With just 78 days to go before America’s midterm elections, Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s on-again, off-again political adviser, is suddenly a deeply worried man.
On Friday, the President’s political Svengali told viewers of his daily “War Room” broadcast that he has looked at the state of play in the midterm election campaign and fears Republicans are destined to come up short.
Citing figures showing that Democratic candidates are ahead – in some cases, comfortably ahead – in several key states, Bannon insisted the party is on the brink of what he termed “a disaster… completely, an absolute debacle”.
Why average house price plunged by £7,360 in August
Average house prices nosedived by more than £7,000 this month- marking the biggest August price fall since 2018, according to new figures.
Property site Rightmove said asking prices fell by 2 per cent, or £7,360 month-on-month.
Rightmove downgrades annual house price projections
While prices usually fall in August, this is a much bigger drop than the 10-year average of 1.3 per cent.
The figures prompted Rightmove to downgrade its annual house price forecast for 2026 from a 2 per cent increase to between 0 and a 2 per cent fall.
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What is influencing the figures?
The average asking price for a home in Britain stood at £364,999 in August – 1 per cent lower than a year ago.
And it’s all down to the supply.
- The number of available homes for sale is at a 12-year high for this time of year.
- This, combined with the quiet summer holiday period, has led to lower price expectations from sellers.
- Colleen Babcock, a property expert at Rightmove, said the larger-than-usual price drop is a sign sellers are pricing much more competitively from the offset.
- “Buyers have the widest choice of homes for sale at this time of year in more than a decade, so standing out on price for the right reasons is hugely important,” she said.
A regional divide in property prices
But not everywhere is experiencing a dampening in property prices – as usual, there is a regional divide, Rightmove said.
In the North West of England, average asking prices are up by 1.9 per cent annually, beating out homes in London where prices have sunk by 3.1 per cent on average.
- The depressed figures follow a “mini bounce” in buyer demand since Andy Burnham became PM.
- Buying activity, however, remains roughly 10 per cent below 2025 levels due to the changing picture for mortgage rates, geopolitical uncertainty and October’s Budget spooking potential buyers.
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Everything you need to know about Reform’s welfare overhaul
Reform UK is preparing to unveil the biggest shake-up of the welfare system “in a generation”, with plans to abolish personal independence payments (PIP) for working-age adults and save an estimated £50bn a year.
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‘We will not pretend this is painless’
Nearly three million people would see their disability or sickness payments withdrawn or changed under the plans.
The party’s treasury spokesman, Robert Jenrick, set out the proposals in an article for , ahead of a full 50-page policy paper due on Monday. He has acknowledged the human cost directly, writing: “We will not pretend this is painless.”
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What is Reform proposing?
- Reform would scrap PIP and the health element of universal credit for working-age adults. Both would be replaced with a new “health security allowance”, a single, regularly reviewed payment.
- Only claimants with “severe, enduring and high-risk” conditions would qualify for that cash support.
- Everyone else currently receiving disability-related payments would lose their cash entitlement altogether.
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A closer look at the detail
Those who would lose access to payments would instead be supported through council-run disability support accounts.
Reform estimates that 2.16 million would keep their present cash entitlement in full, while 2.89 million would see theirs modified or withdrawn.
Child payments impacted
- The party plans to extend the same approach to children’s benefits, aligning the system for anxiety, depression and ADHD with the adult changes, though only for new claimants.
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Plans modelled on Dutch system
Reform would also place a new obligation on businesses with more than five staff to take out “return to work cover” insurance, which would pay for the cost of an employee’s first two years off sick, rather than the state covering that cost through benefits.
The scheme is modelled on the Dutch system, where Reform argues disability benefit applications fell by 40 per cent after similar reforms were introduced.
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Scientists hail malaria breakthrough – what we know
A new compound has been hailed “an exciting step forward” in the fight against malaria – which kills hundreds of thousands of people each year.
Researchers at the University of Dundee, who discovered the compound, say it has the potential to simplify dosing regimens for the treatment and prevention of the illness.
A ‘novel drug-like molecule’
The new compound, called cabamiquine, is described as a “novel drug-like molecule” that can be delivered in a single dose.
