This is an audio transcript of the FT News Briefing podcast episode: ‘Elections across the Atlantic’
Marc Filippino
The last time the US and the UK held general elections this close together was in 1964. That year we saw a Democratic incumbent return to the White House and a Labour government take charge after more than a decade out of power. Could history repeat itself this year?
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This is Swamp Notes, the weekly podcast from the FT News Briefing, where we talk about all of the things happening in the 2024 US presidential election. I’m Marc Filippino, and this week we’re asking: one, could next month’s UK election be a preview of the US election in November? And two, what does 2024 mean for the special relationship going forward? Here with me to discuss is Lucy Fisher. She’s the FT’s Whitehall editor and the host of Political Fix, our UK politics podcast. Hi, Lucy.
Lucy Fisher
Hi, Marc.
Marc Filippino
And in New York we’ve got Derek Brower, the FT’s US political news editor. Hi, Derek. Welcome back.
Derek Brower
Thanks, Marc.
Marc Filippino
All right. So the UK is holding elections in less than three weeks now. And the US election is in November. But if both contests were held tomorrow, according to most polls, Sir Keir Starmer would be British prime minister and Donald Trump would be the American president. Just run me through that scenario. Lucy, Derek. What would that relationship look like?
Lucy Fisher
Well, I think certainly from the UK perspective, Keir Starmer, the Labour leader who looks like he’s headed into Downing Street, has made crystal clear he will work with whoever enters the White House. Now that’s been tricky for him in some ways. Donald Trump is very unpopular with the left flank of his party and progressive voters in the UK. I think one interesting aspect of it, to my mind is that David Lammy, the man who is lined up to be Keir Starmer’s foreign secretary if Labour wins the election, has in the past been incredibly disparaging of Donald Trump. He’s described him as a racist KKK and Nazi sympathiser, and he’s had to do a lot of work in the past year or two to row back from that, try and reset relations with Republicans on the Hill. He spent quite a lot of time in the US in recent months, but it has led to speculation that Keir Starmer might need to reshuffle his Foreign Office team if a Trump administration wouldn’t be willing to work with David Lammy.
Derek Brower
If we’re looking at how Trump behaves with other leaders and other people. We have to remember he’s a very, very transactional politician. And David Lammy may have been mean about Donald Trump in the past. Lots of people have been mean about Donald Trump in the past. There may be a relationship to be had. What I would caution, however, is that the UK election at the moment is not registering at all in the US election terms. It really isn’t a big feature of the US election discourse at the moment, unfortunately.
Marc Filippino
Plus, we’re American, right? We just we don’t we don’t really . . . [laughs]
Derek Brower
Right.
Marc Filippino
We’re so self-centred that we don’t really care what’s happening in the rest of the world, unfortunately. Lucy, if Labour wins as predicted, it would represent a bit of a departure from the trend lines we’ve seen elsewhere in Europe. Centre right and rightwing parties dominated the EU elections last weekend. So I’m wondering if the UK is actually shifting to the left here or if there’s something else going on?
Lucy Fisher
Well, I think in a sense in the UK it’s more antipathy towards the conservatives who’ve been in administration for 14 years. There’s this prevailing attitude that it’s just time for a change. And on top of that, there’s a lot of anger that’s built up around the Boris Johnson administration. And of course, fast forward to 2022. You had Liz Truss and her disastrous mini Budget, which sent the markets into turmoil. So I think there is the sense, the polling seems to suggest that actually people feel more against the Conservatives than filled with a lot of love for Labour and what Keir Starmer is offering. There is this glimmer of the hard right rising in the UK. Nigel Farage, you know, the leader of the Reform UK party, has really shot up in the polls. There’s been one pollster this week that suggested this party has overtaken the Conservatives, which is a really striking moment. I wouldn’t say a Labour victory in the forthcoming UK general election shows it’s really a big swing to the left. I think there’s a feeling the Conservatives have not been competent and it’s time for change.
Marc Filippino
It seems like voters are generally dissatisfied with whoever is in charge right now. Is that right, Derek?
Derek Brower
I think that’s a pretty good way to characterise it, Marc. I mean, the G7 just took place in Italy. I think Lucy’s been attending it. But if you look at the family photos, they call it the leaders who attended. Sunak is, of course, deeply unpopular for all the reasons that Lucy has outlined. Fumio Kishida of Japan, really unpopular. Olaf Scholz in Germany, very unpopular. Justin Trudeau of Canada, very unpopular. Emmanuel Macron, as elections in Europe just showed in his effort to kind of thwart the rise of the right in his country just showed, also very unpopular. The standout person I suppose in that group was Giorgia Meloni, who’s the only real right winger among them. And then you have Joe Biden, who is really struggling at the moment. And I think what all these leaders have in common is that they all led countries where populations are still dealing with high inflation, high energy prices, geopolitical turmoil, and of course, the big issue affecting all of them, immigration, these populist right wingers has seized on the discontent over immigration, over inflation and so on to project much more popular solutions for these problems. And the consequence is that the rather staid politicians you’ve overseen this era in Western democracies are all very unpopular.
Lucy Fisher
Derek, can I jump in and ask you, I’m interested what turnout is likely to be in the US election, and I’m thinking of the UK election. That seems to be quite a high degree of ambivalence about the two choices on offer for prime minister: Keir Starmer or the incumbent Rishi Sunak. And I just wondered the predictions this side of the Atlantic are turnout’s going to be pretty low? People don’t feel much like backing either side. Is that the same in the US?
