“Trump doesn’t invent anything without a reason.”

Some commentators, trying to find a former Labor leader to compare with Sir Keir Starmer, mentioned John Smith, whose term lasted from 1992 until his death. His daughter is not convinced. “There are similarities in that they are both described as safe, almost boring, unexciting and mediocre. I don't know Keir Starmer well enough to know what he's like in his private life, but my dad was a real badass; funny, witty, hilarious. I doubt many people would say that about Keir Starmer.”

Her life off camera is pretty ordinary, she points out. She and her husband have no children. She loves wild swimming and hiking in America's national parks. “And I've been working out a lot more than I used to, so I take some sort of fitness class four or five times a week.”

Perhaps this could be a reaction to the fact that she has reached the same age as her father when he died of a heart attack 30 years ago, but she interrupts that train of thought before I can even articulate it. “I'm in a bar or restaurant at least as often as I am in a fitness class,” she jokes.

The BBC posted Smith to Washington in 2022, replacing Jon Sopel, who promptly moved to LBC with Emily Maitlis, but this is not her first US presidential election. She covered the historic 2008 race that elected Barack Obama to the White House for Channel 4 News.

“I thought I would never cover such an exciting election again. Well, this year has put all that to shame.”

At first there were parallels between Obama and Harris, she says. “There were a few weeks around the Democratic Convention in Chicago [in August when Harris was chosen as the party’s presidential candidate] But when it looked like it was going to be 2008 again with Kamala Harris's joyful, optimistic campaign, that went away relatively quickly.”

She reports that it has been replaced by fear. “Each candidate warns direly about the dangers of electing the other. Kamala Harris tells women they will lose their reproductive rights while Trump is equally apocalyptic that if they vote for her America will no longer have a country and before you know it your kids will be coming home from school with sex
change.”

He didn't quite say that, did he? “I may be exaggerating, but that's what his campaign wants people to believe.” Both sides – and she's careful to highlight both sides' shortcomings – are trying so hard to create narratives in which facts are lost.

“During the only debate the two had together, Trump said that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, ate cats and dogs. I was aware that there was some story to it, stemming from an erroneous Facebook post, but the fact that he was able to state it as fact was pretty mind-boggling.”

Yet there is logic in his lies. “He doesn’t make this stuff up for no reason. He led a campaign against border insecurity in 2016. Now he wants to bring the immigration issue to every community in every state, no matter how far north of that border you are.”

With economics, immigration and abortion key issues in the race for the White House, Smith says Harris has also been guilty of exaggeration in her rhetoric. “When she talked about abortion rights, she said that Donald Trump wants to monitor all women's pregnancies. There are some states where they are trying to introduce legislation, but he hasn't specifically said he wants to do it nationwide.”