The baggage carousels at O’Hare airport for flights from the UK this week had some intriguing folk waiting for luggage. The Democratic Party’s farewell to Joe Biden as president and coronation of Kamala Harris as candidate in Chicago has attracted key Labour figures observing the transition. Jonathan Ashworth, the former shadow frontbencher who fell to the shock defeat of the July election due to a surge of pro-Gaza activism in his Leicester South constituency and now co-runs the Labour Together think tank, arrived with party general secretary David Evans.
Communications boss Matthew Doyle is due to attend Harris’s introductory speech on Thursday and even Morgan McSweeney, the strategist Sir Keir Starmer trusts on thorny issues — like the longer-term remedy for the summer riots — is taking a break from Gradgrind British issues to assess the outlook for the Democrats under a new leader.
The point of this (besides a bit of Stateside political tourism) is to study how parties in comparable democracies get elected a second time. It is one of the reasons Labour has invested heavily in befriending Olaf Scholz, the German leader, who is grimly holding together a coalition government — but also says he intends to run again for the Chancellorship.
The baggage carousels at O’Hare airport for flights from the UK see some intriguing folk this week
But it is US politics which provides the stardust — and the warm-up music in the hall is from The Killers. Ashworth first visited a US election campaign when working for Gordon Brown, as Barack Obama sought the White House keys. The US press mocked “Britain’s Obama complex” — an overly enthusiastic love affair with someone else’s leader, which built on the Blair-Clinton affinity. It would be a stretch to say that the Starmerites standing in the queues for admission to the United Center to hear vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz today and the even hotter ticket of Kamala Harris’s flagship address on Thursday feel the buzz of inspiration that Bill Clinton or Obama inspired.
Conditions now are more difficult for leaders and Harris is still an untested one who does not feel as open to the charms of the transatlantic relationship as incumbents in the early 2000s.
But the fascination, as one of the UK informal delegation puts it, “is with ensuring we get on the right road to getting a second term before events start to intervene”. That also reflects anxiety about the changeable nature of electoral politics and fragility of victory. In 2024, that has been to Starmer’s advantage in an easy defeat of the Tories. But it’s easier to run up the numbers for a win than to guarantee that one lasts, without a clear argument with the electorate. The riots were one example of how fast reality can get in the way of other priorities.
And it is not just embittered Conservatives who point to Labour governing with a big majority on a relatively thin share of the vote. If you have seen seats like Ashworth’s, with a previous majority of more than 20,000, fall in the wake of anger over Gaza or seen high rankers like Wes Streeting in Ilford North scrape by with a cushion of only some 500 votes, Harris this week has to contend with protests of delegates who insist that stopping arms sale to Israel is a condition of their support — the precise ceasefire conditions also vex both centre-Left parties. And Democrats and Labour respectively face next generations far less loyal to Israel and more likely to see the conflict as defining to their own views. Arguments at the heart of domestic politics in the US today are also on the agenda in Europe — primarily how to recreate growth which can satisfy the tendency of voters to move between parties when they feel disappointed or unheard.
US campaigns have a habit of being echoed across the pond and while Britain does not have a Donald Trump in the wings in a way that could change power at Westminster, it has shown the Tories and Labour that the politics of dissatisfaction can eat into previously “safe” support bases. The Starmer nightmare is that a large majority can be quickly eroded as he makes choices which displease sections of the vote and carries the blame for many factors outside the control of prime ministers.
Little wonder then that his allies are looking for momentum which can make power more durable — the electoral equivalent of Super Glue. Democrats have the dark psychology of Trump to motivate their defiance. Labour has the advantage of a shattered opposition, but looks to the US and a changeable Europe — and sees that modern elections are won or lost one at a time. That is an opportunity when you are in opposition. In government it feels like a warning.
