As America gets ready to celebrate the 250th anniversary of our independence from Britain, U.S. Democrats can ironically learn a lot from UK politics these days. New British political star Andy Burnham recently defeated a MAGA-type “Reform” Party candidate in a special parliamentary election, paving the way for Burnham to become the UK’s next Prime Minister and, in the process, showing how right-wing nationalism can be defeated.
Burnham’s meteoric rise is based on a regionally-focused economic populism, one that promises a “new politics to build a new economy” for the benefit of average workers. Smart Democrats should be closely studying Burnham’s messaging and plain-spoken political manner as they look to defeat Trumpism and win back Congress in November and the White House in 2028.
Burnham will become Prime Minister later this month now that sitting PM Keir Starmer has announced his resignation. Yet Burnham’s startling political ascendance owes much to his emphasis on government working closely with the private sector on economic develop that helps specific communities and workers. Even so, Burnham is also determined to regulate capitalism diligently when needed to facilitate a return to fundamental economic fairness, rather than the Trumpian approach of letting corporations and billionaires run roughshod over average consumers and citizens.
Burnham notes that even as living standards have fallen for tens of millions of citizens since deregulation caused the economic and financial crises of 2008, Trump and the MAGA-like UK Reform Party leader Nigel Farage offer only more of the same: a “new wave of deregulation….that would doom us to repeat past mistakes…by failing to regulate social media, artificial intelligence and big tech.”
A key Burnham focus as Mayor of Manchester and now he says soon as PM will be on regional economic development and worker training in Britain’s north that has been left behind by financial markets and our new technology dominated era.
Despite differences between the US and UK, Democrats must do the same for the vast middle of America that have been hollowed out by deindustrialization and is profoundly lacking social mobility, rather than just focusing on the coastal areas and professional classes. And crucially, Democrats must also reach directly out to voters in many Southern states and other areas have voted exclusive Republican in recent years.
One Democrat who understands this is Andy Beshear, the twice-elected popular governor of Kentucky. He calls himself “living, breathing proof that Democrats can win anywhere and we must fight everywhere.” In office, Beshear has delivered economic benefits to average people through a “middle-out” rather than top-down growth and job creation strategy of working with business, making infrastructure investments, and expanding public services.
He characterizes Trump’s approach as one of “chaos, incompetence and cruelty.” Significantly, the Kentucky Governor is also going after Vice President J.D. Vance, a probable Republican presidential candidate in 2028. Beshear says Vance is the “most arrogant politician I have ever seen” and says Vance’s book “Hillbilly Elegy,” amounts to “poverty tourism.” Beshear argues that Trump and Vance have done little to help the working class voters who are their political base, and indeed new polling shows average workers who once supported Trump are now deeply disillusioned with Trumpism.
Another issue newly animating both UK Labour and US Democrats is corruption of Trumpian right-wing political elites and the ineffectiveness of conservatives in London or Washington to deliver for average people. Britain’s government in London “is broken” Burnham said last week as he promised to bring “good growth in every British postcode.”
Likewise, Democrats are slamming Trump’s unprecedented graft, greed, and corruption. Senator Jon Ossoff has made the Trump’s Roman-emperor like self-aggrandizement and enrichment a central theme in his reelection campaign, noting the Trump runs “the most corrupt administration in history, and everybody knows it.”
Pennsylvania’s Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro contrasts Trump’s using the government to make of billions of dollars for himself and his cronies off with the Trump disastrous economic policies that have increased inflation for essential commodities like energy, groceries and healthcare for average consumers. This turning of political tables on MAGA’s resentment machine by identifying Trump Republicans and his billionaires cronies as the real economic and political elites who only use working class Americans to accrue power is already proving a crucially effective message that can help fuel a Democratic political come back.
Trump has enriched himself while in office by many billions in a blatantly corrupt and brazen manner no other President in history has ever approached. Trump’s net worth has exploded from $5 billion to more $10 billion. And new financial disclosures show that Trump has amassed more than $2 billion since again taking office just last year, including $1.4 billion in “crypto” plays, an ersatz and entirely speculative currency that his Administration has taken extraordinary actions to legitimize.
