What can Britain take from Biden’s victory?

This month’s narrow defeat of the Trump presidency may already have been heralded as a triumph of liberal values over populist forces, yet unfortunately the disputed election created a very different spectacle. The episode many on this side of the Atlantic were hoping for, of a serene path to victory for Joe Biden, did not materialise. 

The Trump “base” held out impressively despite his disastrous rule and its impacts on American society, and, contrary to many predictions, the President’s handling of the pandemic was not the central issue for many crucial voters in deciding their votes. Instead, the “culture war” which has enveloped the United States for a generation weighed heavily upon many minds, as did the supposed financial security which Trump has brought over the last few years. Illusory as they may appear to the international commentariat, it was these concerns that were largely at stake last week when the world watched and waited. 

But it was a different man who prevailed where many could easily have fallen short. For Joe Biden’s campaign offers up a few lessons to what remains of any similar liberal movement in the UK. The Democrats, knowing how secure many Republican votes had become, and increasingly veering away from the moderation of Obama and his former vice-president, desperately needed a centrist. In 2016, it seemed as though the party could have picked anyone else in the country to stand and win — apart from Hillary Clinton. This year, there was really only one person who could beat the President. Biden was a reliable, seemingly affable, albeit increasingly frail, “consensus man”, who provided a vital contrast with Trump’s acrimonious rhetoric and floundering regime. It seemed for a while that the more hard Left voices of Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren would secure the nomination, and therefore banish any hopes of stopping a second term for the incumbent. If Trump had been a burning oven, this response would have been equivalent to burning the house down as a solution. 

Instead, Biden has “turned down the temperature”. The protests and violence seen across the States earlier this year pointed to the highest tensions seen for decades; many would have looked to the top and seen a leader only prolonging the pain through his gruesome pronouncements. Indeed, much of the widespread resentment can be traced back to the hatred of Trump himself; remove him and the anger instantly lessens. Yet if this summer we had been faced with the prospect of a far-Left candidate expostulating at an equally loud volume, then the bitterness of the debate and the cementing of such divisions as now segregate many could only have been worse. Biden was, if anything, a calming influence. 

A similar scenario can be envisaged in Britain. Boris Johnson’s failure to handle the recent crisis prompts many to question his leadership, but they will only be prepared to oust him if the alternative seems any more competent. Jeremy Corbyn, apart from all his numerous moral failings, made unpopularity into an Olympic sport. Keir Starmer is, for one thing, untainted by the legacy of the Corbyn “project”, but possesses a calmness and assurance to which the bombastic Johnson can never lay claim. “He thinks too much,” says Caesar of Cassius: “Such men are dangerous.” Johnson would be wise to take note of this. Starmer faces a long struggle to enjoy any hope of overturning Johnson’s majority, but he could follow Biden’s example to constantly derail the government, if he doesn’t follow the blundering example of his predecessors.

I have before often bemoaned the ineptitude of Britain’s liberal parties in this country for their failure to learn to judge the mood of the public, or to grasp any sense of dominant political reality. Starmer’s recent repentance for the scars of the last five years of his Party show some encouraging signs, but it will take a complete washout of the party’s far-Left for any expectation of electoral respectability. This does not entail simply a revamp in the mould of New Labour and its uncomfortable verge to the Right. Historical examples from America have often provided a good mirror for British leaders. Bill Clinton lurched into Republican territory and some of the basest methods for his wooing programme before the 1992 election. Biden now knows that he is unlikely to face re-election, and his manifesto, vague though it is, thus far seems much more centrist, although the predictions of his caving into the socialist agenda of other Democrats must be exploded if Kamala Harris wants to taste victory in four years’ time. Starmer, who currently presents himself as balancing the concerns of those on either side of him, must eventually cede to one or the other, and the centre is the only place where he can find widespread support for the time being.

Boris Johnson must now be cringing away from previous comparisons with Trump. With the latter on his way out, Johnson’s role as the charlatan charmer comes up against the hard realities of governing through such a year as we have just faced. It must be said that not all of his policies veer too far to the Right, but many more will judge the company he keeps as they decide his fate over the next months and years. He should tear off the immoderate populist labels that have been attached to him, and try to rectify Britain’s current ignoble stature among Europeans and further afield. Modelling himself on Biden may be his only hope. 

Meanwhile, the remaining centrists in Britain can begin to make their voices chime with the populace once again. Many thousands of column inches have been wasted over the last decade in explaining away the rise of populism; it will be down to the ideas and competence of a few to decide the fate of liberalism over the next years. Having retired from the fray for so long, liberalism is slowly unearthing itself to resume leadership of a scarred West, in an attempt to repair the stunning damage done by a populist decade.

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