It’s nonsense to say Biden’s victory has parallels for Britain
The rush to set a British narrative about the US result is as nonsensical as it is self-serving
It was always inevitable, as Joe Biden was confirmed 46th President of the United States, that politicians and campaigners in Britain would seek to turn the US election result into a narrative about our own politics. “The mainstream is back,” gushed George Osborne, hoping for a return to the liberal and technocratic policies that made him a much-loved national treasure. “It is now up to the UK public,” declared David Lammy, who sees Donald Trump and Boris Johnson as one and the same, “to make sure both Trumps are consigned to the political scrapheap.”
The rush to set a British narrative about the election is as nonsensical as it is self-serving. There is, after all, little agreement about what the results mean in America itself. Yes, Trump is out and Biden is in. In the end, the presidential election was not especially close, yet it was not the overwhelming repudiation of the Trump presidency many Democrats had wanted.
The Democrats failed to take control of the Senate, and lost ground in the House of Representatives. That Biden outperformed his party, and GOP candidates outperformed their president, suggests that the election was a rejection of the bigotry, bombast and incompetence of the Trump administration, rather than a strong endorsement of a rival party or programme.
Even if there were a clear domestic narrative about the meaning of the election, it is fatuous to claim it would transfer seamlessly to Britain. We are two very different countries, with different histories, cultures, values and interests. Many of the issues that dominate US politics – like gun ownership, abortion rights, and racial antagonism – sound alien to British ears. Many of the arguments – about the constitution, states’ rights and the Supreme Court – do not apply here. And many presidents and their acolytes – from Richard Nixon to Trump himself – seem too corrupt and mendacious to have analogues in our imperfect yet relatively quaint parliamentary model.
The expectation from the narrative-builders that president sand prime ministers must go together hand-inhand does not stand up to scrutiny. Roosevelt and Churchill, Kennedy and Macmillan, and Bush and Blair were all drawn together by security co-operation – the constant of the modern relationship between the two countries – rather than any shared philosophy. Reagan and Thatcher and Clinton and Blair were ideological bedfellows, but their affinity was rare and Clinton left office before the end of Blair’s first term.
And this brings us to an obvious truth, which will remain the truth however hard many hope otherwise. There is no British Donald Trump. Boris Johnson might have blond hair but there the similarities end. While Trump denies climate change, Johnson is a determined environmentalist. Trump is a protectionist, while
Johnson is a free-trader. Trump has attacked multilateralism, while Johnson defends it. Trump is a bigot, a misogynist and joylessly teetotal; Johnson is a bon viveur whose flippant humour causes him trouble, but he is also consistently liberal, supporting causes including gay marriage and an amnesty for illegal immigrants.
It does not help that many American commentators insist on viewing foreign politics through the prism of their own, and this explains some of the disparaging briefings about Johnson from Obama-era officials. But as Senator Chris Coons, a key Biden ally, made clear, this is unlikely to be the view of either President Biden or his Secretary of State.
In Britain, the battle for the election narrative is partly about Brexit, which Remainers want to associate with Trump and define, in advance, as a failure. But it is also connected to the internal politics of the Labour and Tory parties. Some Corbynistas were itching to see Trump prevail, so they could condemn Biden’s moderate politics. Instead, Keir Starmer will tell his party that quiet moderation, relatively few policy commitments and a safe distance from the Left’s culture warriors will be enough to win. And if Labour can motivate their more ideological fans by pretending the PM is just like Trump, so much the better.
Inside the Conservative Party, the remnants of the old Cameron-osborne order want to use the US election to undermine Johnson and his Brexit-supporting government. They will argue that by taking America back into the WTO, re-signing the Paris Agreement on climate change, and scrapping Trump’s most controversial immigration policies, Biden is getting history back on track, and that Tories need to embrace inevitable progress.
But this only proves that Osborne’s assertion that the liberal “mainstream” is returning is misplaced. Johnson needs no persuading about free trade and action on climate change, and is constructing a new immigration system that will likely mean further immigration and a more racially diverse society. The very idea of inevitable progress is flawed. International co-operation on climate change, for example, will be limited without Chinese participation. And China’s rise will change the future trajectory of global trade, with Western countries growing more sceptical about unchecked trade liberalisation with less developed economies.
Moreover, one person’s progress is another’s pain. Increased scepticism about trade has grown as globalisation and technology have eroded midskilled, mid-paid work in countries like Britain and America and, together with domestic changes, contributed to the stagnation of wages. This, and the Left’s rejection of patriotism, mutual obligation and restraint, has driven a realignment in both countries, with working class voters moving to the Conservatives and Republicans.
It should not take lessons from across the Atlantic to know the scale of Johnson’s challenge. Alongside the robust cultural conservatism that won over much of his new electoral coalition, he also needs an economic strategy to recover from the Covid recession and bring prosperity to the communities that helped elect him. That is a mission made much harder by the fiscal consequences of the pandemic, but one that can still be accomplished if the PM ignores the motivated reasoning of his opponents based on events overseas and listens, instead, to the country he governs.