A strange aspect of US presidential elections is the almost total absence of any detailed policy discussion. Perhaps it is indicative of the checks and balances between Congress and the President, which means the latter has little direct control over domestic policy. Combined with a complete lack of public interest in foreign policy, where presidents have more sway, and there seems a vacuum at the heart of presidential political debate.

Which is a shame as there is so much to discuss. Re-skilling people, whose livelihoods depended on traditional manufacturing and infrastructure investment, are just two key topics which are crucial to reversing America’s decline but get little air time. Then there is the crippling size of the deficit, the future shape of healthcare (still no plan from Trump), or constitutional reform with the appointment of the Supreme Court and funding of politics up for long overdue legitimate debate.

Perhaps it is the inability to often deliver meaningful change which causes voter turn out to be mostly depressingly low in presidential elections. The process just doesn’t seem relevant enough for a lot of ordinary Americans.

So, in this vacuum, such elections usually tend to focus a good deal on character, as the president’s role of being the nation’s conscience and voice comes to the fore. Normally it doesn’t feel enough. It does this time.

And this is why Americans are voting in record numbers.

I watched the brilliant documentary, ‘The Trump Show’, currently airing on the BBC. In three parts, the first two to be frank led me to have a grudging respect for Trump’s chutzpah and indefatigability. In many respects you can see why his showmanship and bling attracts. But charisma on its own rarely makes good politics and can be downright dangerous. This has blatantly been the case over the past four years.

It comes screamingly home in the third part of the BBC documentary. It lifts the lid on current White House travails and provides conclusive proof of the awfulness of this President, his weird family and dodgy associates. Trump has reinvented himself as an anti-abortion, evangelical pushing extreme conservatives to the Supreme Court when many across the political spectrum, including those who have worked with him, believe he is simply a narcissistic liar with no moral or political compass. Covid is being dismissed because it gets in the way of his re-election; tax cuts go predominantly to the rich to fuel debt-driven economic growth surely unsustainable in the longer term; dictators are embraced because they are ‘strong’. There appears to be no empathy for the treatment of black people when divisions on race threaten the fabric of the country and there seems little empathy for the very people who voted for him. Trump likes the adoration of many of the core, non-college educated white voters but has not done much for them. He undermines the legitimacy of America’s democratic institutions and a free media. He denies science generally and evidence of climate change in particular. Externally, he ignores most democratically elected allies in favour of dictatorships and pulls America off the world stage, leaving it to the Chinese.

‘Make America Great Again’ has suffered shrinkage.

To be fair, Trump is on to something when he highlights the hypocrisy of the political class and extreme identity politics which has ignored the concerns of many core voters. Trumpism won’t disappear easily with the defeat of Trump until some of these issues are addressed and Democrats should take note. There is also a huge role for a free-market, smaller state, smaller deficit Republican Party to flourish. Political discourse needs to improve across the spectrum.

But first, to make any headway, this election needs to address the issue of character.

In challenging Trump, Joe Biden may be a somewhat elderly, old-school politician; but he is almost certainly a decent, moderate man who palpably cares about the things his opponent doesn’t. In this respect, he marks a sharp contrast and is perhaps a little more than ‘anybody but Trump’. His first job is simply to be a ‘healer-in-chief’ whilst the next generation of Democrats create policies that resonate. In achieving this, one hopes that his allies, and Kamala Harris in particular, can steer the Democrats back to the centre-ground where all future elections will be won.

Meanwhile, as Biden said recently: ‘character, compassion and decency are on the ballot’. You can’t put it more succinctly than that. It should be enough to defeat Trump and deliver Biden victory. One sincerely hopes so.

For those too young to remember the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), it was a managed European currency exchange rate the UK decided to participate in alongside the introduction of the Euro. The UK was humiliatingly forced out on ‘Black Wednesday’ as it is known, 16 September 1992, as it couldn’t maintain the value of Sterling above the lower limit for participation, despite panicky huge increases in interest rates. It cost John Major’s government billions and its reputation for economic credibility. It never regained its feet and, as we know, a resurgent Labour Party under a new leader won a landslide victory five years later.

