Common traits: Harris arriving to speak on the fourth day of the DNC in Chicago. Like Starmer, Harris was a prosecutor before embracing politics. — ©2024 The New York Times Company
WHEN Vice President Kamala Harris said at the recent Democratic National Convention in Chicago, “you can always trust me to put country above party,” it struck a familiar note in Britain, where the new prime minister, Keir Starmer, used much the same phrase throughout the Labour Party’s relentless march to power earlier this summer.
It’s not the only parallel between Starmer and Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee. Both have shaken off or soft-pedalled some of their earlier positions as they try to broaden their party’s appeal. Both are former public prosecutors, who declare a ringing commitment to the rule of law. Both are operating in a volatile environment, where law and order is threatened by extremist elements.
In Starmer’s case, he was hit with anti-immigrant riots only weeks after his victory, after a deadly knife attack on a children’s dance class was followed by false claims, amplified by people on the far right, that the assailant was a Muslim asylum-seeker. (The attacker was born in Britain, police said, and his parents were Rwandan Christians.) In Harris’ case, some analysts believe she could face unrest if she defeats former President Donald Trump in a close race and Trump or his supporters reject the results.
“These are different countries with different political systems, but there often seem to be parallels in their political trajectories,” said Steven Fielding, an emeritus professor of political history at the University of Nottingham.
Starmer and his wife, Victoria, entering 10 Downing Street in London on July 5. — ©2024 The New York Times Company
Lessons from a centre-left win
Labour and the Democratic Party have long shared tips and swapped strategies, most vividly during the eras of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. So it was little surprise that key members of Starmer’s political brain trust were in demand at the Democratic National Convention to offer lessons from Labour’s recent victory.
“There was huge interest in how we won our campaign,” said Jonathan Ashworth, a close ally of Starmer and a former Labour member of Parliament, who was part of a British delegation that included the party’s political strategist, Morgan McSweeney, and Starmer’s communications director, Matthew Doyle.
Ashworth also served as a cautionary tale. A rising Labour star, he unexpectedly lost his seat because of a backlash over his party’s stance on the war in the Gaza Strip, which critics said was too slow to condemn the killing of Palestinian civilians. Drawing on that bitter experience, he said he had warned Democrats not to be complacent, even if the Gaza protests in Chicago were not as disruptive as expected.
“The anger was not captured in the polling; it wasn’t really captured in my street campaigning until the last few days,” Ashworth said. “They’ve got to make sure people don’t stay home because of Gaza.”
On the plus side, Ashworth said he saw parallels in how Starmer and Harris have framed the challenge of immigration, with both emphasising the need to crack down on the gangs that traffic migrants across borders.
A polling divide
The last time Britain and the United States seemed on the same political circadian rhythm was 2016 when the Brexit vote in June presaged Trump’s election that fall. The calendar has lined up similarly this year, with Britons going to the polls on July 4, five months before the Americans.
Yet until an embattled President Joe Biden withdrew from the race last month, the two countries appeared to be diverging, at least in terms of the outcome for the major parties. Now the swift ascent of Harris has political analysts wondering whether the left-of-centre victory in Britain could foretell a similar result in the United States.
There are many caveats, however: Trump is polling neck and neck with Harris, nationally as well as in several swing states, while Labour held a double-digit lead over the incumbent Conservative Party for 18 months before the election. In a year of anti-incumbent fervour around the world, Starmer ran as a challenger against a deeply unpopular government. Harris, meanwhile, represents the Biden administration against a challenger, albeit a polarising one who also served in the White House.
Like Starmer, who ran for party leader in 2020 on a more left-wing platform than his election campaign this year, Harris has changed some positions. She hardened her stance on border policy and reversed her opposition to fracking. He, after being elected, suspended Labour ministers in Parliament who balked at his refusal to abolish a cap on child welfare payments to families.
Also like Starmer, Harris has been a cautious campaigner, refusing to be drawn out on sensitive issues. In Britain, that is known as the “Ming vase strategy,” after Blair, who was likened to a man “carrying a priceless Ming vase across a highly polished floor,” as he nursed his party’s lead before the 1997 vote.
Blair and Clinton were both adherents of the “third way,” a 1990s-era centrist political philosophy, which they adapted to modernise their parties and make them more appealing to a broader pool of voters.
Three decades later, there is no comparable formula for Harris to fend off Trump. His populist message parallels that of Britain’s Nigel Farage and his insurgent hard-right party, Reform UK, which racked up more than 4 million votes. The anti-immigrant passions that fueled Reform’s vote found a more violent expression in the riots.
To some observers, the shared background of Harris and Starmer as prosecutors raises questions about whether she would respond to any post-election unrest like he did. Encouraged by the prime minister, British authorities arrested more than 1,000 people who took part in the riots and have charged more than 700.
Although Harris shares Starmer’s left-of-center political instincts, she presented herself in Chicago as an unyielding protector of the rule of law. She accused Trump of sending “an armed mob to the US Capitol, where they assaulted law enforcement officers,” and painted him as a serial lawbreaker.
“What if, instead of another Jan 6, we have a series of right-wing riots around immigration?” said Harold Hongju Koh, a professor at Yale Law School and a former legal official in the Obama administration, who has taught at Oxford. “It’s really about what Kamala Harris would do.” — ©2024 The New York Times Company
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
