Seeing someone trapped between a rock and a hard place is strangely uplifting

Friends in New York with non-American accents are careful not to go canvassing in swing states (or anywhere else).

- Emma Brockes

Monday

Stuffing envelopes is one thing. But the assumption among those in the US with non-American backgrounds is that, to a person in Pennsylvania or Arizona, the only thing more annoying than having a canvasser at your door, is having a canvasser with a British, Australian or Canadian accent at your door, telling you who they think you should vote for.

Like British gap year students bothering other parts of the world with offers to dig unwanted wells and teach English to people who already know it, political tourists encouraged by the Labour party have been showing up in swing states to volunteer on behalf of the Democrats - an entirely pointless action that, this week, was dignified by Donald Trump when he filed a legal complaint with the US election authorities crying foreign interference.

The volunteer numbers are negligible, the Democrats almost certainly don't want them, and I suspect those Brits currently on holiday in the US to "help out" are powered less by a sense of public duty than a self-aggrandising desire to Insta their involvement.

All of which might have been avoided had the volunteers in question remembered life's top three rules of thumb: don't do impressions of other races; avoid the phrase "in the field" unless you actually work for the CIA; and don't offer to help in elections where you don't have the vote.

Tuesday