Keir Starmer’s American Dream – Politics.co.uk

It is important to note that during his recent rise Sir Keir saw the return of the progressive sister parties of the Labor Party as bright guiding stars. And none of their visions or speeches have been as instructive as those of Starmer’s chief centre-left comrade: Joe Biden.

Learned in a recent interview on Radio 4Asked on PM whether he considered Biden a “role model”, Sir Keir replied coyly: “I looked at America, we looked at Germany, we looked at Australia. I placed my teams in these countries based on how they campaigned [and] how they won.” Time magazine followed a similar question: “We’re going to learn a lot internationally as a Labor party,” Starmer said, “so we’re looking intensively at the US and particularly Biden’s path to office because [the Democrats are] our fraternal party.”

Social democratic soul mates?

Sometimes the similarities are subtle. For example, Biden and Starmer both come from humble origins, are seen in their countries as staunchly centrist corrections to years of populism, and face and have faced mounting interrelated crises: a perilous economic legacy, a worsening climate crisis, and a democracy plagued by low trust. (Biden’s campaign’s success in winning back key Blue Wall states in 2020, such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Maine, may also provide clues as to how Sir Keir might reshape his party’s traditional heartlands.)

At other times, Labour’s “intensive” learning process has a more overt quality. In fact, Biden’s messages, both on the campaign trail and in government, have become increasingly important to the grassroots aspects of Starmerism.

Sir Keir’s pledge to “buy, make and sell more in Britain” mirrors Biden’s “Buy American” plan. His “mini-budget” line that Labor would “grow the economy from the bottom up to the middle” debuted at Labor’s annual conference in September, taken verbatim from Biden’s 2021 State of the Union address. Even his “mission-oriented” approach to government (citing economic growth, clean energy, the NHS, crime and opportunity) recalls Biden’s focus on the four crises of the coronavirus pandemic, economic collapse, racial justice and climate change during his early presidency.

Oh, and since the president likes to present himself as Franklin Roosevelt’s heir, Keir Starmer cites Clement Attlee as a source of inspiration. (Biden has certainly come a long way from stealing lines from former Labor leader Neil Kinnock, an accusation that sunk his first presidential campaign in 1987).

Progressive plagiarism

Of course, impersonating a proven winner as an occupant of the White House is far from a new and not necessarily a master strategy. Harold Wilson recalled JFK’s ‘new frontier’ rhetoric when he called for a ‘new Britain’ in the run-up to the 1964 general election; and Tony Blair was accused of “Clintonizing” his party in the 1990s.

In Clinton, Blair found a moderate center-left avatar that he could parade before British voters. Their transatlantic kinship as harbingers of a ‘Third Way’ approach to politics gave New Labour’s project and its thrust against doctrinaire socialism some much-needed legitimacy at home. Starmer will welcome comparisons to Bidenism for the same reason: why wouldn’t the Labor leader want to share a progressive moment with the leader of the free world?

But beyond the pleasant optics, Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign could prove particularly instructive as Labor seeks to fend off attacks from the Conservatives as we approach the general election expected in 2024.

For some time now, the Conservative Party has been accused of importing US-style right-wing politics into the Westminster arena: moral immigration policies, culture wars, even voter ID – what Jacob Rees-Mogg recently suggested was akin to US-style voter suppression. But in 2020, Biden proved that the progressive party can prevail in the face of such an onslaught. He chose to frame the election as a battle for America’s “soul,” openly presenting himself as a vessel for more traditional, less adversarial politics: a necessary cleansing experience after the brutality of Trumpism. He wanted to make the case for the active role of government as a force for good, which Americans could see as a source of optimism rather than submissive antipathy.

Speaking at the TUC conference in Brighton in October, Sir Keir Starmer announced his own “Battle for the soul of our country”. This is a message that Sir Keir has previously been behind, writing in a July 2021 article for A new statesman at the height of the furore over the footballers’ ‘kneeling’ under the headline: ‘The Labor-Tory divide in values ​​is not a culture war. This is a battle for the soul of England.”

But again further Starmerov rising to the glory of England’s “soul” (which was naturally stronger during Boris Johnson’s tenure), the most important aspects of Labour’s transatlantic appropriation come down to politics. After all, in his first three years as president, Biden has combined an encouraging rhetoric of moral recovery with the largest expansion of social security and infrastructure investment in generations. To the surprise of many in his own party, President Biden has shown interest in changing the fundamental tenets of American economic policy.

British school of bidenomics

That the ideological aims of Joe Biden’s Democratic Party are now seeping into Starmer’s Labor Party is evident in Rachel ReevesA recent tour of the United States. Fresh from the refill A new statesmanA ‘list of left-wing power’, the shadow chancellor’s trip was a true progressive pilgrimage.

Ms Reeves traveled to Washington – not for the first time as a former economist at the British Embassy in D.C. – to present Labour’s latest economic blueprint: A new business model for Britain. It was a deliberate attempt to conflate the proposed Labor administration with the Biden administration.

Speaking before the Peterson Institute think tank, Reeves called for the UK to move to a “securanomics” – a clumsy combination of “security” and “economics”. To tell the truth, she advocated “Bidenomics”. In fact, Reeves joined the Biden administration in marking the end of the “old Washington Consensus,” embodying the so-called “modern supply side” approach advocated by Biden’s Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.

At the heart of Yellen’s “securonomics” and “modern supply-side economics” is the conclusion that globalization has not delivered the promised conditions, and therefore Western economies must adapt. In an era of economic turmoil and uncertainty, Reeves and Yellen agreed to restore the center of the nation-state at the center of economic policymaking. “It’s time for us to admit that globalization as we know it is dead,” Reeves told Washington.

The shadow chancellor also outlined how Labor would champion “a more proactive state that follows a modern industrial strategy” in government. She cited investment in digital technology through the CHIPS Act and in clean energy and industry through the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) as areas where the UK should follow the US lead.

Reeves’s emphasis on the IRA and re-industrialisation is repeated throughout A new business model for Britain the pamphlet points out that — amid all the sloganeering — the biggest area in which Labor is seeking to emulate Biden is energy policy.

With $500 billion in investments over ten years, Biden’s IRA aims to help the U.S. transition to a greener economy by developing the clean energy sector and supporting new jobs. Despite the huge constraints, the Biden administration has made a major focus — and early signs are that the approach is working. In the first seven months after the IRA was passed, clean energy companies announced the creation of more than 100,000 new jobs in 31 US states with investments totaling $89.5 billion.

The British government has received a hostile response to Biden’s green plan. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt dismissed Biden’s green energy investment strategy as “some sort of distortionary global subsidy race”, while Energy Security and Zero Profit Minister Grant Shapps called the approach “dangerous”.

But for Starmer, a “green” industrial strategy is central to Labour’s economic agenda. As part of its Green Prosperity Plan, Labor has committed to an additional £28bn of annual investment over a 10-year period and said it will launch a government start-up for green energy investment in GB Energy. It’s an approach that has been unapologetically wrapped in the Union Jack.

Starmer’s American Dream

To be sure, the structures of the American economy and the leverage of the Oval Office are very different from the British one. But for Starmer, his Biden-style green investment plan means acknowledging that triangulation will not be enough in some areas. This vision of social democracy, created in the 2020s, diverges in many areas from Blair’s vision and owes much to the Democrats. It is a left-of-center speech with strong rhetoric, precise and focused in its radicalism.

Thus Sir Keir dreams of Downing Streetand it’s Biden—his star-studded centrist poster boy—who, he reckons, will get him there.