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.

There have been no blogs for a while. It has often seemed futile to rail at the dire political leadership in the UK and the US but here you go… Johnson advocates breaking international law over an agreement with the EU he signed less than 12 months ago to win an election, whilst Trump threatens to ignore November’s Presidential election result due to ‘fraudulent’ postal ballot voting. Both leaders are guilty of chaotically managing the pandemic, yet incredibly, Johnson remains ahead in polls and Trump is just a few points behind Biden.

Why is this the case? There are various reasons. Both Trump and Johnson have played a clever game in exploiting disillusionment with past political regimes. Globalisation has been unkind to many; the professional classes as represented by the likes of Cameron, Obama, Clinton et al have been seen as remote, hypocritical and/or patronising. It was time for a change. Traditional alliances, treaties, political correctness and even experts are out. They don’t matter to many mainstream, frustrated voters. However unfair, they feel nothing seems to change. The immediacy of crude nationalism in the form of Making America Great Again and Brexit (ex-Corbyn) is in.

This is a narrative that will maintain its resonance with many voters for years. Liberal commentators can rage at each other using the echo chamber of social media, but Johnson is safe. In the US, although Trump may lose in November, he has reshaped American politics. The Republican and Conservative parties will not be the same for a generation.

But just in case this analysis is wrong, there is an additional weapon these leaders employ. They encourage voters to disengage from politics so chaos, lack of principle and incompetence go unnoticed. They trash the media and try to by-pass it. Trump’s concept of ‘fake news’ is well known, as is his desire to frustrate postal voting, but Johnson is seeking to introduce White House style broadcast press briefings too so he can ignore the conduit of regular, questioning journalism. As in the US, UK history is being re-written with bombast, whether it be the EU Agreement or manipulating facts around the management of Covid-19. Key policy announcements are made outside the House of Common; acquiescent Cabinet Members read out their scripts; expert analysis, certainly any offered by the judiciary, is carelessly denigrated and criticism is labelled simply as enemy liberal whinging.

Johnson and Cummings are set on a revolution, even if the former has arrived at this conclusion by accident. If politics is polarised, filled with outrage and ultimately based on the most charitable premise of ‘tune them out, they would say that wouldn’t they?’, then opposition can be ignored. The public in the UK have been worn out by the Brexit wrangles, all magnified by online anger. Johnson is almost certainly around for a good few years and they just want a breather from knowing or even caring who is right or wrong. Governing without attracting the attention of, or bothering, the voter is the aim. Encouraging disengagement at every opportunity is the method.

Trump’s narrative for the US presidential election has been set. It is Keeping America Great versus violent social disorder driven by a far-left political agenda. It is so depressing and untrue; but highly effective. Incredibly he might just win, and Biden must raise his game. Lightness versus Darkness is unsurprisingly not enough. For Biden, Harris and the Democrats as a whole, this must be the fight of their lives.

As Edward Luce wrote in an excellent article in this week’s FT, there is no Republican Party anymore, just the Trump Party. Most former Republican grandees including the Bushes, Cheneys, Mitt Romney et al stayed away. This week was the humbling of the G.O.P. as speaker after speaker lauded Trump with no sense of healing a divided nation, the architect of which is often Trump himself. The low point in terms of speakers, excepting the almost Dynasty-esq parade of frankly weird Trump family members, had to be a couple now facing criminal charges as they pointed guns at peaceful black demonstrators to ‘protect their home’.

There were no policies in this Republican convention, just Trump’s Will. And his closing speech, set outrageously against the backdrop of the White House in front of an audience neither socially distancing nor wearing face masks, was a litany of misrepresentations. The impact of the coronavirus and its mismanagement was swept away; no mention was made about the legitimate concerns of the treatment of black people by some members of the police; lies were liberally thrown around.

But the threat to the suburbs from ‘chaos and anarchy’, a repeated theme in Trump’s speech, resonates and the drift to the Left of many Democrats is an uncomfortable reminder of politics in the UK when Corbyn’s Labour Party was swept aside by the albeit more moderate but populist Johnson.

An excellent US website to follow is RealClearPolitics.com. It makes sober reading. In top battle ground states at this time, Biden is 3.7% ahead. Clinton was 4.8% ahead in these swing states at the same stage in 2016. The betting odds only have Biden with a 52% chance of victory. In Pennsylvania, Biden has a 7% lead. But Jon Sopel, BBC’s North America Editor, reported this morning that it just doesn’t feel like that. What everyone is agreed on is that the polls are narrowing when anyone but Trump should be a shoe-in.

