The smart money seems to be moving to Kamala Harris as she rides a wave of Democratic party enthusiasm and her polling shows an edge in key swing states. Although one should always remember the old adage that no ordinary voter switches on to the candidates before Labor Day, there’s a feeling building that this may well be Trump’s last stand. A successful convention this week and a big speech by the Vice President may further secure the polls.

Seems Nikki Haley was right: the first major party to nominate someone under eighty wins.

And yet. And yet. Events six thousand miles away may descend like a screaming black swan dropping from the sky just as US voters weigh up their options.

Somewhere deep in sunblasted Iran, the senior Twelver Shia clergy are making their minds up as to how to respond to the assassination on their own soil of Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh. It is an afront they cannot let stand.

Hezbollah are on standby in Lebanon. As Paul Wood argued in last week’s Spectator the paramilitary leadership are reluctant to throw caution to the wind and start a war on Israel’s northern border. And yet it may happen. Their arms may be twisted by the Ayatollahs. Or indeed, Israel itself could trigger the fighting, desperate as Netanyahu is to continue the war and avoid facing corruption charges. There’s talk in Israeli military circles of forcing a six-mile exclusion zone inside Lebanon.

If we are thinking of the betting then we could see a situation where Biden has had to honour long-standing commitments to the state of Israel and offer military support to Netanyahu. The US is already gearing up; sending more planes, warships and even a submarine with guided missiles to the area. We could see a scenario where the US is fully at war with Iran within weeks.

How will the US public react?

There’s less than eighty days to the US elections. Any war that kicks off in the next few weeks is highly unlikely to have been resolved by November.

I hate to say this but I can’t shake off this terrible, nagging feeling that something primeval and deep may well collectively drive sufficient swing voters to decide to put Trump back in as Commander in Chief at such a dangerous and worrying time. Someone seen as a ‘strong man’. Someone who claims to be able to solve international crisis and wars with his arts of the deal. A former president who avoided any foreign wars.

Will the famed silent majority decide, in the quiet of the polling booths, that actually this is not a good time to elect the republic’s first woman president?

I wouldn’t agree with them. Frankly, Trump is a highly dangerous personality to be putting in charge of anything during a war let alone in peacetime. Keep him playing golf.

And his relationship with the military is frankly sub-optimal; witness his latest outburst about maimed soldiers who have “been hit so many times by bullets” getting congressional medals.

Perhaps that will weigh on the minds of voters as they decide who will be best to lead them in war time?

I’m very red on Trump on Betfair.

A very nervous seventy odd days lie ahead. And obviously not just for betting purposes but, far more importantly, for the peace of the Middle East.

Rotten Borough