The joy in US politics is like an out of body experience

Yes, last week I was watching the ­Democratic National Convention (DNC). ­British party conferences are curious enough beasts.

But everything is bigger in America, and the DNC has spent four solid days ­projecting happy warrior energy at the world, determined to survive Joe Biden’s (above) final wobble and tear into the ­upcoming ­presidential election with gusto.

In ­principle, this seems like the right attitude to take. The whole world has a stake in the Terracotta Weeble wobbling to a second ­defeat come November.

But dipping into American politics ­during election year is like an out-of-body experience. You can understand most of the words their politicians and pundits use, if not how they’ll land with the ­average American voter. But the overall effect melts at the edges into something entirely surreal. Some of this is about policy – god, guns, manifest destiny. Much more of it is about affect.

There’s still a lot to be said for the old ­observation that Britain and America are two nations separated by a ­common ­language. If you peek into European ­elections – even if you can parlay your high school modern languages into ­understanding snatches of the debates – the linguistic differences put you on ­notice that you aren’t following the political ­conversation in the same way as a native.

It’s the superficial accessibility of ­American politics which so often makes it such a false friend and which makes the ­different style in which politics is ­transacted there so discombobulating. And I’m not just talking about the Wisconsin delegation dressing in cheese hats made of foam rubber – though I have thoughts on that too – but the emotional saturation characterising it all.

Mega-church

The DNC isn’t a political event in the ­ordinary sense of the word, but a kind of mega-church experience, where true ­believers share the ecstasies together, salute living saints, and a series of wildly ­ambitious people make not-altogether-successful ­attempts to emulate the rhetorical gifts of the Obamas on the national stage.

Every speaker is guaranteed a ­delirious cheer just for blandly listing one or more states of the union. Every drip of ­sentiment from every personal story is ruthlessly squeezed out. Nobody would laugh at the invocation of a toolmaker father in Chicago.

There would be tears in their eyes. No sugarable moment is left unsaccharine. Sustained viewing must cause significant dental trauma.

In America, it’s a family affair too. The personal is political, and the politics is excruciatingly personal. Or at least it is pretending to be. Pity the US politician without a hardscrabble backstory or a ­significant extended family to march out on stage behind them.

If the partner of a leading British ­politician appeared in public and said, “I’d like to introduce the love of my life,” the line would cause most of us to cringe to the sphincter or mutter ­ungenerous ­suspicions that the lady might be ­protesting just a tad too much.

All of this creates the illusion of ­intimacy – which is one of my favourite definitions of celebrity in modern ­culture. As parasocial relationships go, what distinguishes celebrity from simple notoriety or ordinary fame is that sense that the ­celebrity has invited you into their private life, that they’ve opened up.

It is easy to forget that in the States, the president is also a kind of priest-king for the national cult. And that means they’re responsible for projecting images of the divine family back at the audience.

'Childless cat ladies'

Democrats have been understandably critical of unearthed suggestions from Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick that “childless cat ladies” don’t have the same stake in America’s future, while ­simultaneously laying the virtues of ­coupledom, parenthood, and family life on thick themselves. I’m vaguely aware that Keir Starmer and John Swinney have kids, but these weans will never have to play the role of dauphin or crown ­princess, and make the lieges cry in their seats like mom and dad.

It makes you rather feel for these ­American political spouses and children – well, for some of them – drafted into the public arena by their parents’ professional choices sometimes for decades and decades. A lot seems required of them.

Rather than just being window ­dressing projecting a reassuring vision of ­superficially wholesome family life, ­political ­husbands and wives find themselves ­under the obligation to become ­gregarious campaigners, and talented speech-makers in their own right, while their kids come under scrutiny as a kind of social metric for what kind of parenting they’ve had.

There's an ominous school of thought that what springs up in American politics inevitably washes up on the other side of the Atlantic.

If that’s so, we’re going to have to brace ourselves for joy surfacing on a British beach sometime in the next 18 months. But as things stand, joy looks likely to sink under a mess of mid-Atlantic plastic, leaving more of the foreshore free for the best of British sewage water companies have left there.

Any kind of good cheer is currently thin on the ground right now, either in British or Scottish politics. As the remains of the summer sinks under volleys of late August rain, both London and Edinburgh governments are standing over a series of spending cuts guaranteed to go down badly with significant sections of the public.

(Image: PA)

Sir Keir Starmer (above) has now exceeded Liz Truss’s 49-day tenure as Prime ­Minister. So far, he hasn’t wilted. Whatever ­quality people mean by a politician being prime ministerial, Starmer seems to have ­adequate ­supplies of. He can be trusted not to ­dribble in public or turn up to ­international meetings looking like he’s been sleeping in a public park. This low threshold of adequacy, he’s comfortably overleapt.

Energy bills

But beyond that, the headlines are not great. As first impressions go, ­stripping winter fuel support from millions of ­pensioners was an audacious kind of change to lead with. Having made much of energy hikes in opposition and pledged to reduce people’s energy bills by £400 a year, we now have senior Ofgem ­figures defending the ­profits energy companies are generating and no obvious government intervention to speak of.

For a couple of weeks there, somewhat smug Labour supporters were briefly ­inclined to tweet things like “it’s nice, isn’t it? The quiet?” – days before some of the ugliest public disorder in recent ­British history broke out. Curiously, ­nobody is basking in “the quiet” now. These riots will define the summer of 2024 and the first months of Labour’s tenure in office.

For me, Starmer has felt curiously ­absent through the summer’s biggest news story. As one of politics’ natural authoritarians, having cut his teeth as Director of Public Prosecutions during the English riots of August 2011, you might think stepping up as a sober voice of reassurance and the rule of law would come naturally to Starmer.

But this isn’t how things seem to have worked out. The Prime Minister has said a lot of the right things but rather than seizing the opportunity to be a commanding presence during the recent disorder, Starmer largely resisted the temptation to put himself at the centre of the response.

Why? There are different explanations for this. Parliament is in recess. The ­ordinary Westminster platforms available to him are currently shut off. A raincoat interview in a car park has less gravity to it. Caution may have played a part too.

Not impressed

It isn’t just me. According to pollsters, the British public isn’t wholly impressed by the new government’s response to this first crisis. In early August when the extent and duration of the violence ­remained unclear, YouGov found that just 31% of folk felt Keir Starmer had handled the situation well while 49% reckoned the Prime Minister had handled things badly.

Interestingly, this was significantly worse than equivalent polling for the police, who scored positive ratings of 52% to 34% negative from the public while the rampages were still ongoing. Come this week, impressions seem to have improved.

Now, 43% reckon Starmer has made a decent job of it, compared to 40% who remain critical of his performance. The police polling is up to 63%. This shift in attitudes may be attributable to the fact that the disorder seems to have tailed off through the combination of community action and the swift execution of some very substantial prison sentences.

Meanwhile in Scotland. the SNP are now making their own range of unpopular announcements, from the ­extension of Labour’s cuts to winter fuel grants, a continuing failure to stabilise drugs-related deaths, increases to rail prices after the conclusion of the off-peak experiment, and the spectre of arts funding cuts.

For both governments, anything resembling joy feels a very long way off.