‘Thank you for bringing back the joy’. So effused Tim Walz to Kamala Harris whose new-found position as Democratic nominee for the US presidency has turned the race for the White House upside down.
You might expect Walz, Harris’s pick for vice president, to say nice things to his boss. But in terms of crowd numbers, their enthusiasm and the polls, Harris – the dancing, laughing, Happy Warrior – really has made a striking impact on the American public, much to Donald Trump’s consternation.
Starmer finds it hard to communicate anything more uplifting than stolid competence
The contrast to when Joe Biden was the Democrats’ presumptive candidate is remarkable. Of course, there were concerns about Biden’s age. But that wasn’t the party’s main problem: it was that, as Robert Reich put it, ‘so many Americans believe the economy is bad when in fact it’s damn good’.
The Biden administration’s massive investment in infrastructure and green technologies has paid off across almost all metrics, most notably producing 15 million more jobs. Yet, encouraged by Trump’s wild claims about impending economic disaster and a nation in crisis, most Americans were pessimistic about the future and intended to vote Republican. With Biden as their figurehead, Democrats were glum and defensive but now, partly thanks to Walz himself, they are on the front foot, mocking Trump and his running mate JD Vance as ‘weird and creepy’. The real state of the US economy has however not altered: what a difference ‘joy’ can make.
Which brings us to the new Labour government: where is the joy there?
Despite its huge Commons majority, Labour was elected on the thinnest of electoral margins. And while Keir Starmer promised ‘change’, most voters were unclear what that meant, being happy to kick out the Conservatives, just as Americans turned to Biden in 2020 to be rid of Trump.
Like Biden, Starmer promised to be a leader who would move the country on from the craziness of the previous regime and back to normality. Reform’s four million votes at the election and the recent riots suggest that might be easier said than done. Even so, again like Biden, Starmer hopes to kick-start an ailing economy by investing in dynamic industries. He is especially intent on making Britain a clean energy superpower – although with significantly less capital than that mobilised by the US president.
Whether Labour achieves its primary aim of securing the ‘highest sustained growth in the G7’ by the time of the next election is to be decided. But as the Biden presidency suggests, something more than material progress is needed to secure re-election. Certainly, Starmer’s opponents on the populist right will, whatever the real state of affairs, likely regurgitate powerful Trumpian tropes of a country in decline and under siege from waves of immigrants. Where is the joy that might offset such attacks?
Just now it is hard to find. Labour presents a dour face to the public while Starmer finds it hard to communicate anything more uplifting than stolid competence. During the election campaign, Labour argued it had to secure the economic foundations as the basis for a ‘decade of national renewal’ organised around its five ‘missions’. This might be worthy and necessary; but in making its case the party talked the language of technocrats and policy geeks – not of ordinary voters.
This alienating and elitist rhetoric has been only reinforced by the kind of gloomy ‘doomsterism’ once mocked by Boris Johnson. Rachel Reeves’ August statement which laid the ground for the autumn Budget was groaning with warnings about ‘difficult decisions’ and of a yawning ‘black hole’ that needed filling, partly by stopping pensioners’ automatic winter fuel payments. Killing off the old folk at Christmas for lack of warmth is nobody’s idea of comfort and joy, but it seems Britons are being prepared for a long and grinding slog towards a hoped-for prosperity.
Labour ministers would argue that this dreariness is due to the Conservative legacy. But the roots of Starmer’s miserable road to socialism go much deeper and can be found in Clement Attlee’s 1945 government. If they transformed Britain, Attlee and colleagues were also bleakly utilitarian – and only lasted six years in office. The government helped the economy transition from war- to peace-time production but purposely limited individual consumption through rationing to shift resources to revenue-earning export industries.
All too late, Labour sponsored a Festival of Britain to cheer up the public albeit with the kind of enforced frivolity associated with trendy vicars at parish discos. This neglect of joy allowed the Conservatives to exploit popular frustrations by promising happier times and so slip back into power in 1951.
Throughout its history, Labour has believed that plans and policies were enough. Too few of its adherents recognised the power of something as irrational as emotions like joy and so the need to appeal to them. In contrast, it has been the Conservatives who have (until recently at least) exploited emotions with alacrity and great success. Kamala Harris might be an accidental candidate but even if at the last she fails to laugh all the way to the White House, Labour needs to learn how to inject some joy into its government – or by the time of the next election Starmer could be crying.
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