At the time of writing, the US mid-term elections had not taken place, although that questionable practice, early voting, was underway.

A Republican victory in at least the House seems more than likely, but because the Democrats were only defending 14 seats against the Republicans’ 20, the Senate result was not so clear.

CONSEQUENCES

Despite that, there are likely to be three significant consequences.

First, Donald Trump, the greatest American president since Ronald Reagan, will announce his candidature for the Republican nomination, possibly as soon as November 14.

Provided that the election is not again conducted in serious breach of constitutional principles, he will be returned to the White House – in a landslide.

At a recent seminar on US-Australian relations at the Sydney Sheraton, I was pressed to name the likely winner of the 2024 election. When I said “Donald Trump”, there were strong murmurs of discontent.

But my prediction was, interestingly, supported by a panelist from the United States Studies Centre.

The second consequence of the mid-term elections is the flow-on effect on Western politics.

For Australia, the most important Western country after the US is the UK, the only other country with the means and willingness to help us if attacked.

The fact is that without our “great and powerful friends”, our political class has left us defenceless.

As to the UK, there is an untruth, propagated especially by Paul Keating, that after Singapore the British abandoned us.

The fact is they continued to fight on valiantly in Asia with Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten as the Supreme Allied Commanders in South-East Asia.

The flow-on effect of the mid-term and likely presidential election result will, both in Australia and Britain, bring in new players and cause existing ones to change their position on net-zero emissions.

The British already show signs of modifying their position, even if Rishi Sunak is now going to COP 27.

He should have learnt from Scott Morrison’s error in going to Glasgow and coming back as a net-zero convert. The result was he lost both his base and the election.

DISASTER

This flow-on will also lead to a growing acceptance that net-zero has proved a disaster in every country whose politicians have been foolish enough to adopt it.

And either because the discredited and unproven theory of man-made emissions is wrong or because Beijing, India, and, after the presidential election, the US will not apply net-zero, voters will increasingly question the heavy burden in imposing it.

Eventually, any Western politician pushing net-zero will be seen as either Beijing’s “useful idiot” or their willing tool. As in fact they already are, every one of them.

The third and most immediate consequence of the mid-term election is that the Republicans, even if they only win the House, will be able to compel witnesses to give evidence under oath.

The result will be that real investigations, impossible during the last two years, will soon begin with the mainstream media finding it increasingly difficult to ignore.

These will be into several sets of questionable and even criminal activities.

The first investigations will be into activities undertaken by Joe Biden and his family, particularly under the Obama presidency, when access and influence to the highest levels of the American government were sold to the Chinese communists and corrupt groups in Russia, Ukraine and in the Middle East.

This will extend to the degree to which decisions taken by Biden as President have been compromised by the obvious fact that Beijing and Moscow were able to exercise leverage over him under the threat of releasing compromising information.

SCANDALOUS

In this the temptation to be distracted by Hunter Biden’s scandalous behaviour should be avoided.

The second series of investigations should be into the unconstitutional weaponisation of three great Washington agencies, the Department of Justice, the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service.

All have been used with gross impropriety and possibly illegality against political opponents and not only by the Biden administration but also the Obama administration. (Those investigations should include historical reference to notorious instances of similar abuse under the Nixon and Roosevelt administrations.)

The third likely series of investigations, one of particular relevance to Australia, is collusion between the Biden administration with major social media platforms. This has been especially through the Department of Homeland Security.

The aim has been to treat any criticism of the Biden administration over a range of issues as prohibited “misinformation” and thus banned and removed from social media platforms in breach of the First Amendment.