Starmer’s Brexit Wall, Biden’s Burden

Starmer’s Quandary

Keir Starmer has done a thoroughly good job of bringing Labour back as a serious party of opposition, to one that now looks like mounting a credible challenge to the Conservatives at the next election. Yet, he is hampered on the two biggest issues of the moment. His party loses support every time he’s too critical of the Tories for Covid and Brexit. Voters believe it’s a patriotic duty to row behind the government during the worst pandemic in over a century, despite the UK having the highest global death rate from the illness. Starmer has been careful on his positioning on this. The other area he’s had to be very careful on is Brexit.

The fall of the Red Wall has deeply scarred Labour as it seeks to challenge the iniquities of a post-Brexit Britain. The electorate see the matter as settled for now, and are prepared to give the new dispensation time to bed down. This won’t be forever, but any criticism of real folly, economic loss, and sheer Tory incompetence can come across as churlish and, in the worst case, unpatriotic. Johnson has huge expectations to meet in his ‘leveling up’ commitments, but he has been given a pass for now when it comes to Brexit criticism.

There is very little doubt that Brexit will be economically and socially negative, and in a normal polity, this could be clearly stated. But the resurgence of English Nationalism has left the British political landscape in anything but a normal state. It will take some time for the jingoism of 2016 to be replaced by the realism of the 2020s. The electorate may not notice an immediate shortfall in their pockets, but they will eventually, and who they blame for that will be a harbinger of whether Labour are on the ascendant or remain in second place.

The Labour leadership will come under increasing pressure from Remainers as Covid recedes to tackle Johnson head-on over Brexit. Starmer, a conviction European, knows the risks of getting into a fight at the wrong time. Politics is as much about timing as it is about anything else. Yes, he should hold the line that it was always wrong for the UK to leave the EU. But he needs to be very careful about choosing the right moment to go on the attack. He needs to dance like a butterfly and sting like a bee.

There’s the bigger issue of the end justifying the means. Is it right to keep quiet about a policy that Starmer knows is causing economic damage to his country? Sometimes, the politically right thing to do may not be the ‘right’ thing to do. When the next election comes, possibly in 2024, it will have been 19 years since a Labour Party victory at the polls (for reference, the gap between Harold Wilson’s win and 1997 was 23 years). Starmer already faces a massive challenge next time round. He owes it to himself, his party, and millions in need of a Labour government, not to make things harder.

Biden’s Burden

The sheer weight of responsibility on Joe Biden’s shoulders would represent an overwhelming challenge to most of us. In no particular order, he has to tame Covid, restart the US economy, re-establish the US role in the international order, tackle home-grown terrorism, face a challenge to his legitimacy on a daily basis, ensure he does not overload his personal working commitments as the oldest president ever to assume the office, tackle the American original sin of racial inequality, and win in 2024. In short, a massive agenda, which he has set to work on with gusto. If you think Obama faced enormous difficulties in 2008, which he did, his vice-president says hello from the future, where things are much worse.

The security threat from within is real. There are seditionists in Congress who would not be out of place in the Confederacy. Trump’s malign influence still casts a deep shadow over the GOP and the stability of the USA itself, and the country is dangerously divided, principally made so by the lies of Trump and his supporters. President Biden is a conciliator by nature; very few of the post-Gingrich Republicans know what this means. But he will seen from the Obama terms how little the GOP is prepared to compromise. He will be realistic about the limits of what is achievable with the say-so of his political opponents. Until elected Republican officials stop indulging ludicrous Trumpian conspiracy theories, then there remains a clear and present danger to the security of the Republic.

Biden has already done the state considerable service by halting the slide in to full scale neo-fascism. November’s win allowed much of the world to breathe again and take stock. The years ahead will be difficult, but America is on a vastly better path than a mere three months ago.