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It’s election day in the US and polls suggest that it’s neck and neck between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.
The Standard’s Rochelle Travers joins our Deputy Political Editor, Jitendra Joshi, to discuss what role the Supreme Court could play in this extremely close race.
In part two, The Standard’s Rachelle Abbott joins Nick Curtis, the Standard’s Chief Theatre Critic, who gives his verdict on the latest movie installment from Britain’s most famous bear, Paddington in Peru.
Here’s a fully automated transcript:
From London, I'm Rochelle Travers, and this is The Standard.
If we get everybody out and vote, there's not a thing they can do.
It's election day in the US, and polls suggest that it's neck and neck between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.
The excitement and nerves are palpable as the world waits to see who comes out on top.
However, there are concerns about what role the Supreme Court could play in this crucial election.
There's an established conservative majority on the bench, and Trump has made it clear he plans to contest the result should he lose.
So, is there a scenario where the Supreme Court decides the next president of the United States?
I'm now joined by our Deputy Political Editor, Jitendra Joshi.
There are some suggesting that the Supreme Court could play a pivotal role in this election.
Could they ultimately decide who the next president is?
They could, potentially.
It's a scenario we saw play out really dramatically in 2000 when the Supreme Court then handed, effectively handed the election to George W Bush after a dispute over a recount in Florida.
In that case, it all boiled down to the state of play in one particular state.
And that's where the Supreme Court was asked to weigh in.
This time around, the more likely scenarios that, well, we know from everything Trump is saying and doing, is that if he loses to Harris, he's prepared to contest the result in multiple states.
His people have got loyalists on election boards and other relevant organisations across the battleground states.
After 2020, when it was all a bit haphazard, his attempts to buy me his defeat by Joe Biden, which really played out in one state, in Georgia especially.
So this time around, there's multiple outlets for him to air his grievances, but equally that means that the Supreme Court is less likely to weigh in because it just gets too messy, it gets too complicated.
And even for the Supreme Court, that has been stacked by Trump with three very right-leaning justices that he appointed.
There's a sense that they don't want to be seen as getting abroad in a nakedly artisan act to overturn what would be a legitimate victory for Harris by upholding Trump's pretty specious claims already that he's making about election fraud playing out in places like Pennsylvania.
There's just no evidence for that, but they're sort of muddying the waters as much as they can ahead of the election to set the stage for a narrative that says this election was stolen from us.
Now the courts need to rectify that.
Judges here and there might well uphold recounts might say, we need to look again at this particular tally in this county or this state.
But ultimately, is the Supreme Court going to want to weigh in and shoot its own credibility down?
And to that extent, several people we've spoken to, analysts and legal experts, are not entirely sure.
But, you know, there's always a caveat there.
And the big one is, everything we thought would happen has not happened.
There is no rhyme or reason.
There's no predictability anymore to how these things play out, how this election campaign is playing out and how the result might potentially play out.
So it could get messy, yes.
But either way, you know, things could well be drawn out.
And so anyone hoping to stay up late in our time frame for a result being for a very long wait.
Some commentators are suggesting that if Trump wins, there could be a scenario where two justices retire and are replaced with younger conservative ones, meaning it could ensure a conservative majority for up to 50 years.
What would the impact be of something like this happening?
Well, really, I mean, one of the reasons why you see such levels of support for Trump and this is what we saw in 2016 and again in 2020.
Yes, a lot of that is driven by people in sort of Rust Belt communities where globalisation has failed them, where jobs have disappeared, where industries have died.
But a lot of it is also driven by people like evangelical Christian voters, who explicitly said, their leaders repeatedly have said, well, you know, Trump is a flawed person, is a flawed candidate, he's got all sorts of personal deficiencies that we as God-fearing folk might not necessarily want to see in a president.
But ultimately, the biggest prize is to see a Republican president forming the Supreme Court that will last generations to uphold their vision of what the United States should be.
So that's really the end game for a lot of people, is to get Trump back in and to do exactly that, to ensure a durable, lasting right wing majority on the court.
That's the big prize.
The question then is, who does he appoint?
Well, we would have to see how that plays out.
But we know in his first term, he already did appoint three judges.
And they've been fairly consistent in siding with the right wing majority that he inherited.
But that said, people do change over time.
