Evening Standard View: A good night for Kamala Harris

LAST NIGHT was good for Kamala Harris. She won the presidential debate against Donald Trump on most people’s estimation by the simple expedient of goading him, and inevitably he rose to the bait. It was not a good spectacle for his supporters; he seemed blustering, off the point, occasionally downright eccentric. It was fair enough for him to focus on the issue of illegal immigration, the area where Harris had responsibility as vice-president, but he made the point by insisting that illegal immigrants were eating American pets, not a good idea. And he left what should have been his best point until the very last: if Harris was so anxious to change things with exciting new policies, how come she hadn’t done any of this during the three and a half years she was vice-president?

For her part, Harris presented herself as the candidate of the moderate middle ground, leaving her opponent to seem “extreme”. Neither candidate showed any inclination to answer the questions put to them; neither displayed the eloquence that characterised Bill Clinton or Barack Obama, or the good-natured humour of Ronald Reagan; but it was at least better than the appalling spectacle of the first, Biden-Trump debate.

Harris can congratulate herself that her most visible appearance before the electorate has shown her to be a plausible candidate for the presidency. And best of all, she now has the support of Taylor Swift, who signed off her endorsement as “childless cat lady”. Things are going Kamala Harris’s way.

THE Renters’ Rights Bill, which the Government introduces today, promises to end no-fault evictions and impose Decent Homes Standards to the private rental sector. That includes the requirement to remove black mould, which Labour’s Jas Athwal may like to bear in mind when renting property. The imposition of high environmental standards on the rental sector, including old houses, may well follow later.

All this is well-intentioned. But the amount of rental stock is diminishing — by as much as 40 per cent in London since the pandemic — and we need to increase supply, not reduce it. Landlords argue that increasing regulations and the difficulties in evicting tenants make renting an unattractive proposition. This Bill may well aggravate that real problem.

THE Van Gogh exhibition at the National Gallery, to which this paper has given five stars, is a marvellous collection of the artist’s late works, with an extraordinary number of important loans. The gallery marks its 200th anniversary this year; we are so very lucky to have it.