Biden shows how centrists can woo those left behind away from nationalism | thearticle

Joe Biden and Boris Johnson may not be soulmates, but they have one thing in common. They both rode to victory on a wave of disillusionment: voted in by communities that feel the world has

passed them by, abandoned by a political system that has failed them time and again.  The final results in the US are still not in. But it appears that many predominantly white, blue-collar

workers in the rustbelt of America deserted Donald Trump. They discovered after four years of sound and fury that Making America Great Again did not actually mean affordable healthcare,

better housing or steady jobs. The Democrats and liberal democracy have been given a second chance. But Biden will have to deliver to hold on to those gains despite being hamstrung by a

Republican Senate.  In Britain, lifelong Labour voters in the industrial and manufacturing heartlands of the North and Midlands, gutted by years of austerity and the lopsided benefits of

globalisation, voted for Johnson as the man to get Brexit done and deliver a brighter future (not necessarily the same thing).Dominic Cummings, the man who served up Brexit, has gone

clutching a cardboard box like a film prop. That won’t play big in the mill towns. But the communities that defected to the Tories in December have more than Brexit in common. What binds

them is a shared tradition of hardship, interdependence and solidarity. Can the Tories address that? If they can’t they can kiss goodbye to most of those seats, many held by vanishingly thin

majorities, next time round.   The nexus that delivered the wholesale defection of the rust-belt states to Trump in 2016, Nigel Farage, Brexit and the collapse of Labour’s red wall last

December did not come out of thin air. They were the result of relentless economic pain and a profound sense of alienation. Without addressing this central socio-economic reality, we are

condemned to repeated cycles of upheaval and instability.  The second decade of the 21st century has been a revenge of sorts for earlier decades of unfulfilled promise. Globalisation turned

out not to be rational, fair or sustainable, at least in its present form. It has produced a small number of winners but a great many more losers. It amplified inequalities, increased

poverty and deepened political divisions. The pandemic has reopened these wounds.  Economic hardship was compounded by catastrophic foreign policy mistakes. The second Iraq war — the

Bush/Blair war — led to the unravelling of entire regions in the underbelly of Europe. This unleashed a refugee exodus that continues to have profound effects in Europe and to a lesser

extent in the US. The only beneficiary was what Dwight Eisenhower named the military-industrial complex.  Social mobility and life-chances for many remain stubbornly low in both the US and

the UK, cradles of neo-liberalism. In the US, income inequality between individuals is the highest of all G7 nations. The next highest, unsurprisingly, is the UK.  These trends fed into the

defining political movement of our times: nationalism. This is based on the feeling that, in this turmoil, the sensible, safe thing to do is to fall back on what you know in order to

preserve what you’ve got — chiefly your sense of identity. Johnson, Trump, Modi in India, Orban in Hungary have all played this tune to great effect. Despite this, democracy is alive and

well, even if it’s a little down in the mouth. As a form of government, it is a clunky, flawed, one-step-forward-two-steps-back process. The ballot box remains the best chance the citizen

has of getting a leg up. But its ability to deliver has worn thin. Liberal democracy is on probation.  Populism, too, is alive and kicking. Biden and Kamala Harris are the biggest winners in

American electoral history. Biden has a mandate. But the Trump/Pence ticket recorded the second largest popular vote ever. He and his base will see this, not as a collapse, but a foundation

on which to build. They will want to ensure that Republicanism Trump-style (free-market nationalism, red in tooth and claw) lives to fight another day.  In the UK, Boris Johnson’s

overarching ambition is to establish a Tory hegemony in England. Who can blame him? We can no longer take it for granted that the Union will survive. England could, conceivably, be the

Tories last redoubt.  Those 60-odd seats the Tories flipped, albeit by a small margin, are essential to this strategy.  History teaches us that big change rarely comes from the flanks. It

starts in the political centre and works its way outwards: FDR and the New Deal; decolonisation; the Truman doctrine and the Marshall Plan; Clement Attlee and the welfare state; Margaret

Thatcher and the Big Bang. Left or right out of the door, the path to real change lies through the centre. Also, in a mature democracy big changes are only possible with the consent of the

majority. Jeremy Corbyn never understood this. I’m not sure Johnson does either.   Biden will have a tough job without a Senate majority. The President has a relatively free hand in foreign

policy. But he must deliver on the big domestic issues — healthcare, housing, schooling, race, pollution, jobs. Without that he, or his successor, will struggle to get a second term. It

won’t be easy. Robert Reich, Labour Secretary under Bill Clinton, put it neatly: “Biden’s team will have to change tyres as the car is speeding down the highway, and change four tyres at the

same time. The challenge will be huge.”  In Britain, the Tories will need to convince those Labour defectors that they’re more than a one-night stand. That will require a leap of

imagination beyond Brexit, beyond Covid and, for that matter, beyond immigration. The core preoccupation for many in these constituencies is the daily struggle to make ends meet, feed the

children, find a steady job, stay healthy. Brexit is not the gift that will keep on giving. Covid will pass. The first order issues in the seats that flipped, just as in the rustbelt, are

poverty and better life-chances.   Americans, by and large, don’t like the term social justice. It smacks too much of unbridled socialism. Nevertheless, addressing the host of small

challenges that make up the one big, scary challenge — call it social justice or a fair shake — is a monumental task. It requires fresh thinking, ingenuity and genuine empathy. Biden has

these in spades. Judging from the school meals fiasco and other car crashes the Tories, or at least _these _Tories, not so much. The catchphrase “one-nation Tory” is a masterpiece of

ambiguity. Each generation of Tories from Disraeli onwards redefines it. Johnson’s appears to mean big, spending on big projects while holding the union together. In a post-Brexit,

post-Covid, post-Cummings era the new converts need something altogether more mundane and closer to home. This is the opening centrists like Keir Starmer need to worry at.  A MESSAGE FROM

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