Is this Boris Johnson’s ERM moment? Quite possibly. The charge sheet against his government grows ever longer. There is no point going through past mistakes made in managing the Covid-19 pandemic. An uncomfortable public enquiry strung out over the coming years will no doubt cover these in gruesome detail, but current avoidable missteps on further regional lockdowns multiply. How has he lost the support of devolved governments and local mayors so comprehensively? To fail to build a coalition against the coronavirus because of ministers’ confrontational, non-inclusive style (note Cummings’ malign pervasive influence) is unforgiveable. Endless confusing, sometimes wholly illogical, local restrictions are causing enormous resentment. Focused mainly on the North, they are destroying the Conservative Party’s ‘red wall’ majority for a future election as hardships seems to pile up more on this relatively disadvantaged region than the prosperous South. Andy Burnham, Greater Manchester’s Labour mayor, may have over-played his hand a little but his words of treating the people of Greater Manchester as ‘canaries in a coal mine for an experimental regional lockdown strategy’ resonate and the government, in failing to agree an economic support package by a mere £5 million, looks mean spirited at best. A further tier two Covid relief package cannot come soon enough.

The last Prime Minister to be accused specifically of such regional vandalism was Margaret Thatcher in introducing the hugely unpopular local government poll tax first in Scotland, and we know what subsequently happened to the Tories there…

Then there is also the slowly growing resurgence of the Labour Party under its new leader, Keir Starmer. He outperforms the under-briefed Johnson most times at PMQs and his line of attack on asking for a sharp, comprehensive, ‘circuit-breaking’, full national lockdown rather than limited regional ones for which there is no effective exit, is a powerful line of attack.

A Sky News poll this week cites 67% support for a national circuit-breaking lockdown strategy with 61% of voters not trusting Johnson to make the right decisions on the virus. Starmer is now ahead of Johnson in the polls as a credible PM and Labour are level pegging overall in the national polls, the Tories having surrendered their 10% plus lead.

Then, if all this wasn’t enough, there is the scenario of a no-deal Brexit. Bearing in mind the only thing which separates the EU and UK is fisheries policy and state aid, a deal is still expected as it is in both parties’ interest to achieve one, but again the government’s stance is confrontational and unpleasant as it moots breaking international law. The economic consequences of an aggressive Brexit on top of the coronavirus impact are incalculable.

The public very early on are starting to have had enough of the style and substance of this government. The tone of Johnson’s administration is ugly and its growing incompetence manifest. It is now also undermining the very Northern alliance that helped put it into power. Some events linger long in the memories of voters. When looking back at the next General Election, still four years’ away, many commentators might well judge that this was Johnson’s ERM moment. And deservedly so.

Whatever your political stance, there is no satisfaction to be gained from seeing the current UK (well, English really…) government struggle with Covid-19. It is scary. Johnson and his team have lost the narrative. Over-blown boasts about a world class track and trace system followed by moonshots and constant references to beating the virus have been replaced by fear. Fear that they have lost control of the virus and with it, any semblance of competence. Those views about Johnson not completing a full term as Prime Minister don’t look so outlandish now.

How did this come about? We know this deeply un-Conservative, libertarian government, who decries established institutions and experts, drifted into the pandemic complacently, not treating it seriously enough and loathe to restrict people’s freedoms. The consequences of a failing track and trace and comprehensive nation-wide testing system are sadly self-evident. But the accompanying arrogance of not building bridges with devolved governments and regional mayors in keeping the virus at bay is what is doing for it now.

A reluctance to trust Nicola Sturgeon, for example, is perhaps understandable at any other time but not when confronting a deadly pandemic. This is not a time for party politics but this deeply partisan Johnson/Cummings led government has acted throughout with minimal consultation. Chaotic restrictions were imposed across England and were often inconsistent with what was happening in the devolved regions. Ministers couldn’t even remember what the regional restrictions in England were; one minister incredibly saying during a BBC radio interview that she represented a southern constituency and couldn’t be expected to know all the details of restrictions in the North-East!

