Watching the Conservative leadership race from across the sea in America has left me both hopeful and envious. Hopeful that the Tories will select a leader who will steer Britain to a better, stronger place, and exhibit responsible global leadership to offset the void left and damage done by our catastrophe-in chief, Joe Biden. In the same breath I am envious that Britain, unlike America, has this chance to correct its course.
Whether Boris’s fall was deserved has been beaten to death in the British press, so this Yank won’t presume to intrude other than to say he had me at ‘I will deliver Brexit, unite the country and defeat Jeremy Corbyn.’ Biden, on the other hand is going nowhere for now. His deficiencies have cratered America’s fortunes in less than two years and with his unlimited errors, gaffes, and catastrophic miscalculations, he should not be allowed to continue to wreak destruction.
There is no straightforward means of removing such a catastrophic, unpopular and obviously impaired president
As we speak he is on a much-criticised mission to beg the Saudis to increase oil production ahead of the November midterm elections which look to spell Armageddon for his party. True to form, the clueless Biden has managed to insult both Britain and Israel in a speech at an East Jerusalem hospital when he wincingly stated: ‘the background of my family is Irish American. And we have a long history not fundamentally unlike the Palestinian people, with Great Britain and their attitude toward Irish Catholics over the years for 400 years.’ With unfiltered remarks like these his popularity is tanking, and the mutiny among his own party is brewing.
Freddy Gray, whose analysis is often more insightful on US issues than most of my American colleagues, wrote this week on these pages that ‘The Biden show can’t go on.’ Indeed – it really must not. Unlike the British system, however, as just demonstrated with the ousting of Boris, there is no straightforward means of removing such a catastrophic, unpopular and obviously impaired president like Biden, unless high crimes have been committed.
An emasculated America is in dire straits. The man who pledged to unite the country has delivered soaring prices through inflated crippling state entitlements, catastrophic violence on our streets, and significantly greater social division. Against this backdrop, America’s global standing has been eroded by the emboldening of Putin and the alienation of our allies and partners, most alarmingly our greatest friend the UK, over Northern Ireland and Afghanistan (as I have written here and here). This is without diving into the cesspool of personal scandals which have plagued Biden’s tenure, such as burgeoning revelations around his son Hunter Biden’s laptop.
My good friend the historian David Starkey has said that the American Revolution was only half a revolution because it preserved the English structures of politics and society. And thank goodness for this, for it set America on a course that enabled our eventual rise to global leadership. While we preserved some of the best aspects of the old order, however, our modified copy of the English system had some limitations that haunt us today. Britain, for example, is able to select a new leader while we seem condemned to two more years of catastrophe, even though what’s wrong with Biden is manifestly more egregious than what brought Boris down
As Biden is demonstrating, the US system of elected monarchy has more capacity to leave the country on a potentially wrong and unpopular trajectory for at least four years, particularly now that the two-party system is so rigidly entrenched.
The UK system seemingly has more potential for change than with a president with a fixed term of office. In the face of plummeting poll numbers Biden (or those pulling the strings) is resolved to plough ahead, defiantly vowing to run for re-election. With recent poll numbers in the low 30s, Biden’s Democrat colleagues seem to be setting out to head off that prospect. With Harris as the immediate acting replacement were he to be displaced prior to an election, one can understand why there is reluctance to invoke any of the apparent solutions (such as impeachment) that were suggested for removing the incumbent when that was Trump.
As an American champion of Britain who knows that the world is safer and more prosperous when our Special Relationship is strong, I am hopeful that the UK will get to choose the right leader now, so that your country will have the chance to emerge from its current strife in a much better and stronger position. And I hope that ultimately it will achieve new heights with its reclaimed independence. Sadly, America must wait for this same opportunity until Biden’s term expires.
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