The new agenda that the American president-elect, Joe Biden, is working on, and the similarities to be found with the positions of Britain's Labour Party leader, Keir Starmer, together suggest that something new is surfacing in the West: a hothouse of ideas and initiatives to lead the world's democracies on a mission to face up, together, to the various global issues that entail dire consequences for individual nations, ranging from inequality and human rights to Covid-19, climate change, and migration. We have Jake Sullivan, political adviser to the president-elect, to thank for lifting the veil on what Biden is working on, when he explains that Biden embraces "the intersection between domestic policy and foreign policy, not as an abstract notion but as a strategy." This points to plans to "invest in our sources of strength at home: in our infrastructure, in our innovation, in our workers, in our immigration system and, yes, in our democracy, tackling issues from the strength of our institutions to the ongoing scourge of systemic racism." This will lead Biden to "rally like-minded free democratic nations in common purpose to both push back against authoritarian competitors and also construct and build the kinds of long-term durable solutions to the challenges that afflict us all." It is within this framework that the objective has ripened of a "summit of democracies" which might even be called by Biden during the first hundred days of his presidency — a first that will begin on January 20, 2021 — with the aim of restoring America's role of world leadership, while simultaneously developing concrete responses in the face of dire and compelling challenges, beginning with the task of economic reconstruction in the wake of the pandemic.

It's still too early to learn the details of this initiative, but the very fact that the Biden transition team should let it leak makes it clear that they are working in the tradition of the precedent set by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933, when he stated in his memorable first inaugural address from the East Portico of the U.S. Capitol that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself," a first step in pushing America out of the Great Depression and toward the programs of the New Deal. Today, the whole world is facing those challenges, not just the United States. Another difference from 1933 is that, back then, as Adolf Hitler was rising to power in Germany, the world had only 20 democracies, but no fewer than 130 autocracies; whereas today, in the wake of the defeat of the Nazis and Fascists in the Second World War and of Soviet Communism in the Cold War, there are 101 democracies and 78 autocracies. This means that representative democracy based on the rule of law is now the prevailing model of government on the planet, and that it therefore has a responsibility to develop global responses to the broad and far-reaching challenges giving rise to inequality, afflicting millions of individuals, driving the protests of the middle class, while allowing the proliferation of populism and encouraging authoritarian regimes to grow in strength and aggressivity.

In that context, we must assign a special meaning to Starmer's choice, as head of the British Labour Party, to identify Biden and Kamala Harris as standard-bearers of the possibility of "filling the void in global leadership" and "a better, more optimistic future." Starmer went on to emphasize that this prospect springs from an election campaign in which the American Democrats won back the working-class states in the Midwest by emphasizing the themes of "family, community and security." "We can use that same recipe to win once again in the Midlands and the North of England", he added, referring to the manufacturing districts that were once Labour strongholds, only to be stormed recently by the Conservatives led by Boris Johnson. Starmer's message is unequivocal: growing inequality has driven large slices of the progressive electorate into the arms of the conservatives, in America just as in Great Britain, and if there is any hope of winning them back, the left will need to appeal to these voters, promising them protection for their families and communities. A form of "protection" — and this is where we see the most important convergence between Starmer and Biden - that the world's democracies can best guarantee by joining together to confront the global threats afflicting us: the pandemic, employment, climate change, and immigration. And that's not all, because, as Claire Ainsley, Starmer's principal political adviser, points out, the goal is also to emulate Biden in the "recovery of patriotism" which springs eternal in the "new working class" that stands out for its shared "core moral values, among them care and fairness, but also principles typically associated with the right, such as respect for tradition and loyalty to community and nation." Jeremy Corbyn had turned his back on this British working class from the industrial areas — a class that feels "forgotten" as a result of the impact of globalization, exactly like what has happened to the middle class in the American Midwest — and instead gave in to the demands of a radical left that had pushed him to take up extreme positions concerning public ownership, taxing the rich, and environmental action. And that is to say nothing of the far left's hostility to Jews and Israel. All of that has been tossed aside, along with Corbyn's leadership, by his successor Starmer. Likewise, Biden has made it clear that he fully understands the extent to which the dogmatic rigidity of the extreme wing of American liberalism constitutes a strategic Achilles' heel: he defied the extremists during the primaries, then pushed them aside during the proceedings of the Democratic Convention, and is now marginalizing them during the transition, as is clear from the elimination of Susan Rice's name from the short list of potential Secretaries of State. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the combative New York congresswoman and standard-bearer of the radicals, accuses Biden of "giving lobbyists special treatment" and she awaits him "at the culmination of the transition, in the hopes that the party base won't be abandoned once again". But it's clear that, for Biden every bit as much as for Starmer, winning back the blue-collar middle class requires taking stands that will be incompatible — and not just in economic terms — with the standpoints of the extreme left in their respective nations. In other words, Biden's inauguration will offer Western progressives a chance to take on global challenges with strategies capable of winning long-term majorities, but only on the condition that they isolate the most extreme left wing. We will see in the coming months what steps Biden will choose to begin this journey, but the similarities with Starmer already suggest a return to a strengthened understanding — for the moment, on the party level — between Washington and London, two power centers that have always been at the heart of any transatlantic entente. So much so, that we can expect to see further convergences between Starmer's and Biden's teams in the near future on such topics as post-Covid reconstruction, the new Cold War with China, and the climate emergency. Which raises the question of the approaches that will be taken by the progressive forces of continental Europe in relation to the revived Anglo-Saxon liberal experiment. 
(Traduzione di Antony Shugaar)