Writing in the Scotsman as the G7 summit takes place in St Ives, Christine Jardine breathes a sigh of relief that we have a grown-up in the White House again and looks at how Joe Biden has been a good friend to the UK. Sometimes, she says, your best friends tell you the truth.
She compared this summit to the Atlantic Charter, Churchill and Roosevelt’s vision for the post war world:
Eighty years later, Biden referenced that moment as he cast the other leaders in his shadow to declare that the United States will donate half a billion dozes of Pfizer vaccines to 92 low and middle income countries.
“America will be the arsenal of vaccines in our fight against COVID-19, just as America was the arsenal of democracy during World War Two”, he promised.
This was the statement of intent that the world needed.
A commitment from a US President to those who had begun to doubt his country’s engagement with foreign affairs. Leadership.
The UK and others have made similar vaccine commitments but this was America’s moment to step forward and begin to lay the foundations of a post-Covid international order.
Christine also sees hope in the fact that we now have Joe Biden in power after four years of someone who inspired contempt, protests and blimps.
America got rid of Trump, and maybe we can get rid of our equivalent:
Three years ago, every utterance of the then President brought fresh waves of disillusionment bordering on despair.
Everything we understood about our relationship with the US, our desire to protect the planet from climate change and keep the international order stable, seemed thrown into question by a politician who was from a different mould.
But time and patience are democracy’s greatest allies.
They have worked in our favour again by allowing a much more reassuring replacement to be chosen.
Those who fear that one government, one Prime Minister of whom we do not all approve, may lead to the break up of our country should be more confident this week.
Time and democracy has worked for America and given the world a new champion.
You can read the whole article here.
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6 Comments
I suspect that any celebration about Trump being out of power is going to prove to be short-lived. Biden is not managing to deliver on his bold agenda and is likely to lose both Houses of Congress in 17 months time. The final 2 years of his presidency will therefore prove to be one of greater impotence and further lack of delivery. I doubt Trump will stand again in 2024 but whoever Trump endorses will emerge as the Republican candidate and, in all likelihood, the next President.
Brad Burrows:
Is that an informed judgement or an expression of resigned pessimism?
Experience of LDs since 2010 has shown that resigned pessimism is usually the best informed judgement ;-(
@Martin
Both, unfortunately. I have taught US politics for 30 years and feel the signs suggest the Republicans will make gains in 2022 both on account of a Conservative backlash against the direction Biden is trying to push together with an element of disappointment among Democrat voters with the lack of progress on delivering their priorities. The only ‘hope’ for Democrats, I believe, will be if the Supreme Court gut Roe v Wade this coming year and allow Republican states to massively restrict abortion rights – that would likely motivate Democrats to vote in record numbers.
There are more signs of Republican problems than gains at the moment. The Trump appeal and ‘stolen’ election narrative may well appeal to an uncomfortably sizeable sector, but are also massive turn off factors.
That said, I sympathise with pessimistic resignation over the last decade. In a sense the US election was ‘stolen’ from Trump; it was stolen by CoViD and how Trump responded to it. Biden’s win was uncomfortably ‘a damned close run thing’; but for CoViD pessimism would again have been validated.
Look at the direction of the world. Biden won by 5-6 million votes ( Clinton beat Trump by 3m ) and is enacting a massive programme of Greening and good works.
As well as USA, Liberals run France, Canada, Netherlands, S.Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Belgium, Luxembourg, Taiwan and arguably Germany, soon likely to be co-run by Greens. Liberal minded Socialists run most of Scandinavia, NZ and Portugal.
In the recent EU Elections, Liberals made the most gains followed by Greens, with nasty nationalists in retreat everywhere except Italy. Of course the BBC focussed on the nationalists in Italy, the one country the did well in.
Once America sees the welfare programmes, the infrastructure built, the Greening and the new quality jobs coming they will like it as much as their Covid cheques.
The rest of the world will look at USA and want some of that. The Reagan/Thatcher neoliberal era is now coming to an end and the present UK government and Russia will be left in the cold, with the UK continuing to fall down the GDP and GDP per head leagues.