It is often said that when the US sneezes, the UK catches a cold. The progressive patriot in me longs to reject this idiom on the basis that by many measures – universal healthcare, employment rights, and women’s bodily autonomy, to name a few – the UK is streets ahead of our American friends. Yet it’s undeniable that some political trends travel the other way across the Atlantic to us.
Since the Brexit vote in the UK and Trump’s first term as President of the United States, progressive politics has been in retreat, and right-wing populism has found a foothold across Western democracies.
There is a plethora of stories about why we came to where we are. The forces of capitalist globalisation, the 2008 financial crash, and the resulting austerity have all been cited. Some, including our new Prime Minister, trace our woes back decades to the Thatcher years. History tells us that fascism and authoritarianism often follow periods of economic and political instability like the one we are living through now. It seems this time the search for scapegoats for hardship has settled in the main on immigrants. Whatever the reasons, it’s been a dark time for those who believe in equality, diversity, and compassion in our communities.
Green shoots?
Even in the gloom, the optimist in me can see green shoots. As one Tory MP exclaimed at Burnham’s swearing in, Burnham isn’t the messiah. Questions remain over Burnham’s positions on Israel, wealth inequality, and the climate emergency. But he does at least appear to be a man with some kind of mission; a man of some principle; a man of empathy.
Across the Atlantic, things have grown even darker, with Donald Trump’s corruption and fascistic tendencies wreaking havoc on civic life in America. Who knows what further damage he will inflict before his term is finally over?
Yet if you squint a little into the right corners, you might just make out signs of a progressive fightback in the US. The election of Zohran Mamdani as New York’s progressive mayor was the first shot across the bow. Elected on a ticket of rent control, free and fast buses, and funded childcare, Mamdani spoke to struggling New Yorkers with a practical approach to their everyday problems and a sprinkling of much-craved joy.
Since then, prominent campaigning figures like Democratic Senate candidate for Texas James Talarico, incumbent Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff, and Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Dr Abdul-El-Sayed are shaking the establishment gerontocracy that constitutes the current Democratic Party leadership. They join progressive sacred cows like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in shifting the momentum from corporate-sponsored drones like Chuck Schumer. There’s probably a fair bit of internal party squabbling left to do, but the very fact that there’s a conversation at all is an encouraging sign for the Democrats and the working people who feel left behind by their party. And despite the desperate attempts of the right to scare people about the ‘Islamism’ and ‘communism’ these candidates supposedly represent, Trump’s refusal to address the needs of his people might see his fellow Republicans fail spectacularly in this November’s mid-term elections.
On both sides of the Atlantic, there’s a long way to go to win back the voters who have been seduced by right-wing easy answers. But the US’s nose may just have begun to tingle. If Burnham is wise, he’ll do everything he can to try and catch this cold. So, what could he learn from leaders like Mamdani, Talarico, Ossoff and el-Sayed?
Progressive storytelling
It’s not that Keir Starmer did nothing good at all. His steadfast support for Ukraine and level-headed initial response to Trump’s war on Iran gained him international respect. There were signs he was beginning to take online safety more seriously at last, with the social media ban for under-16s, and he strengthened renters’ rights.
What was missing was a coherent set of values, a story about where we’ve been and where we’re going. Post-Brexit, rudderless UK still hankers for a purpose, a sense of our place in the world. Too often, Starmer twisted in the wind, at times seeming to have a shocking lack of moral compass for a former human rights lawyer.
Burnham appears determined to rectify that. His speeches so far have begun to tell a story of how working people have been left behind by four decades of neoliberalism. He rightly traces the line from Thatcher’s car boot sale of public assets to the paucity of public good today. He’s hinted that he gets that labour has been abandoned in favour of the veneration of capital. He needs to go further in building an optimistic vision of the ‘so what?’ of it all and where we go next.
Over in Texas, James Talarico draws a similar line from decades of crony capitalism and civic neglect. Like Jon Ossoff in Georgia, Talarico tells a compelling story of how corruption directly impacts affordability struggles. And Dr El-Sayed of Michigan agrees: “Money out of politics, money in your pocket, and healthcare for all.”