As Trump’s son Eric has implied, the grandiose and narcissistic Trump is determined to create a political family dynasty so rich and politically powerful that it could establish a borderline hereditary dictatorship. In fact, Trump is illegally enriching himself, his family, and his political allies as part of an effort to create a Trump-branded, permanent right wing political over-class that will totally control the Republican Party. The plan seems to involve other Trump family members like Donald Trump, Jr., Eric Trump, Ivanka Trump or her husband Jared Kushner running for president or playing key roles in future far-right governments.
Democrats must fiercely and tirelessly attack these deeply undemocratic attempts by Trump to create monarchical family power and, critically, denounce Trump’s related and on-going machinations to undermine or invalidate free and fair U.S. elections.
Already Trump’s existing government is run by a toxic combination of self-dealing billionaires and unqualified flunkies whose Pecksniffian self-abasement at the altar of Trump’s overweening ego. Their pathetic eagerness to execute his plainly disastrous policies is the main currency in keeping favor with the despotic Trump. As for Republicans in Congress, even conservative columnist George Will has described their embarassing kowtowing to every new Trump outrage as poodle-like “canine devotion.” No wonder America’s leading grassroots anti-Trump movement is called “No Kings.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s tax legislation passed by complacent congressional Republicans has been bogus for most Americans, not beautiful, since it amounts to just tax cuts for the richest with the top 1% getting a $82,000 giveaway while American families making less than $30,000 a year are worse off, and those with income under $10,000 lose as much as $2,700.
Burnham, in contrast, emphasizes rebuilding working- and middle-class economic standing through technical worker training for many jobs the private sector needs today, and an “education system built on the firm principle of parity between academic and technical paths.” His is a “pro-business” as well as pro-labor approach that is attempting to create a “stable platform for some of the long-term structural changes the country needs.” Beshear has been doing much the same in Kentucky, working with business to create tens of thousands of new jobs with the highest wages in state history.
In a clear reference to the dangers of Nigel Farage’s Trump-like Reform Party, Burnham fears that unless the UK creates a new bargain between workers and industry Britain will “become trapped in a toxic, divisive politics like the US, with all the social harm that comes with that.”
Of course, we have yet to see whether Burnham can actually revitalize Britain’s dormant economy and the fortunes of average workers. But there are compelling reasons to believe he might succeed.
In a recent Atlantic essay, “How Britain became as Poor as Mississippi”, economic policy analyst Idrees Kahloon notes that the UK’s economic doldrums since the 2008 financial crisis per capita GDP down by 8% are almost entirely self-inflicted. They include counterproductive austerity measures early in the last decade by the benighted Tory government in addition to the disastrous Brexit fiasco brought about by conservative Prime Ministers David Cameron and Boris Johnson but most effectively agitated for by the UK’s right-wing Trump-like figure Nigel Farage.
Kahloon suggests that wisely administered Keynesian-type public investment in housing, infrastructure, education and new technologies along with pro-business efforts in crucial industries may be keys to reviving British productivity and improving the lot of average UK citizens.
Democrats, too, must offer bold solutions to America’s profound economic inequality and missing social mobility that used to be an American hallmark but has all but disappeared from its economic landscape. A variety of new research shows that assistance with food, education and housing for low-income families with children is one of the keys to giving young people the opportunity to move up the economic ladder. These are precisely the programs that Trump Republicans have decimated.
Yet Democrats must also embrace ambitious, practical new economic and regional growth strategies, yes working with industry and labor, but also carefully regulating the obvious excesses of tech, AI and other heedless industries to help average workers get a bigger share of the American economic pie.
Otherwise, the nightmare of a vindictive Trumpian political elite whose main strategy is to divide Americans against each other and establish an undemocratic dynasty could, tragically, long outlast the repugnant and disastrous Donald Trump himself.
Keep writing Paul! You have such insight and important information that people need to hear. Katherine!