US midterms: Angry Trump could vent frustrations abroad after rebuke for Republicans at home

Donald Trump’s Republican Party has received a stunning rebuke in the US midterm elections. Republicans went into the evening hoping that the polls might be wrong and that they could at least cling on to control of the Senate. But by midnight in Washington, the Grand Old Party was staring down what looked like its worst defeat in 50 years.

Republican losses were not just confined to the type of swing districts that parties usually worry about on election night. The scale of the losses was staggering. They lost Senate seats in deep red states such as Texas and South Carolina. They lost districts they had gerrymandered and in which they were supposed to be unbeatable. They lost seats that even the sharpest analysts thought were safe.

Why? For months, surveys have shown that voters are fed up with high prices, with the war in Iran, and with what is increasingly being talked about as the Trump administration’s corruption. A president who was narrowly elected on the promise of a steady economic hand instead spent two years pursuing an extreme ideological agenda favoured only by a minority of Americans. He ignored what voters were saying, and now they have delivered a harsh verdict.

But these results have implications beyond just the...

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