‘It’s time to move on’: have the US midterms finally loosened Trump’s grip on the Republican party?

After the party came up short in another election, Ron DeSantis may be poised to become its new leader

Sitting at the head table in a white and gold ballroom, beneath glistening chandeliers and an ornately corniced ceiling, Donald Trump looked sullen as midterm election results flashed up on a giant TV screen.

Across Florida, 200 miles from his opulent Mar-a-Lago estate, the mood was quite different. In Tampa, Governor Ron DeSantis was celebrating his landslide re-election by repurposing lines from Winston Churchill.