Biden walks away having fared better than any other President in his first midterm since George W. Bush in 2002.

Besides Biden’s low approval rates, high inflation, turbulent financial markets, and other issues that have favored Republicans – such as concerns about crime – loomed large in most polls. Yet the red wave so many anticipated didn’t happen. Votes are still being counted in key states and districts, but even if Republicans end up with control of one or both chambers, their majority will be extremely narrow. It’s safe to say Democrats will not face the “shellacking” they experienced in 2010.

Some world leaders may be so confused at the speed with which the UK churns through prime ministers that they imagine Johnson is still in charge. What goes around, comes around.

If you eat meat, this is something you can try yourself – next time you use mince in a bolognese, burger, or chilli, substitute 50% of the volume with lentils or chopped mushrooms. You may well even prefer it – in blind taste tests, a recent study found that consumers actually ranked the taste of blended burgers above beef burgers. Perhaps most interesting of all, preferences for blended burgers increased when the consumers were told they were blended, possibly because people valued their environmental and health credentials.

By feeding media speculation about just how savage the squeeze will be, the government is playing the expectations game in the hope of generating some relief when the chancellor’s measures turn out to be slightly less horrendous than is being pre-briefed. I am unconvinced this manipulation will work. Being told that you are about to be chucked out of a 10-storey window won’t make it feel any better when you are then thrown out of an eight-storey one.

It has been bruited about that the Treasury will try to hold down public sector pay increases to just 2% in the next financial year, which would mean a big bite out of the real value of the salaries of police officers, teachers and health workers.

It is indisputable that both Putin’s war and the legacy of the pandemic are having a global impact, but no other advanced economy has done worse than Britain. We are the only G7 country to be poorer today than we were pre-pandemic.

The statistics are glaring. Immigration into Britain has not fallen since Brexit but risen. According to the ONS, the number of EU citizens who have departed has indeed declined by a net 94,000, but non-EU legal arrivals rose in 2020 by up to 303,000. The Home Office’s work and study visas issued in 2021 were up 36% on pre-Covid levels and now stand at over a million, the biggest number on record. Thus while white Europeans have been declining, the number of incomers from Asia and Africa has increased.

Figures published by Frontex, the EU border agency, show “irregular entries” rose to 114,720 in the first half of 2022, 84% up on last year.

Strikingly, these figures do not include millions of Ukrainians who have sought EU asylum since February.

The west’s abandonment of Afghanistan last year is clearly reflected in increased refugee numbers. Continuing strife in Syria, including Idlib; the threat of more Turkish cross-border military incursions into Kurdish areas; and various Middle East and African conflicts, plus the legacy of the Iraq war, continue to fuel instability.

Seventeen EU countries received larger numbers of asylum applications per capita last year, according to an analysis of official figures by the OMO.