Dear John,
This week, the Democratic National Convention in Chicago has shown off the party’s new united front. They’ve bridged long-standing factional divides and stood strong against the far-right. Perhaps their hope and optimism can serve as a lesson to Keir Starmer.
The Democrats appeared this week as a unified coalition of interests, with the party’s left and right wings united around decency, human rights, and democracy. Biden’s resignation has fundamentally changed the party’s energy.
Senator Bernie Sanders, once a fringe figure in the party, took the stage and railed against money in politics, attacking the “special interests” that buy out American elections – much as they do here. His ‘money in politics’ agenda is now part of the official party platform, in addition to a myriad of other provisions designed to protect Americans’ voting rights (which the Republicans routinely threaten to take away).
As one political strategist put it: “I’ve been doing this a long time, decades, and I don’t think the party has been this joyous, happy, confident, united in any of the years since.”
The lesson for Starmer is that democracy – and the Western liberal values of fairness, the rule of law, and accountability that underpin it – can be a uniting force against the rising far-right. Starmer has spent plenty of time focusing on his party’s divisions, but not much at all on what can bring them together.
As in the States, the far-right is a minority in this country. Democrats show that a bold vision for a fairer future can bring the sensible-minded among us together.
Starmer has a similar opportunity to push forward a vision for a more democratic, more hopeful, and fairer Britain. He can commit to building a political system that works for everyone and not just corporations and oligarchs, a fair press environment that protects our right to free speech but also our right to make informed democratic decisions, and an electoral system that truly represents the will of the people.
The Democrats are willing to take a political risk in order to invest in the future of their country, to pry it away from the would-be autocrats that think they own it. Starmer could do the same.
