I spent the whole of last night at the Marylebone Sports Bar and Grill in central London with a few hundred Americans resident in Britain – all Democrats wanting a victory by Hillary Clinton. \u00a0I arrived about 10.15 pm and stayed until the place closed at 5.30 am, so it was 6.20 am before I reached my bed.<\/p>\n
It was a noisy affair with so many excited people and dozens of screens showing live coverage of the election results on CNN. I tweeted 11 times in the course of the evening. All my tweets come up on my Facebook page and I received a number of comments from friends in both the UK and the USA who had also stayed up for the results.<\/p>\n
It was a surprising and depressing result. The polls got it completely wrong and across the democratic world we are finding that political polling is much less accurate than it was.<\/p>\n
Donald Trump’s victory is astonishing. \u00a0For someone who has never held elected office, has such a chequered business career, did not publish his tax returns, insulted almost every demographic constituent in the election, was so extreme in his policies when they were clear, and was so vague about his policies in so many crucial areas, for this person to beat one of the most experienced politicians ever to run for the White House is simply breathtaking.<\/p>\n
For those, like me, who vehemently opposed his candidature but wishes America and the world well, we have to hope that he will pull back from many of his more extreme positions in the face of the realities of power and that he will appoint experienced and wise colleagues who will be able and ready to counsel him. We have to hope this because his tenure will profoundly affect the whole world and we have nowhere else to go.<\/p>\n