Economically, the government has performed better and the recent moves to protect two-thirds of the income of those who lose their jobs through new lockdowns, however tough for those on minimum wages, is at least in line with best practice in continental Europe. But specifically in relation to the science, the government is failing and the economic fall-out alone is too large to repair, possibly for a generation.

The virus is running rampant. Trapped between scientific experts and libertarian backbenchers the government has lurched from Eat Out to Help Out, encouraging people to go to work and opening up the universities to belated sharp national and even sharper regional lockdowns, with SAGE now letting us know it warned a more comprehensive national lockdown was needed 3 weeks ago. Track and trace and comprehensive testing is still woefully inadequate. The government is afraid and Johnson looks haggard. This is not the premiership he hoped for and his style doesn’t work in this environment.

As the Tory Red Wall crumbles in the face of northern city mayors crying foul, the government is belatedly consulting them to spread the blame of further lockdown measures. Both mayors and the devolved regions know necessity means a belated government out-reach to all corners of the country needs meeting half-way as another national lockdown beckons.

But memories are long. One hopes the merits of local democracy and devolved government are a beneficiary of this dreadful chapter, but the origins of the disastrous mismanagement of this virus and the subsequent lack of consultation in managing it will not be forgotten. They lie squarely with Johnson and his government as it has lurched from arrogance to fear.

Either brave or foolish, this blog’s prediction is that Biden will win the 2020 Presidential election. Tuesday’s presidential ‘debate’ confirmed this.

Why the certainty?

The debate. On Tuesday, Trump needed to reach out beyond his core supporters. He failed. Over the top interruptions and failure to absolutely condemn white supremacists, essentially name checking Proud Boys, must surely be the final straw for floating voters. Biden just had to stay upright and not get lost. He succeeded. Trump also allowed Biden to put some distance between himself and the Democratic Party’s left wing by going for Bernie Sanders, and asides from Biden to Trump saying ‘Would you shut up, man?’ played well on television and social media. It came across as a comment from a decent, exasperated man fed up with Trump’s bullying antics. Surely, watching this, a majority of Americans must be worn down with the divisiveness Trump brings to the table.

As an aside, why are debate moderators so poor? We have the same issue in the UK, and there really needs to be a raising of the game to make these gladiatorial clashes worthwhile.

Coronavirus. Appallingly handled. The fall-out is growing and there will be no vaccine to save Trump or the economy this side of November.

The Supreme Court. Nominating Amy Coney Barrett in haste ahead of the Presidential election is a disgrace bearing in mind the Republicans delayed Barak Obama’s nomination nine months before the 2016 election. Any floating voter would see the hypocrisy and the divisiveness this creates. It pleases core Trump supporters but, again, as polls show, it alienates floating voters and energises Democrats to get out to vote as equal rights, the Affordable Care Act and indeed the very results of the Presidential election are threatened.

The polls. These were proving remarkably stable in favour of Biden after some tightening and in actual fact are now starting to move more favourably to him after the debate. He is now largely ahead of where Clinton was in 2016. Most polls are also now weighted for the educational qualifications of voters which was one reason they were inaccurate in exaggerating Clinton’s support in 2016. It is worth noting, however, that Clinton still won the popular vote by 3 million and only lost three key swing states by a collective 80,000 votes. For this reason alone, Biden, just for not being Clinton, should win this election. But RealClearPolitics in polls today has Biden ahead of Trump by 8-9%. Even the normally Trump leaning Rasmussen Reports has Biden leading by 8%. Then there is a poll this week in the key state of Pennsylvania which has Biden ahead by 9%. The betting odds are now 59% v 41% in Biden’s favour, strongly up in recent weeks, and the highest since July.

Of course, there is still a month left and two more presidential debates to go. But it is Biden’s to lose and, barring a catastrophe, I don’t think he will.