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On wokeness, patriotism and change, Kamala Harris’s defeat has lessons for Starmer | Deborah Mattinson and Claire Ainsley
Given how events unfolded, it was never going to be easy for Kamala Harris. Many Democrats are convinced her campaign saved the party from an even worse result. To be fair, it achieved some real highs: she won the debate. But she never won the argument, at least not with the voters who mattered most.The US election triggered a scary deja vu moment for those of us who had watched the 2019 UK general election from behind our sofas, hands over our eyes. The Democrats lost votes with almost everyone, almost everywhere, but, like Labour in the “red wall”, most dramatically with traditional heartland voters: working-class, low-paid, non-graduates. And, like Labour back in 2019, that lost connection with core voters had not happened overnight.Working with the DC-based Progressive Policy Institute, we conducted post-election polling and focus groups with past Democrat voters who voted for Trump on 5 November. The work laid bare an anxious nation desperate for change. Be in no doubt, this was a change election: any candidate failing to offer the change the electorate craved had become a risky choice. Asking how voters felt about the results on 6 November, “relieved” was the word we heard most often.Overwhelmingly, change focused on two issues: inflation and immigration. Trump enjoyed a clear lead on both. Sure, Harris had some popular policies (anti price-gouging, tax cuts, help for first-time buyers and small businesses), but these seemed sidelined in an overcrowded campaign, with voters concluding that she was not on their side and was too focused on “woke” issues.Among working-class voters, 53% agreed the Dems had gone “too far in pushing a woke ideology”. They’ve “gone in a weird direction”, said one, “lost touch with our priorities”, said another. Worse still was the sense that any voter who disagreed with them was “a bad person”.American liberals were out of step with these voters’ views – most importantly, on loving their country. As many as 66% of Americans say theirs is the greatest country in the world, rising to 71% of working-class voters. Liberals were the only group who disagreed. What this patriotism means matters. Voters expressed it in terms of putting US interests ahead of others – it also meant recognising that change is needed and being prepared to act. As one voter put it: “If you’re not championing change, you’re not patriotic.”Hungry for that change, voters yearned for a shake-up in the way that both government and the economy operates. Just 2% said the system needed no change, while 70% believed the country was heading in the wrong direction. The Democrats did not seem to hear this – some even interpreted Harris’ pledge to “protect democracy” as “protecting the status quo”. By contrast, Trump’s appetite for disruption, coupled with his contempt for Capitol Hill sacred cows, seemed to promise change that for once might actually deliver for working class voters.Are there things the Harris campaign could have done differently? Of course. Joyful celebrities seemed tin-eared to an electorate feeling worried, pessimistic, even scared. But what should really trouble the Democrats now is the sense that the party – not just the candidate or the campaign – has, since 2020, parted company with the voters that its electoral success depended on: millions of Americans who work hard, pay their taxes, do the right thing and now feel they are not getting a fair deal. The Democrats can only win by putting those “hero voters” back at the centre of their politics. The same was true for Labour in 2024 and is true for centre-left parties elsewhere. That requires a course correction which needs to start now.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAs Democrats absorb the result, without an immediate leadership contest to provide direction, local leaders must be prepared to step up, flex their muscles and challenge Trump. Change demands strong leadership – all the more so when voters feel vulnerable. Polling gave Trump a 28% lead on strength. Described as a “powerhouse”, he was likened to “neat whisky – gives it to you straight” while Harris was a “watered down cocktail”. Imagined as a car, he was a “sturdy dump truck owning the road, not to be argued with” while she was a “flimsy Kia”. The grit that took a mixed race woman tantalisingly close to the top job in world politics was just not evident to voters. Having absolute clarity of conviction is a must for tomorrow’s aspiring candidates – and showcasing that must start today.This is eerily familiar ground to those of us who worked hard to distance Labour from what led to catastrophic loss in 2019. It remains to be seen if the Democrats embrace the change their party needs as courageously as Keir Starmer did over the past four years.But there is food for thought for the new Labour administration, too. Labour must continue to channel its powerful change message in government, reflecting the anti-establishment mood that now exists both sides of the Atlantic. It must be prepared – enthusiastic even – about disrupting rather than defending old, tired institutions. It needs a strong overarching narrative and a plan to reform government and the economy so it can truly deliver back to the hero voters that delivered its electoral success in July. That work started last week with the launch of Starmer’s Plan for Change with its powerful emphasis on working people being better off, but there remains much to do.Deborah Mattinson is Keir Starmer’s former director of strategy. Claire Ainsley was Labour’s executive director of policy from 2020-2022 More
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A pardon that proves power trumps all | Brief letters