Derek Brower
I think it really is. And it’s a sad thing, given just how much is at stake in the US in this election, that turnout looks likely to be low. And the reason for that is because the one thing many, many Americans agree on is that they did not want either of these two candidates to be their choice for president. Some people in the US are going to be turned off by Trump’s legal problem. Some people are going to be turned off by Biden’s age and so on. But I suspect, especially when you contrast it with the 2020 election, when there was a very high turnout, by American standards, this one could be rather disappointing.
Marc Filippino
I like the the concept of politics mirroring one another across the globe. We’ve talked so many times about this year being the year of democracy, and that idea of politics mirroring one another is definitely something that we see a lot in the US, in the UK. I think about 2016, you know, Brexit took place just a few months before Donald Trump’s election, kind of acted as a preview in many ways of, you know, the populist rhetoric that was going to become dominant in both countries. Does it seem like our fates are kind of intertwined?
Lucy Fisher
Well in some ways I think it’s true to say there is an element of sort of symbiosis that can be read. And certainly in the UK we see trends seem to sweep across the Atlantic. But I do think Brexit and Trump, there is some overlap in terms of their causes, but also quite a different combination of forces at work. And fundamentally I think that has, you know, as you mentioned, been a swelling of support for Nigel Farage from some quarters of the population. But I don’t think it should be overstated, the support in the UK for that kind of rhetoric around immigration and cultural issues for those policies. The orthodoxy has always been that, you know, it is in the centre ground that parties win in the UK, and I think that’s what we’re going to see in this election, too.
Derek Brower
I wanted to ask you, Lucy, as well, whether the US election at all is registering politically in the UK right now. I mean, Donald Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr, held a fundraiser for his father in London last week. I don’t know if anybody made that into a political opportunity to score political points or anything. Do people care? Is it affecting how people are voting back home?
Lucy Fisher
Well, certainly Nigel Farage, the Reform Party leader who considers himself a great ally, a great friend of Donald Trump, is keen to make a lot of these elections happening in the same year. So he was in attendance at that fundraiser you mentioned. And interestingly, there was a rival Democrat fundraiser also in town this week. So look, there’s a sense that there’s a symbiosis between the UK and the US that is not just political, it’s cultural. And of course, culture is upstream of politics. And, you know, after Hollywood or maybe I should say Netflix now, music, gaming, these trends seem to sweep across the Atlantic and with politics too. I think people in the UK think things tend to happen first in the US and then come to the UK. That’s what we’ve seen with some of the culture around what rightwing critics called wokery. Defenders of it would call sort of social justice movement and the kind of the subsequent culture wars that we’ve seen really raging in the US. They’ve picked up some speed and pace in the UK in recent years. But broadly, Marc, it’s like you said, you know, in the UK we are guilty as being just as self-involved as maybe Americans are about the US.
Derek Brower
I guess in both countries we’re all just waiting to see who Taylor Swift endorses [laughs].
Marc Filippino
Exactly. That’s right. All right. We’re going to take a quick break. And when we come back we’re going to do Exit Poll.
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Marc Filippino
We are back with Exit Poll and normally we do something a little fun, but there was a big headline that just needs to be unpacked. Then that’s how we’re going to spend Exit Poll today. This week, Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, was convicted on federal charges that he illegally purchased a handgun. For Derek, I’m wondering how you think this verdict could impact the race for the White House. And Lucy, how are people on your side of the Atlantic thinking about all the courthouse news on the US presidential campaign trail? Derek, I want to start with you.
Derek Brower
Sure. So far, the polls seem to show that nobody really cares. They don’t care about Donald Trump’s conviction in the hush money trial in New York much. They don’t really care about Hunter Biden’s conviction on federal gun charges in Delaware last week, either. So it’s not, I don’t think, going to affect the election. If anything, I would say that for Biden, my hunch is that this could end up being net positive for him. He looks like an empathetic figure, which is something that I think people have long associated with him because of the personal tragedies and traumas he’s had. For that reason, what the Bidens are going through with Hunter will not be as negative politically as some of the Republicans hope, and may even be a bit positive for Joe Biden.
Marc Filippino
Lucy, how are things coming in on your perch?
Lucy Fisher
Well, really, I think it’s viewed as just the latest plot twist in this blockbuster melodrama going on in the US, first with Donald Trump’s conviction and now with Hunter Biden. And I think, you know, crack cocaine, guns, porn stars, hush money. It makes our own scandals in the UK just seem incredibly parochial.
Marc Filippino
Yeah. You guys held a party during Covid.
Lucy Fisher
Can we just clarify here? It was soft drinks and a cake that stayed in its tin in a way [laughter].
Marc Filippino
That the lack of drama in UK politics, comparatively, is something that I, as an American, crave. Also, how short your elections are, like, definitely jealous of that too.
Lucy Fisher
Yeah, it makes it makes it more fun and a little bit easier in our job, that’s for sure.
Derek Brower
Yeah.
Marc Filippino
I want to thank our guests. Lucy Fisher is the FT’s Whitehall editor and host of the Political Fix podcast. We’ll have a link to that in the show notes. Thanks, Lucy.
Lucy Fisher
Thanks, Marc.
Marc Filippino
And Derek Brower, he’s our US political news editor. Thanks, Derek.
Derek Brower
Thanks, Marc.
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Marc Filippino
This is Swamp Notes, the US politics show from the FT News Briefing. If you want to sign up for the Swamp Notes newsletter, we’ve got a link to that in the show notes. Our show is mixed and produced by Ethan Plotkin. It’s also produced by Lauren Fedor and Sonja Hutson. Special thanks to Pierre Nicholson. I’m your host, Marc Filippino. Our executive producer is Topher Forhecz and Cheryl Brumley is the FT’s global head of audio. Original music by Hannis Brown. Check back next week for more US political analysis from the Financial Times.
