Leader comment: Divisions get wider in US election

Hillary Clinton is caught up in a scandal that has given her rival Donald Trump a boost ahead of the US Presidential election. Picture: Getty.

Bizarrely it was sparked by an FBI investigation in to allegations that a former congressman sent sexually explicit texts to a minor. The former congressman, Anthony Weiner, has form. He has already lost his political career and his marriage over sexting. That marriage was to Huma Abedin, a key and very close aide to Clinton. Apparently hundreds of thousands of e-mails from her have been discovered on her husband’s laptop, and the FBI are investigating whether some of these might have information from Clinton, and suddenly the whole row over Clinton’s use of insecure e-mail servers for government information is back in play. And the director of the FBI James Comey has broken with policy, and possibly the law, by revealing this new twist just days before the presidential election, saying he thought it important to put before the people of America before the election. And he used to be a Republican.

If this had been suggested as a plot line in a West Wing script it would have been dismissed for being too fanciful.

The harm this ugly election has caused the reputation of the US is unquantifiable. But if this is the final twist that sends the presidency Trump’s way – because the gap in the polls has closed - we could all suffer.

What is clear, given the various threats of legal action now hanging over the campaign, is that even after the result is known, the US will be a bitterly divided country.