awe 2: Now with Depleted Firepower! are just the usual small-twiggery. And I hope the insider plans to put ground troops on Kharg Island can be defused, or at least ameliorated by a rendezvous or two with Lindsey Graham's transgender "sex workers". As it is, Republican candidates are running ads like this:

#NHSEN — John Sununu in a new TV ad: "The way Chris Pappas tells it, I'm President Trump's long-lost son. I've never even met the man." https://t.co/7zgQHNoHZr

— Patrick Svitek (@PatrickSvitek) October 20, 2026

If I were the late Senator Graham's tranny hooker, I would have asked him: what in the last three-quarters of a century of the world's most expensively dysfunctional military led you to believe it was remotely capable of pulling off a once-per-millennium geopolitical change?

Lest you think the above is a wee bit transphobic, not at all. To modify William F Buckley, I would rather be governed by the first thousand transgender tops in the DC phone book than by Lindsey Graham's nitwit sister.

A great man chose to self-bollocks his comeback presidency. The bloodletting will begin on Wednesday morning - because none of the self-bollocksing needed to happen.

Mark's international bestseller America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It. If you haven't read the book during its first seventeen years, well, you're missing a treat. It's still in print in hardback and paperback. (Buy it at a 77% discount by clicking here or order in KINDLE edition at a 47% discount by clicking here. Sales help fund JWR)

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Mark Steyn is an international bestselling author, a Top 41 recording artist, and a leading Canadian human rights activist. Among his books is "The Undocumented Mark Steyn: Don't Say You Weren't Warned". (Buy it at a 49% discount by clicking here or order in KINDLE edition at a 67% discount by clicking here. Sales help fund JWR)