Peter Franklin: What Conservatives should learn from America’s Presidential election

Peter Franklin is an Associate Editor of UnHerd.

By holding the general election in July, Rishi Sunak cunningly avoided a clash with the US Presidential election in November.

What he didn’t avoid was the worst defeat in our party’s history. Hence our current leadership contest. Ironically, this will clash with the US timetable: we announce our new leader on the 2nd November, and the United States of America chooses one on the 5th November. We can only hope that the American people aren’t so distracted by the excitement of our contest that they forget to vote in theirs.

Just kidding. Americans are barely interested in British politics — and not at all in what we think of theirs. Nevertheless, UK Conservatives ought to pay close attention to the state of the US race, because there are plenty of lessons to be learned and applied over here.

You’ll recall that only last month, Donald Trump was all but home-and-dry. He’d not only survived an assassination attempt by millimetres, but also turned it into the photo-opportunity of a lifetime. After just one day to settle his nerves, he then breezed into the Republican National Convention with just a bandage to show for his ordeal. The contrast to his mumbling, stumbling opponent was stark.

But then Joe Biden dropped out of the race, to be replaced by Vice President Kamala Harris. The switch was managed with ruthless efficiency by Democrat insiders. More to the point, it’s been spectacularly successful (so far).

Before looking at the implications of the latter, let’s consider an obvious lesson for UK politics. The Democrats have shown us that by replacing a doomed leader — with just months to go before an election — a governing party can go from certain defeat to a fighting chance. If only the Conservative Party had done the same earlier this year.

There are differences between the UK and US situations. For instance, a change of leader in our case would have required a change of Prime Minister — whereas Biden will, in theory, complete his term as President. Another key difference is that an American election season is much longer than a British election campaign. The first debate between the presidential candidates took place on the 27 June — giving the Democrats time to reconsider Biden’s viability.

Then again, it’s not as if we didn’t have our wake-up moments, such as crushing by-election defeats and the local election results. Furthermore, while dropping a sitting president is a rare event in American politics, British Conservatives are well-practiced in deposing their leaders. And yet it was the Democrats who engineered a game-changing substitution, while we just sat there waiting for oblivion.

The most important difference between the two political machines is that one still had the will to win. It’s not even that Harris is an impressive candidate. When she ran for the 2020 Democratic nomination, she failed to secure a single delegate. Indeed, she withdrew before the primaries, having never recovered from her humiliation during an early debate. She’s provided ample proof of her essential vacuousness: just listen to her holding forth on such topics as the scourge of inflation, cloud computing, and space exploration. Never has so little been said in so many words and with such scant self-awareness.

On the other hand, she is telegenic — and, more importantly in the digital age, meme-genic. Her sudden candidacy has become a social media phenomenon, generating a buzz that the mainstream media has obediently amplified. It’s amazing what a halfway competent comms operation can achieve, and how fast it can do it. There’s no reason why a properly run CCHQ couldn’t have pulled off the same trick. Indeed, I can think of at least one Cabinet minister who could have been our Kamala Harris.

It’s all too late now. Still, it’s worth bearing in mind for the next general election. If the new leader we’re about to pick doesn’t work out, then we shouldn’t hesitate to switch horses.

It should be said that the Kamala effect isn’t just a function of Democrat cunning, but also Republican foolishness — especially that of Donald Trump himself.

After his miraculous escape, there was a moment in which he could have reached out to friend and foe alike. At the outset of the Republican convention, he appeared as we’ve never seen him before. He was calm and collected, projecting an aura of something not unlike graciousness. It didn’t last.

His convention speech started well but descended into the usual rambling mess — betraying a lack of discipline that sends him off on endless self-indulgent tangents. Things have since gone from bad to worse. He should have focused attention on his opponent’s woke identity politics but decided to question her racial identity instead (it’s a matter of record that Kamala Harris is of Indian descent on her mother’s side and mixed Jamaican heritage on her father’s side). If that’s not enough controversy, he’s also made a point of pursuing a petty dispute with Brian Kemp — the popular Republican Governor of Georgia, which is a vital swing state.

Then there’s his choice of running mate. JD Vance of Hillbilly Elegy fame is an intelligent man with interesting ideas, but for a Vice Presidential pick he’s inexperienced. He was only been elected as a Senator in 2022. On the campaign trail, he can be awkward — allowing the Democrats to target him as “weird”.

I hope that British Conservatives are paying particular attention to this last point. Trump may be off-the-scale when it comes to political eccentricity, but we’ve had our share of oddballs. In picking a new leader and starting a new chapter we must put an end to the Tory grotesque. Yes, there are many things — like principles and competence — that matter more than mere image, but we’ll never see them in action if the vibes repel the voters.

There are still three months before Americans go to the polls. A lot could still happen. For instance, the mainstream media might stop acting as an arm of the Democratic campaign and subject Harris to some sort of scrutiny. But if current trends continue and Trump and Vance do go down to defeat, what happens to the Republican Party?

Most likely it would end any prospect of a Trump second term. A fourth run for the Presidency in 2028 (at the age of 82) would strain the limits of plausibility, even in America. Vance would be damaged goods. As would his backers. The elder Trump children don’t have the charisma to step into their father’s shoes. Some Republicans see the youngest son as a potential Augustus to Trump’s Julius Caesar. That, however, will require patience: Barron Trump is still in his teens.

And yet if the humiliation of losing to Kamala Harris does bring the circus crashing down, there’ll be no reversion to the pre-Trump Republican Party. We won’t see the likes of Mitt Romney or Jeb Bush re-emerge to reclaim their lost inheritance. Rather, there’ll be a scramble among those not closely associated with the 2024 campaign to take over and redevelop the MAGA brand.

At this stage, it’s difficult to know who would come out on top. It could be a Trump-lite Republican governor like Ron DeSantis. Alternatively, a media-savvy outsider like Vivek Ramaswamy might be the future. The worst-case scenario is that the Republicans destroy themselves and are replaced by a new movement just as they replaced the American Whig Party in the 19th century.

And that’s a final point for British Tories to ponder. For us, humiliating defeat is already a fact. Nevertheless, there will be no return to the past, let alone the pre-Brexit past. Whatever happens next will be different — if not necessarily better.

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