So we've seen an interesting pattern of rulings or judgements from the chief justice, for example, John Roberts, who was installed by a Republican president, but has sometimes sided with the liberal justices over time.
Another judge that Trump appointed, Amy Coney Barrett, has also not always slavishly followed the right wing line on these things.
So it's worth remembering that it's a strike double-h sword.
You appoint these judges for life, and going on their past rulings, going on their writings and so on, you think they're going to be a safe bet.
But over time, people do change, and they've got no particular, given their lifetime term, there's no real threat to their incumbency, so they might well decide over time, well, actually, I'm not beholding to that party or that person, I'm going to vote the way I see fit.
How important is this US election, and what kind of impact could it have on the rest of the world?
Every US election is important, of course, but this one feels as consequential as any in our lifetime so far.
At stake is the Western Alliance, the future of NATO, if Trump gets back in, you know, he's lukewarm at best about keeping the US and NATO, he's threatened that Putin, he'd allow Putin to march into a NATO country that doesn't pay its way.
And what would it mean for Ukraine, given the Republicans' hostility to giving more money to the Ukrainians, to fight against the invasion by Russia?
What would it mean for the Middle East, you know, given how things are playing out between Israel and Iran?
China is watching very attentively, might they make a move on Taiwan, given the going along nature of a Trump presidency in the second term?
Would people like Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un in North Korea feel more emboldened to do their worst because they think Trump is going to turn a blind eye?
Equally, can the Harris presidency rebuild those lights?
It's sure things up in time when half the country doesn't seem to want to make those sort of commitments financially and diplomatically.
There is a huge amount at stake.
And for the UK in particular, we're in a slightly strange post-Brexit scenario here where you've got a new government under labour for the first time in 14 years.
They've had their own issues with the Trump people after the recent morales over labour volunteers going out to campaign for Harris.
You know, might we, after Brexit, might we find ourselves even deeper alone shunned by Trump?
No hope of a trade deal.
Having to shoulder the burden of support for Ukraine even more with other European allies because the Americans won't help out anymore.
You know, there is a huge amount at stake.
And that's not even to mention the consequences of Trump presidency for the international economy and trade.
So even more than usual, we need to be paying attention and I'm sure a lot of people will be.
Let's go to the ads.
Coming up in part two, The Standard's Rachelle Abbott gets the verdict from our chief theatre critic, Nick Curtis, on Paddington in Peru.
Here you're stuck in a sort of generic jungle on a fairly random plot.
Various people looking for the city of El Dorado, the mythical city of gold in Peru, and it just doesn't really work.
It just sort of hobbles along from scene to scene.
The Standard podcast will be back in just a moment.
Welcome back.
I'm The Standard's Rachelle Abbott.
Britain's most famous bear is back in action.
Paddington, there's a letter from Peru.
Dear Paddington, your aunt Lucy.
She's gone, and we have no idea where she is.
She raised me when I was orphaned as a pup.
If you ever get lost, just roar.
Paddington in Peru hits cinemas this Friday, the 8th of November.
However, despite much anticipation, the film's premiere has left a damp impression on some critics, including our own.
Earlier today, I caught up with The London Standard's chief theatre critic, Nick Curtis, who has given the film two stars.
Before we get into your review, Nick, do you want to remind us briefly about the plot?
Yeah, this is the third installment in the sort of rebooted Paddington franchise, big screen adaptations.
The first two were set in England and were very much about Paddington's experience as an orphan immigrant to the UK and the reception he received there.
This one moves him back to his native country of Peru, where he's gone to try and track down his aunt, who has gone missing from a home for retired bears.
Now, you've given Paddington in Peru two stars.
In fact, your review says Paddington Bear, Paddington Bore.
Before we upset Paddington fans, can you walk us through where they've gone wrong?
What this film really lacks is Paul King's direction.
He was the mastermind behind turning Paddington into this big screen blockbuster box office phenomenon, which Paddington has even, of course, now outgrown.
He's become a cultural icon present at the Olympics, present in memes, now as a grim reaper, walking everyone from the late Queen to the afterlife.
This film lacks that director's fluency and charm.
And it also, frankly, lacks London.
There was that lovely heightened cartoonish version of London that the first two films re-created, full of landmarks, you know, the museums, the palace, the Crescent, where Paddington and the Brown family live.
