There’s a lot about US politics that Brits – despite our instincts – really don’t need to know.
Take, for example, Katie Zacharia’s stunningly short stint as White House press secretary last month. It was an enjoyable diversion for us, no doubt, but it could not have had less of an impact on life in the UK.
If the leader’s official press secretary in France, China or Australia had been fired after five days in the job, would we care at all? I would hazard… no.
So, we might find ourselves asking whether yesterday’s dramatic midterms fall into that same category of news that grips us purely because it’s happening in the United States.
One person with a good idea of how events across the Atlantic might affect us is Dame Emily Thornberry, the chair of the Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee and former shadow foreign secretary.
Want to understand how politics affects your day to day?
Metro's Senior Politics Reporter Craig Munro breaks down the biggest stories of the week into easy-to-understand explanations in his politics newsletter Alright, Gov? – sign up here.
Speaking to me earlier this afternoon, she was clear that it largely boils down to one issue: the war in Iran, which has been pushing up prices around the world, including the UK.
Dame Emily said: ‘[Trump] will still be in charge of the armed forces, of course he will. Obviously, one of the things that the Democrats are going to think is that they have a mandate to stop the Iranian war. So how will they go about doing that?
‘It might be difficult to do politically, but it might be that perhaps they can use the War Powers Act, as [Georgia senator] Jon Ossoff has said.
‘Perhaps they can rein in spending on the military and say we’re only going to give you this funding if it’s not spent in the Gulf. I mean, it’ll be a really interesting period.’
Even so, there has been speculation that if Trump feels he has nothing left to lose, he could decide to hammer Iran even harder – concerns Dame Emily told me she shares.
She said: ‘I think that probably what he’ll want to do is to bring some form of resolution in Iran before the new congressmen and senators are sworn in [on January 3], because presumably he’ll be advised that they will give him a hard time over the Iranian war, so it’s best to get it sorted one way or the other.
‘And whether he’s capable of doing that, of course, is another matter.’
In an interview with the BBC’s Chris Mason in Antigua, Andy Burnham said he would be ‘working for de-escalation’ and making ‘very clear’ he wants the Strait of Hormuz open again.
He also suggested he saw the midterm results as a backlash against the pressures resulting from the Iran war: ‘That’s what the voters, in my view, are saying in the United States – let’s get focused in a laser-like way on those cost-of-living issues.’
At last week’s Budget, John Healey was clear about the devastation wreaked on the British economy by a war we don’t support and are powerless to end. It’ll be a nervous wait to see how exactly this latest electoral earthquake changes the equation.
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
MORE: ‘Baby’ Donald Trump has his nappy changed by Joe Biden in surreal new calendar
MORE: Elon Musk jokes his ‘election-interfering space lasers didn’t work’
MORE: Donald Trump claims this ‘Iran thing’ was worth midterm disaster