Unless you’re in the very top percentile of political wonks, the best way to experience the US election results is to look at your phone when you wake up, groan to yourself and then go back to sleep. This is because, when watching a US election from these drizzly shores, nothing interesting happens until about 4am.
But try telling that to the UK’s media, which has a habit of treating US elections the same way dogs look at bollards they want to wee on. Both the BBC and ITV’s coverage kicked off a bit before 11pm last night, light years before anything worthwhile was scheduled to occur. Channel 4 went off even more half-cocked, diving into its coverage at 10pm. And then there was Sky News, which by 7.30pm was broadcasting endless split-screen footage of empty polling booths and slightly floppy lawn signs, like an awful Slow TV remake of 24.
Usually on an occasion like this, your first stop would be the BBC, which you would expect to engage in the sort of pomp and heft it does so well. And yet its output was weirdly muted and anonymous, a sort of ChatGPT of a thing, all bright purples and fixed grins, with none of the big guns wheeled out in any meaningful way. It didn’t feel like watching the BBC at all, instead having the feel of something you’d only sit through if it was the sole English language show available in a hotel you’d travelled to for work.
At least, if nothing else, ITV treated the election as a bit more of a priority. Tom Bradby, the channel’s biggest name, was brought in to host all night long. You’ll remember that this was also the case during the UK election, which leads me to believe that Bradby is part-vampire and that he would explode in a cloud of ash if he ever came into contact with daylight. The big draw here was the level of guest involved. Sarah Palin was onscreen so much that she probably qualified as a co-host. At one point J-Lo even popped up to endorse Kamala Harris. Aside from that, this was ITV by numbers – solid, competent, a tad boring, maybe tinged with envy that the final result wouldn’t come in until Good Morning Britain had started.
But maybe you didn’t want to stay up and watch analysts scroll through potential voting models. Maybe you just wanted to watch a bunch of fantastically bad-tempered people in a room that was slightly too small. This is where Channel 4 came in. It’s genuinely impossible to overstate just how violently furious the whole setup was. Crammed around a minuscule triangular table, like a couple who weren’t expecting everyone to turn up for dinner, Krishnan Guru-Murthy and Emily Maitlis essentially spent hours bristling at everything their guests had to say.
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Sometimes this tipped over into outright anger. Boris Johnson was booked as the main guest for the first two hours, ostensibly to plug his book. In actuality, his job was to be treated as a sort of Trump analogue, to be shouted down and screamed at by the hosts whenever he was silly enough to open his mouth. There were others. Sean Spicer was there at the start, so shriekingly furious that his head perpetually looked like it was going to burst open. Stormy Daniels also turned up, to say three sentences then look on astonished as everyone around her started yelling at each other like a dysfunctional family.
True, as the night wore on, the anger gave way to despair. However, Channel 4’s election coverage was so hostile, so cartoonishly combative, that it probably gave PTSD to anyone who grew up in a loveless marriage. As political punditry, it failed on every level. But as the world’s angriest piece of kabuki theatre? Loved it. Do it every night, please.
However, perhaps the best approach, given the distance and time difference and overall lack of certainty, was the one taken by the Rest is Politics podcast. Holed up out of everyone’s way on YouTube – with a panel including Marina Hyde, Dominic Sandbrook and obligatory aggrieved former Trump insider Anthony Scaramucci – hosts Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart plonked themselves behind a couple of conference tables and blathered on from 8pm to midnight.
And then – this is the genius bit – they all just left, going dark for five whole hours, before eventually putting in another stint. When they did return at 5am, their solid faith in a Harris win had dissolved, and they spent the morning grimly dismantling the echo chamber that allowed them to get it so wrong. There wasn’t much separating it from the other coverage, but at least it encouraged us to get a bit of sleep before reality hit home. Maybe, come 2028, we should all do it this way.