There are plenty of people in the US justice system who suffer miscarriages of justice, who cannot afford good lawyers and who receive unnecessarily harsh sentences. By pardoning his son (Report, 2 December), Joe Biden has sent a message to the American people – and the world – that people close to those in power can get a better deal. This undermines the entire justice system and is an utter disgrace.Angela WrightLondon In your article (Four of UK’s oldest nuclear plants to run for even longer as Hinkley Point delayed, 4 December), we are told by Ed Miliband that these extensions are “a major win for our energy independence”. No, Ed – they are a major win for EDF, a French company on whom, this article asserts, we are 100% dependent for our nuclear energy.Rosemary MiddletonMiddle Taphouse, Cornwall There is an internet meme that sums up Mary Ann Sieghart’s article (Why do some men behave badly? I think I have the answer, 6 December) in 10 words, advising women and girls to: “Carry yourself with the confidence of a mediocre white man.” One of my younger feminist colleagues has even cross-stiched this great advice.Prof Rachel FysonUniversity of Nottingham You report (3 December) that the leader of Merthyr Tydfil county borough council says his team, officers at the council and external agencies will “move heaven and earth to ensure everything is put back into place” following the emergence of a sinkhole. Earth, yes, but is it really necessary to move heaven?Richard FosterThatcham, Berkshire If the government is allowing the British Museum freedom to decide on the fate of the Parthenon marbles (Report, 2 December) then the Greek authorities had better keep an eye on eBay.John Rushton Bridge of Weir, Renfrewshire More
- in US Politics
Farmer styles need an illustrative update | Brief letters
The illustration published with John Harris’s column (1 December) showed a “typical” farmer hoping for a break in the (economic) clouds. Did he have to be from 1960s central casting? Flat cap, neckerchief, green wellies and chewing on straw? Leaning on a spade in an obviously ploughed field? Surely the Guardian doesn’t share the government’s archaic view of farmers.Ian StewartBrackley, Northamptonshire Simon Jenkins lauds that “thing of wonder”, the US constitution, which has “held the union together … for two and a half centuries” (Biden pardons his son, Trump will absolve his criminal allies. America shouldn’t stand for this, 2 December). Has the small matter of the civil war – southern secession, four years of armed conflict, over 600,000 dead and a divisive legacy – slipped his mind?Alan KnightEmeritus professor of history, Oxford University In his confession (‘Phantom gnome snatcher’ of Formby admits prank almost 50 years on, 26 November), the perpetrator said “I hope the statutes of limitations have passed on this one”. Did he mean statues?Joanna RimmerNewcastle upon Tyne Surely we need a “Middle-class woman of a certain age” mug from the Guardian, to sit proudly alongside a “Tofu-eating wokerati” one (As a middle-class woman of a certain age, all I can say is: ‘Thank you, Gregg Wallace’, 2 December)?Gabe CrispShoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex Was Gregg Wallace not “in a good headspace” when making his Instagram comments (Report, 2 December) because he couldn’t find one large enough to accommodate his ego?Paul McGilchrist Cromer, Norfolk More
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Can we keep the Elon Musks of the world out of British politics? Only if we act now | Oliver Bullough
It is an inevitable consequence of the inequality inherent to the “special relationship” that, as soon as someone wins the election in the US, the British government has to swallow its objections to anything they do. Donald Trump may have been “a woman-hating, neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath” six years ago, but it’s 2024 now and the once and future president has become “a very gracious host” with a soft spot for the royal family. Tech billionaire Elon Musk might compare Keir Starmer’s Britain to Stalin’s Russia but, as long as he’s Trump’s new best friend, “he’s far too important to ignore”.This kind of toadying must be as embarrassing for the politicians doing it as it is for those of us watching it, but it is at least understandable. Being friends with the US is not just the foundation of our national security policy, it’s pretty much the whole thing.What is not understandable is successive governments’ failure to learn from the US experience, and to act to prevent our own democracy from being drowned in dark money. British politicians will no doubt say that overhauling regulations around political donations isn’t a priority, that they’re focused on delivering policies that will improve ordinary people’s lives instead.But reports now suggest Musk is considering giving $100m to Reform UK as what has been described as a “f*** you Starmer payment” that would in effect install Nigel Farage as leader of the opposition. The Guardian reported on Monday that Labour might consider closing some of the loopholes that make such a wild suggestion possible – but only in the second half of this parliament, which can only mean the government has failed to understand how urgent this is.For any US billionaire, let alone the richest man in the world, spending on British politics would be like the owner of a Premier League club deciding to invest at the bottom end of the football pyramid: he could buy not only an awful lot of players, but in short order he’d probably own the whole competition.Total spending on the US presidential and congressional elections this year topped $15bn. In Pennsylvania alone, the two main parties spent almost $600m on advertising, so Musk’s $100m wouldn’t make much difference. In Britain, on the other hand, it would be transformational. The Electoral Commission is yet to publish its report on 2024’s general election, but it is unlikely that any of our parties spent much more than that – on central costs, candidate costs and staff costs – in the whole country over the whole year.A pressing need, therefore, is to limit how much political parties can spend. We do