With Trump’s attempted coup underway, this is one card liberals can use to their advantage

It is an unprecedented challenge to sail the ship of democracy between the twin rocks of authoritarianism and a global pandemic. But it is possible

It is very important to understand that  Donald Trump is engaged in an attempted coup, vile and brazen even for him. The survival of American democracy, and the leadership it provides worldwide, depends upon those brave vote counters continuing to count the votes in Arizona and across the American mid-west and a true result being declared.

“It’s not the voting that is democracy, it’s the counting”, says one of playwright Tom Stoppard’s characters. Many of the counters are volunteers; every one of them fills you with democratic pride. They are warriors in the great humanist cause proclaimed by Lincoln at Gettysburg: “that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

It is an unprecedented challenge to sail the ship of American democracy between the twin rocks of Trumpite authoritarianism and a global pandemic. Unless there is a last-minute Supreme Court intervention to support the Trump coup, it looks as if democrats and Democrats have navigated these perils just about intact. But they are not through yet and they need to be as tough as their opponents.

Thank God too for the mainstream media, shining a spotlight on the counting state by state. CNN is another hero of the last 48 hours. I have been transfixed by the Stakhanovite John King, whose encyclopaedic commentary on the thousands of electoral districts across the US is up there with Mr Memory in John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps.

“Looking at black voters in Milwaukee, Detroit, Philadelphia and Atlanta,” says Ben Rhodes, historian of the Obama presidency, “it’s striking that people who have been treated the worst by our democracy consistently do the most to save it”.

The trouble is that since Obama’s re-election in 2012, these voters have been offered terrible leadership by mainstream politicians in the face of an attack on their jobs, living standards and opportunities – for them and their children – unprecedented since the great depression of the 1930s. Joe Biden, a decent but weak candidate, only just managed to resist Trump even after the authoritarianism of the last four years.

Mr Biden and Kamala Harris need to copy Barack Obama, the star of this election, as fast as possible. They need a plan for extending Obamacare and launching a green jobs revolution from day one of the new presidency, while standing shoulder to shoulder with Germany, France and Japan in promoting international democracy and co-operation in the face of the twin perils of Putin and Xi of China and their unrelenting illiberalism, thuggery and international lawlessness.

“Today, the Trump administration officially left the Paris Climate Agreement. And in exactly 77 days, a Biden Administration will rejoin it”, tweeted Mr Biden this morning. We need much, much more radical centrism of this kind, allied to those legendary Washington political skills which got him where he is.  

There are big lessons for liberals and social democrats in the UK. “It is time to get serious about winning”, said Keir Starmer in his first Labour conference speech last month. After a decade in the wilderness, this admission is the first step. Starmer now needs a credible strategy to win after thirteen years of chronically failed leadership in Britain since Tony Blair, Britain’s Obama, stood down in 2007.

This requires bold centrism – New Labour Mark 2. It means eradicating every vestige of Corbynism and the far leftism which nearly destroyed the Labour party, with its tolerance of antisemitism, its hostility to the European Union, its adoration of high taxation and its allergic reaction to wealth creation, stuck in a Marxist theme park past that never worked with its billion-pound nationalisation programme while the state education system, the NHS, and the opportunity society, wither in the face of the hard-right populism of Johnson, Farage and Cummings.

A new plan for jobs, opportunity and aspiration must be at the heart of New Labour Mark 2. It needs to be green, technologically literate and bold, pro-market while harnessing the state intelligently and competently. Starmer could start by copying Blair’s best slogan – “education, education, education”. The reconstruction of state education and the NHS as agents of equity and opportunity were the crowning achievements of the Blair/Brown government.

New Labour 2 also needs a credible strategy for getting Britain back to the heart of Europe, where it must play to defend and enhance our living standards and European peace and security. A key test will be Labour’s stance on the likely Johnson barebones Brexit deal to take us out of the European single market, customs union and freedom of movement in January.

The rumours are that Starmer intends to abstain on a Johnson Brexit deal, afraid of confronting the populists who got us into this mess. That would be a weak and ultimately counterproductive stance, unbecoming a great leader and a great country.

It is also high time for Labour and the Liberal Democrats to come together behind a bold, workable plan for a federal United Kingdom to hold our country together in the face of nationalist threats. Devolution within England is critical to this. We need more Andy Burnham, less Nigel Farage. We might even learn a thing or two from the best of American federalism, a beacon on the hill which we rightly admire today.

Andrew Adonis was a Cabinet minister under Blair and Brown. His latest book is ‘Ernest Bevin, Labour’s Churchill.‘ His next book is ‘New Labour Mark 2’, out next month