And here you're stuck in a sort of generic jungle on a fairly random plot, various people looking for the city of El Dorado, the mythical city of gold in Peru.
And it just doesn't really work.
It just sort of hobbles along from scene to scene.
Most of the performers, including the new sort of star signings for this installment, acting fairly unconvincingly and as if they're just sort of out here on autopilot.
And even though Paddington remains a strong character, given amazing voice by Ben Whishaw and vivid life by the animators who bring him to life in all his sort of furry glory, it really is a bit of a bore, frankly.
I mean, Peru feels a bit of a cop out.
If you're going to take Paddington out of the UK, I don't know, I feel like you could be a bit more creative.
Yeh, Paddington takes New York or Paddington in Paris or something a bit like Emily in Paris.
You can imagine the sort of carnage he would wreck there because he remains extremely accident prone.
I mean, I think the idea here is to sort of reverse the situation that, you know, the whole point of Paddington is that he provides a sort of wry outsider's view on British foibles and society and the sort of family dynamic of the Brown family.
And here, I suppose the idea is to reverse that, that he's going back home and the Browns follow on to try and sort of look after him, are the ones who are out of their element and challenged.
But that just manifests itself in them being sort of rained on all the time and Mr. Brown being menaced by spiders, it's a little bit naff.
And it's also hit a problem with the fact that the Brown children and our university age or thereabouts, you know, the Brown daughter is about to go to university, the Brown son has become this sort of slob loafing in his bedroom, spraying himself with deodorant endlessly, which is I think a bit of a clumsy metaphor for the change of adolescence that he's obviously going through, whereas Paddington remains this sort of eternal child in the middle of it all.
And you know, what happens to Paddington when his family and everyone around him grows up and grows older?
You know, Mr. Brown is appreciably older in this.
Mrs. Brown, who was played by Sally Hawkins in the first two movies, is played here by Emily Mortimer.
And that's, you know, not addressed.
We assume she's the same character, but she's sort of radically different.
Looking at the cast, how do Hugh Bonneville, Antonia Banderas and Olivia Colman fare in this threequel?
Well, they all look a bit sort of tired and uninspired by the material, frankly.
Hugh Bonville is Mr. Brown again.
And running through the same sort of shtick that he's done before about him being a bit of a sort of safety first, fuddy-duddy and endlessly challenged by his children and his wife, although the children are fairly sullen and his wife is just a bit grumpy and there's hints that she's a bit bored with him.
So he's doing the same thing and it's starting to look like a slightly tired shtick.
Banderas is this rogue-ish riverboat captain with a young daughter who takes the Browns up the Amazon and proves to be not entirely heroic.
Olivia Colman plays a sort of perma-grinning mother superior who runs the home for retired bears from which Paddington's aunt has disappeared.
And she has a sort of secret life for her, which I will not spoil for anybody who is desperate to go and see it still. Despite all I've said.
Do you think this could be the end of the franchise?
Are we expecting too much from a franchise?
I doubt it.
I mean, the very few franchises go bust by endlessly repeating the same formula.
I mean, look at the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
But I think there's going to have to be some fairly radical rethinking about where to take it next, because you need to move it on.
I mean, the problem as well is that, unlike the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which has had years and years and years of backstory, Paddington exists in a series of short books and a series of short-form TV programs from the 1970s.
So to ask him to carry these big, you know, sort of narrative arcs of a 90 to 120-minute movie, you need to sort of work up a lot more about the character and work out where you're going to take him.
I think that's the major problem with this film.
They don't really know what to do with him now.
You know, the first two films placed him very, very clearly in counterpoint to contemporary society as an orphan and an immigrant, and this film doesn't.
And Christmas is just around the corner.
Do you think this is still worth families investing their time?
I don't know.
I mean, I think I'm sure kids will love some of the humour of it and the charm of Paddington.
They explain a lot of jokes.
I think kids are very aware of that.
You know, I think they know when they're being talked down to.
So, I mean, I think there's enough sort of slapstick gangs here to, you know, please a sort of fairly undemanding family.
And it is an easy way for parents to sort of distract their offspring for two hours.
But, you know, I don't think it's going to endear.
People aren't going to love this film the way they did the first two, kids or adults.
You can find out more about these stories and others on our website standard.co.uk.
The Standard podcast will be back tomorrow at 4pm.