already have restrictions, which were introduced after the 1990s “cash for questions” scandal. But, under Boris Johnson, the Tories increased the limits by almost half to a combined total of about £75.9m on the central party and its candidates. The increase was transparently intended to help the Conservative party since, in the 2019 election, no other party came close to raising enough money to reach the previous threshold.The government must reduce the limit back to its old level. As with a football league, healthy competition and financial propriety suffer when one or two participants can vastly outspend the others, and the stakes are far higher in democracy than they are in sport.If politicians are constantly battling to raise more money than each other, then they will be focused on raising funds for themselves rather than on solving the problems of everyone else. They will also, inevitably, be tempted to offer their donors concessions in exchange for that money. It is in the interests of everyone – apart, of course, from the big donors – to stop that from happening.We also need to reduce the amount that any individual can give. If one man can give £5m to a political party, it inevitably undermines trust. Wealthy people may be different, but few ordinary voters would give away that kind of cash without expecting something in return. In an excellent analysis of the past two decades of political giving published this week, Transparency International suggests a yearly donation cap to any one party of £10,000, while the Labour-aligned thinktank the Institute for Public Policy Research apparently intends to recommend a higher limit ofAlthough these changes might stop Musk from throwing his $100m molotov cocktail into the House of Commons, it would not stop him – or other ill-intentioned foreign billionaires – from giving money at all, and this is where I think we need to be radical.The US culture of massive electoral spending has deep roots, but the problem was super-sized in 2010 when the supreme court ruled that corporations have the right to free speech, that spending is a form of speech, and therefore that stopping companies from making donations was unconstitutional. The result was a huge increase in donations to groups supposedly independent of political candidates, but in practice closely aligned with them.In the UK, only individuals registered to vote can donate money to political parties, but this restriction (along with others) can be avoided by making donations via a British-registered company, partnership or “unincorporated association”, an obscure kind of structure that can allow you to disguise who you are.Many observers have proposed complicated arrangements to plug these loopholes, but rich people have lawyers to circumvent complicated arrangements, so I would just ban corporate giving altogether. Companies are not people. They can’t vote, and I see no reason why they should be able to fund political campaigns either. Our democracy belongs to the voters, to no one else, and we need to keep it that way.The final step to plutocrat-proof our political system would be to re-empower the Electoral Commission, which was defanged – again, by Boris Johnson – in 2022. It needs to have its independence from government restored, and to be able to impose the kind of fines that would make even a US billionaire think before seeking to undermine the integrity of our elections. We also need to toughen the law to impose serious criminal penalties for anyone who breaks the law anyway.Democracy is in retreat everywhere, and we cannot be complacent that Britain’s version will survive today’s challenges just because it has in the past. But if we use Trump’s election as the impetus to finally build defences for our political system against dark money and its owners, then at least some good will have come out of it.
Oliver Bullough is the author of Butler to the World: How Britain Became the Servant of Tycoons, Tax Dodgers, Kleptocrats and Criminals, and Moneyland: Why Thieves and Crooks Now Rule the World and How to Take It Back More
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Trump picks Republican mega-donor Warren Stephens as ambassador to UK
Donald Trump announced on Monday he has picked investment banker and Republican mega-donor Warren Stephens to serve as ambassador to the UK.“Warren has always dreamed of serving the United States full time,” wrote Trump in a social media post. “I am thrilled that he will now have that opportunity as the top Diplomat, representing the U.S.A. to one of America’s most cherished and beloved Allies.”Stephens is chairman, president and CEO of Stephens Inc, a privately owned financial services firm headquartered in Little Rock, Arkansas, according to the firm’s website.The businessman has donated regularly to conservative causes, although not always in support of Trump. Stephens initially poured money into efforts to oppose Trump’s 2016 run, but he later supported Trump’s 2020 presidential run. In 2023, Stephens donated in support of Asa Hutchinson’s presidential run. In 2024, according to Federal Election Commission filings, he donated at least $2m to Make America Great Again Inc, a pro-Trump Super Pac.In his announcement, Trump called Stephens’s company a “wonderful financial services firm” and praised Stephens for “selflessly giving back to his community as a philanthropist”.A 2017 report by the Guardian revealed that Stephens held a 40% stake in a payday loan company, Integrity Advance, that the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB) took action against in 2015 for allegedly employing predatory lending practices. The revelation was produced through the Paradise Papers reporting project, which investigated multinational companies’ use of tax havens to shelter their money.According to the 2015 CFPB report, Integrity Advance allegedly misled loan recipients by obscuring the total cost of the loans and requiring borrowers to pay back loans through pre-authorized electronic transfers.
