After a spectacularly chaotic start for Congress, more discord looms

Having a prolonged fight over a prenuptial agreement on the eve of a wedding hardly bodes well. It may not thwart the ceremony altogether but it certainly increases the chances that the union will be nasty, brutish and short. Such is the lot of Kevin McCarthy, the newly minted Republican speaker of the House, who had to endure four days of agonising negotiations with members of the Freedom Caucus, a hardline contingent of his own party, before he could obtain power. Rather than pedestrian haggling over alimony or unseemly furniture, however, Mr McCarthy had to trade away a considerable amount of his own power and pre-commit to aggressive fiscal hawkishness.