However awful his ultimate legacy of war, for a moment in the late ’90s, Tony Blair’s ‘Cool Britannia’ had the UK feeling good about itself. We had a story of the Beatles, Richard Curtis films, Blur versus Oasis, and damn it, even the Spice Girls. All this without the ugly, algorithmically driven 2020s compulsion to punch down.
The US has one advantage over the UK in this regard. Whether it lives up to it or not, America can pull on its constitution and creed that all its people are created equal. But that doesn’t mean we can’t tell our story another way. Burnham needs somehow to locate that story’s engine.
Money and accountability
In 2010, David Cameron exclaimed – presumably without intentional irony – that lobbying was the next scandal waiting to happen. Over the years since, despite the passing of the Lobbying Act, concern has only grown over the influence of vested interests in our democracy. Nigel Farage’s current difficulties demonstrate how little grip we have on money’s subversion of democratic will. There is not room here to detail all the donations made to our leaders by vested interests, but suffice it to say this activity is not limited to one party nor to one policy area.
When Wes Streeting was health secretary, for example, he took hundreds of thousands of pounds in donations from private health and tech firms, including Palantir. Palantir, founded by ‘tech bro’ Peter Thiel and linked to human rights abuses in Gaza and the US, was awarded a £330mn seven-year data contract with the NHS in 2023.
Reform UK has received £24mn, two-thirds of its total income and counting, from fossil fuel companies. In other news, Reform UK’s climate policy includes scrapping Net Zero and granting more North Sea drilling licenses.
Capital, to misquote Jeff Goldbloom’s Dr Ian Malcolm, finds a way. Anyone foolish enough to still argue this isn’t the trading of democracy will need to explain what these donors think they are buying with their millions if it isn’t favourable policy.
It’s even starker in the US, with PACs and Super PACs donating billions with labyrinthine yet ineffective regulation. Essentially, PACs can donate limited amounts but can coordinate directly with political candidates, while Super PACs cannot coordinate but have no donation limits. And worse, the 2010 Supreme Court Citizens United ruling paved the way for unlimited corporate spending on US politics, with entirely predictable detrimental effects.
Gaza the catalyst
The most powerful PAC is the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) PAC and its associated Super PAC, United Democracy Project. Together, they pour millions of dollars into US politics, on both sides of the aisle. It is reported that AIPAC donated $32mn to Democrat Haley Stevens’s defeated campaign alone as she stood against Abdul El-Sayed in the Michigan primary.
Pro-Palestinian campaigners maintain, quite reasonably, that this influence is behind the US political establishment’s reluctance to recognise the genocide in Gaza. In parallel, Friends of Israel lobbying groups operate within all the main UK political parties, with similar outcomes. Could this be behind the UK’s lack of moral clarity when it comes to Israel’s conduct in Gaza?
Yet, possibly due to Gaza, there is now a shift away from AIPAC on the US left. Democratic voters are increasingly defining rejection of AIPAC money, and recognition of the Gazan genocide, as a qualification for candidates. The 2026 mid-terms are showing the signs, but the 2028 presidential election will likely be an inflection point for AIPAC’s influence and, by association, for corporate money like fossil fuels and big pharma too.
Pushing boundaries
For his part, Burnham has talked about the lack of parliamentary accountability to the people. In particular, he cites the “cover up” culture that led to the decades-long fight for justice for the Hillsborough and Grenfell families. He wants to reform the parliamentary whip system and has expressed support for proportional representation.
Could he be persuaded to go much further, to tackle lobbying and donations for real this time? How about MPs’ second jobs? Their consultancies and the revolving doors in and out of too-weakly regulated industries like water?
If we survive it, Trump’s disregard for international law and the US constitution may yet turn out to be a blessing in deep disguise. At the first opportunity, Democrats can and must take a more radical approach to setting things right. Burnham could take his inspiration from them and shake off the Starmer-era timidity. He could push the boundaries of the possible beyond gentlemen’s agreements made in smoky back rooms and make sure that, finally, the people we elect work for us.
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