Reuters contributed reporting More
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Abandoning Ukraine means ‘infinitely higher’ long-term security costs, MI6 chief says
Abandoning Ukraine would jeopardise British, European and American security and lead to “infinitely higher” costs in the long term, the head of MI6 has warned in a speech that amounted to a plea to Donald Trump to continue supporting Kyiv.Richard Moore, giving a rare speech, said he believed Vladimir Putin “would not stop” at Ukraine if he was allowed to subjugate it in any peace talks involving the incoming US Republican administration.“If Putin is allowed to succeed in reducing Ukraine to a vassal state, he will not stop there. Our security – British, French, European and transatlantic – will be jeopardised,” Moore said during an address given in Paris alongside his French counterpart.The spy chief was touted earlier this week as a possible surprise appointment as the UK’s ambassador to the US, though he is not thought to be pressing for the job. The former Labour minister Peter Mandelson is considered the frontrunner for a critical role at a delicate time in transatlantic relations.Moore has served as the head of MI6 for four years in what is normally considered a five-year job. At the start of his tenure he overlapped with the Trump adviser Richard Grenell, who was the acting director of national intelligence.Trump has complained about the expense of supporting Kyiv and said repeatedly that he wants to end the war, claiming he could do so “within 24 hours”. JD Vance, the vice-president-elect, has suggested freezing the conflict on the current frontlines, and denying Ukraine Nato membership for an extended period.“The cost of supporting Ukraine is well known,” said Moore. “But the cost of not doing so would be infinitely higher. If Putin succeeds, China would weigh the implications, North Korea would be emboldened and Iran would become still more dangerous.”A key British argument to the incoming Trump administration is to try to link the war in Ukraine with US concerns about the rising military might of China, emphasising that the arrival of North Korean troops is bringing authoritarianism from Asia into what was previously a European conflict.Moore emphasised the UK’s history of intelligence cooperation with France in a speech to commemorate the 120th anniversary of the Entente Cordiale, but he was also careful to emphasise that he expected UK-US intelligence cooperation to be unchanged regardless of any political tensions.“For decades the US-UK intelligence alliance has made our societies safer; I worked successfully with the first Trump administration to advance our shared security and look forward to doing so again,” Moore told his audience at the UK embassy, a short walk from the Élysée Palace, the official home of the French president.The spy chief’s public presence in the French capital reflects a wider political rapprochement between the British prime minister and the French president. After Trump’s victory, Keir Starmer met Emmanuel Macron in France where the two discussed Ukraine amid reports that the Republicans would like European soldiers to act as peacekeepers if a ceasefire was agreed.Moore said Putin’s goal was to “challenge western resolve” and that western spy agencies had “recently uncovered a staggeringly reckless campaign of Russian sabotage in Europe” – a reference to a mixture of arson, assassination and kidnap plots, which included a fire at a DHL warehouse in Birmingham caused by an incendiary device hidden in a package sent at the behest of Russia.Moscow has said its demands regarding Ukraine remain unchanged. Earlier this month, the Kremlin said its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was the “direct result” of a Nato policy that aimed at “creating a staging ground against Russia on Ukrainian soil”.Russia continues to demand “demilitarisation and denazification” of Ukraine, and in previous peace negotiations said Kyiv’s military should be reduced to 50,000. It also claims the territory of four eastern and southern Ukrainian provinces, Donetsk, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and Luhansk, of which only the fourth is fully occupied. More
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The final straw in Jacob Rees-Mogg interview | Brief Letters
