Hillary clinton

It’s no real surprise that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have both secured victory in New York overnight and the only real question was what margin they would win by. With most of the votes now counted, it looks to have been convincing in both cases: Trump got more than 60 per cent of the vote whilst Hillary Clinton got around 58 per cent. Primaries like these are the kind that both Trump and Clinton would wish could be replicated over the whole of America. The sense of belonging needed to get voters on side was there automatically for Trump in his home state and also for Hillary as New York’s former senator. Neither Ted Cruz nor Bernie Sanders really stood a chance but that didn’t stop the two winners from talking up the significance of their victories.

Have you seen the internet meme which suggests that Donald Trump's ‘divisive' rhetoric helps Isis gather support and grow in size? It’s been getting a lot of likes and shares, possibly because it contains an element of truth. Certainly Isis seems to buy into the idea, which is why they featured The Donald in their triumphant post-Brussels video. Trump and Isis feed each other. They both thrive on and exacerbate a sense of western decline. But the politician who has done most to help Isis grow is not Donald Trump. It may well be Hillary Clinton. At almost every stage of her career, Hillary has managed somehow to nurture and sustain the conditions for Isis to grow in. Just look at her foreign policy record.

Area of doubt Hillary Clinton has said that if she is elected she will open files on the US military facility in Nevada known as Area 51. Some rumours which will almost certainly not be confirmed: — According to a physicist who claims to have worked there, nine captured alien spacecraft have been examined there. Another says that a small band of aliens works there. They are 5ft high, wear dungarees and came from a planet called Quintumnia, 45 years’ travel time away. — Scientists there are working on a 6,000mph plane called Aurora, a prototype of which has already been flown. — Workers are suing the USAF after their skin turned red and peeled off.

   New York ‘Does this mean we have to vote for Hillary?’ asked my wife. It was early morning 16 March, and the queen consort of the Democratic party had seemingly sewn up the presidential nomination — a coronation promised years ago by her king but thus far denied by unruly subjects. As I scanned the headline in the New York Times, ‘Clinton and Trump Pile up the Delegates’, I felt sick at heart. The Times has functioned throughout the campaign as court gazette for the Clintons, but there was no denying the basic accuracy of the story.

The rich are under attack nowadays, never more so than in America, where The Donald continues to trump his critics, amaze and surprise his fans, and drive his haters to paroxysms of sexual fantasy, with Trump as the main actor. National Review, where I got my start 40 years or so ago, devoted a whole issue to rubbishing Donald Trump. There were contributions from great conservatives, such as Thomas Sowell, and great clowns, like John Podhoretz. It was an issue that inadvertently looked in opposite directions while hating The Donald. William Kristol’s bit was in there — the one where he calls Trump vulgar. That he may be, but coming from a true vulgarian like Kristol, it’s a bit rich.

Three things give momentum to a campaign for a presidential nomination in the USA and power it to victory: Expectations. Expectations. Expectations. The only truly memorable moment of Bill Clinton’s 1992 Democratic victory was his New Hampshire primary loss: where his second-place finish surprised the political establishment and lent him the ‘comeback kid’ moniker than turbo-charged his campaign. In 2004, the Kerry campaign had to go so far as hush up the fact they knew they were going to win the Iowa caucuses for months prior to the vote in order to pull off a ‘shock win’. The impact of John McCain’s New Hampshire primary win in 2008 was the fact he trailed Mitt Romney by 18 points just a month before.

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said that if Britain left the European Union, France could stop allowing British officials to make immigration checks on the French side of the border, and, his spokesman predicted: ‘You have potentially thousands of asylum seekers camped out in northern France who could be here almost overnight.’ Mr Cameron denounced the way prisons are being run by his administration: ‘Current levels of prison violence, drug-taking and self-harm should shame us all.’ Junior doctors went on strike again for 24 hours. Twelve men of Pakistani heritage were jailed for up to 20 years for the rape and sexual abuse of a girl when she was aged 13 and 14, over a period of two years, in Keighley, West Yorkshire.

Manchester, New Hampshire ‘Anybody here got any student debt?’ asks Bernie Sanders halfway through his speech at a rally in a small university on Monday. He then starts conducting a fake auction. ‘What are some of the numbers you got? You? 35,000. You? 55,000? Who else? A young lady here… 100,000 dollars. You win! I don’t know what you win, but you win!’ The students all hoot and chant. ‘Bernie! Bernie! Bernie!’ Sanders cracks an avuncular smile, then starts talking again about how rich the rich are. It’s hard not to like Sanders. It’s hard not to ‘Feel the Bern’, as the mantra goes. He is 74 years old, and angry at the injustice of the world in a lovable old-codger way. The kids like that.

‘Do you really not like Hillary Clinton, or are you just sexist?’ Cosmopolitan actually asked that question last week. Claiming that much anti-Clinton commentary is ‘gender-specific’, with Hillary frequently described as ‘dishonest’ or ‘shrill’, the mag asked Clinton’s critics to search their souls to see if they really do oppose Clinton the politician or just hate women in general. Americans who would rather chew tin foil than vote for Hillary: are you misogynists or what? Cosmo’s implicit branding of Hillary’s critics as sexists — all of them? All those millions of people? — is only the latest stab by the Hillary fanclub to chill criticism of their leader.

[audioplayer src="http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/fightingovercrumbs-euroscepticsandtheeudeal/media.mp3" title="Freddy Gray and the Republican Party Overseas' Kate Andrews discuss what's next for the GOP" startat=695] Listen [/audioplayer]If Donald Trump had won in Iowa on Monday night, everybody would still be saying what a brilliant candidate he is. His decision to shun that Fox News debate, just four days before the caucuses, would be seen as a tactical masterstroke. Looking at his poll lead ahead of the New Hampshire primary next week, journalists would be saying that he had effectively secured the Republican party nomination. He didn’t win, though. He came second, almost third, and now the narrative about the Trump phenomenon can be turned upside down.