An early-stage clinical trial showed that when administered with a commonly used antimalarial drug called pyronaridine, it is both effective and has a favourable safety profile in adults and adolescents.
Larger trials on the horizon
The team said the findings support the development of the combination therapy for larger trials and children.
In 2024, there were an estimated 282 million cases of malaria and 610,000 deaths from the disease worldwide. Figures have been rising in part due to resistance to common malaria medicines.
An ‘exciting step forward’
This is an exciting step forward for a compound which has great potential to simplify dosing regimens for , a disease which causes hundreds of thousands of deaths every year. We are delighted to see how the compound… is progressing into a potential medicine.
Dr Beatriz Baragana, a member of the Dundee University team that discovered cabamiquine
But Bannon insisted there is still a way of saving the Trump project. He urged Republicans in Congress to immediately double down on their support of the President, warning the party’s leaders that they are now complicit in a looming electoral disaster.
“If you treat President Trump as a lame duck… people are not going to show up” at the polls, he warned. “There’s zero enthusiasm for any of these candidates,” he said of Republican nominees in key battleground states.
Only Trump, he insisted, could deliver the party victory.
The White House has conceded for months that the midterm elections will serve as a referendum on Trump’s second term in office, and Republican lawmakers are increasingly fearful for their own futures, recognising the drag that Trump’s war on Iran has had on their own chances.
But Bannon is one of several Republican strategists who believe the answer to the party’s woes is more Trump, not a retreat from him. A self-confessed “huge advocate of President Trump’s third term”, Bannon also continues to maintain that a way will be found to circumvent the Constitution and keep Trump at the helm for another four years.
With Trump’s personal approval ratings crashing to record-low levels, earlier talk about him seeking a third term has largely been silenced. No members of his own government are publicly backing the idea, and the President’s name has not been included in the handful of straw polls conducted at Republican Party events across the country.
Congressman Andy Ogles, a fervent Trump ally who introduced a measure in the House of Representatives that would rewrite the Constitution’s 22nd amendment so that any president serving two non-consecutive terms in office would be eligible to seek a third term, lost a primary election in Tennessee this month and will be departing Capitol Hill at the end of the year.
Polling has shown that more than 60 per cent of Americans believe that Trump is serious about the possibility of serving a third term, but Republican voters are evenly split over whether they would back him in that endeavour. A Suffolk University survey conducted for in May showed 46.9 per cent of Republican voters would support him, but 46.7 per cent would not.
However, none of that has stopped the President from threatening a third term in repeated posts online, and through his own “Trump 2028” merchandise. On Saturday, his social media feed included an image of him wearing a “Trump 2028” baseball cap that he has sported publicly on several occasions. “We are going to win”, read the caption below.
In recent weeks, Trump has referenced the possibility of seeking a third term. He also sidestepped a reporter’s question about whether he would rule out the prospect of trying to secure one, despite it being against the US Constitution.
For those worried about democracy, the President is also openly flirting with the idea of declaring a national security emergency ahead of November’s midterms.
He was challenged last week by the hard-right TV host Wayne Allyn Root to declare a national security emergency in order to bypass Congress’s required approval for the SAVE America Act, which would require people to provide ID and proof of citizenship to vote. In response, Trump said cryptically: “Let me just say that stranger things have happened, ok? I’ll leave it at that.”
Trump – like Bannon – is especially angered over the Senate’s failure to pass legislation that would require all voters to provide proof of citizenship when registering for elections – and have photographic identification at the time they cast their votes.
Democrats claim that the proposed law – already passed by the House of Representatives – is nothing more than an effort to limit minority voter participation.
Many Republican lawmakers now find themselves living in a difficult political reality, one that they can’t seem to escape.
The worse things get for Trump, the more they fear for their own skins unless they separate from him. But Bannon and other Maga voices argue that their retreat from Trump’s orthodoxy is the reason behind their potential immolation – and urge them to return to the fold.
For now, Democrats are watching with glee. The latest modelling shows Republicans more than 8 per cent behind their opponents, with the political statistician Nate Silver saying that “everything is breaking the Democrats’ way”.
But cornered, Trump may become more erratic and less rational than ever. In the remaining days of the campaign, anything could happen, as the Maga grassroots seek to protect their leader at all costs.