I thought I would encounter a fair degree of cant and hypocrisy in the interview with Jacob Rees‑Mogg (Jacob Rees-Mogg on abortion, religion and reality TV: ‘I’ve been called worse than a Nazi’, 18 November), but was prepared to put my misgivings aside and read the whole article. I could cope with his twisting of scripture and the fact that he wants the tenets of the Catholic faith to apply to others and not to himself. However, I realised that he has indeed lost touch with reality when I got to the part where he believes that “Boris Johnson … is a truthful man”.Stan BroadwellRedfield, Bristol Jacob Rees-Mogg says: “I was actually called worse than a Nazi.” Was he called “working class”?Dave VergusonLindley, Huddersfield Many recent discoveries of Roman artefacts have been deemed by historians to be sex-related (Gladiator knife handle found in Tyne ‘reflects spread of Roman celebrity culture’, 15 November). I wonder if the Romans were sex-obsessed – or if the historians are.Cherry WestonWolverhampton I was surprised to see that the Met Office had issued a cold weather warning on X (UK weather: Met Office issues woolly jumpers alert as Arctic blast arrives, 17 November). Of all organisations, surely our iconic weather forecaster should be leading the transfer to Bluesky.Stephen ChickenSwinton, Scottish Borders Elon Musk spent $200m to help get Donald Trump elected (Elon Musk’s Super Pac spent $200m to help elect Donald Trump, 12 November). To keep matters fair, shouldn’t all the other president-elect picks go to the highest bidder?Patrick SheehyLondon More
- in US Politics
UK must choose between EU and Trump, trade experts warn
The former head of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) has said that the UK should side with the European Union over trade and economic policies rather than a Donald Trump-led US, as fears grow over a possible global trade war.Pascal Lamy, who was head of the WTO from 2005 to 2013, said it was clear that the UK’s interests lay in staying close to the EU on trade, rather than allying with Trump, not least because it does three times more trade with Europe than the US.His comments came after a key Trump supporter, Stephen Moore, said on Friday that the UK should reject the EU’s “socialist model” if it wanted to have any realistic chance of doing a free trade deal with the US under Trump and, as a result, avoid the 20% tariffs on exports that the president-elect has promised.In an interview with the Observer, Lamy said: “It’s an old question with a new relevance given Brexit and given Trump. In my view the UK is a European country. Its socio- economic model is much closer to the EU social model and not the very hard, brutal version of capitalism of Trump and [Elon] Musk.“We can expect that Trump plus Musk will go even more in this direction. If Trump departs from supporting Ukraine, I have absolutely no doubt that the UK will remain on the European side.“In trade matters, you have to look at the numbers. The trade relationship between the UK and Europe is three times larger than between the UK and US.“This is a very structural inter-dependence which will hardly change unless – which I don’t think is a realistic assumption – the UK will decide to leave the EU norms of standards, to move to the US one. I don’t believe that will happen.“My answer is that the option to unite politically, economically and socially with the US and not with Europe makes absolutely no sense. I believe that, for the UK’s interests and values, the European option remains the dominant one.”Ivan Rogers, the former British ambassador to the EU, said it was clear that after Trump’s re-election the UK would have to choose between the US and EU. “Any free trade agreement that Trump and his team could ever propose to the UK would have to contain major proposals on US access to the UK agricultural market and on veterinary standards. It would not pass Congress without them. If the UK signed on the dotted line, that’s the end of the Starmer proposed veterinary deal with the EU. You can’t have both: you have to choose.”Their remarks come as Keir Starmer heads to Brazil on Sunday for a meeting of the G20 where issues of global security and economic growth are set to dominate. The prime minister is expected to hold talks with President Xi of China, on whose country Trump is proposing slap huge 60% import tariffs. Trade experts expect that the US will demand that the EU and UK follow suit, which both will strongly resist for their own trade reasons.The UK is seeking to increase trade with Beijing while also stepping up efforts to find greater ways to access the EU single market. Last week, the governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, made clear that leaving the EU had “weighed” on the domestic economy.A government source said that developing a trade strategy in the new world order was now the top priority. “It has gone from being very important to being number one in the one tray [following Trump’s re-election].”However, João Vale de Almeida, the former EU ambassador to London, said he believed there was common “territory for agreement” which would involve minimal pragmatic deals between the EU and the UK, and the US and the UK.“We know that Trump will try to divide European member states and divide the UK and EU. This is already what [Nigel] Farage is trying to do. But I think we can walk and chew gum at the same.“Given that a fully fledged trade deal with the US is not possible because agricultural issues will get in the way, and an EU deal is limited by UK red lines, any deals will have to be limited. So there may be a way through.” More