Biden and Harris need to get out there. They cannot allow themselves to be defined by Trump, boxed in by law and order issues. However frustrated demonstrators are, there is no excuse for looting, every incident of which pushes votes to Trump and the Democrats need to be clear on this. They also need clear, simple messages on the economy and tackling the coronavirus. They must avoid as much as possible talking excessively about identity politics. The vote also has to be got out quickly as some postal voting can start in just three weeks.

Literally anything could happen in the coming two months with three presidential debates ahead and two fairly elderly candidates having to navigate a campaign that would exhaust many younger, fitter politicians. The Democrats must take nothing for granted, not least because America and its allies cannot afford another four years of Trump who, as many moderate Republicans would agree, is the real architect of a dystopian future.

The US presidential stakes don’t get any higher than seeing off Trump and his hugely damaging presidency. Another 4 years of him will fatally wound the US as a global power, challenge the whole concept of democratic accountability and split this amazing nation in two.

Yet the polls that put Biden so comfortably ahead are just starting to narrow. We have been here before. In the face of Trump, Biden (Clinton) couldn’t possibly lose, Biden (Clinton) is consistently ahead in the polls, Biden (Clinton) is experienced and will focus on policies that will improve the lot of the less well off. Surely Biden (Clinton), despite some baggage, is a shoe-in…and yet…and yet…

Many say the VP choice doesn’t make an impact but this time it is different, and Senator Kamala Harris is the right pick. Biden will be 78 if he assumes office, Harris is 55. As a woman of colour, with tough prosecution credentials as California’s former attorney-general, she is hard to lay a glove on. She will energise the black vote in a racially divided nation and yet cannot be portrayed as simply soft on law and order issues. She is centrist and ruthless and that is what will really matter.

This will be the dirtiest campaign yet, the slug fest diluted only by the lockdown, and Biden needs an ambitious running mate who is unafraid and unperturbed by what lies ahead. She will use her role as VP candidate, and hopefully as VP, as a training ground for the top job and good for her. Trump has said Harris would have been his preferred choice as an opponent and describes her as ‘extraordinarily nasty’. Perfect.

Meanwhile the Trump presidency rolls on and voter suppression remains top of his agenda. The US Postal Service is now run by a major Trump donor who is reorganising it as we speak, and cost cutting with the consequence of slowing deliveries down in the face of the largest postal vote election in US history. Trump is attacking the Postal Service daily, saying it can’t cope and that voter fraud will consequently undermine the legitimacy of the election.

As for the pandemic, the death toll heads to 170,000 with over 5 million infections. A further stimulus package remains marooned in Congress. Trump floundered in an interview on HBO, referring to statistical graphs he clearly had no idea about. He is talking about banning Covid-infected Americans based overseas from returning home as part of his anti-immigration rhetoric, and compared Covid to the Spanish Flu of 1918 which apparently ‘ended World War II’ two decades later…Trump makes it up as he goes along and meanwhile people are dying.

So, the US Presidential Election is crucial domestically as well as for allies of the US abroad. Trump needs a heavy defeat so he can’t undermine the result and, if nothing else, to allow some space for the Republicans to regroup on more moderate ground (no mean feat when one considers some of the cleverer nationalist ideologues behind Trump).

Incredibly polls are starting to narrow despite Trump’s performance. Biden, at 77, is not a strong candidate and there is a long way to go. He needs an intelligent, ambitious Rottweiler at his side to keep those polls on side. She might not be the most likeable person but, in Kamala Harris as his running mate, Biden has made a shrewd choice.

Never has the democratic process been under more threat, this time from both liberals and populists. Let me explain why.

The argument that populists are undermining democracy and treating voters as fools is well documented. Populists apparently feign interest in voters’ concerns and rail against the liberal elite but in reality, don’t give a damn. They simply replace one elite with another and, in the process, damage the prospects of the very people who voted for them. Take Trump for example. It is not true that he said if he wanted to stand for President, he would stand as a Republican because they are “the dumbest group of voters”, but it is true that Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, said in 2017, “He (Trump) just knows Republicans are stupid and they’ll buy it”.

The very people who voted for Trump are now suffering most from his appalling approach to the covid-19 pandemic, which is overwhelming America. The tax cuts he doled out have benefited the rich and now, to top it all, just three days ago Trump gave an interview saying he might not accept the results of the November election, admitting “he does not like to lose”. Some argue that voter suppression is now at the heart of his re-election strategy. He rails against postal voting and same day registration. Arbitrary purges of voting rolls and restricted voting times are now common in the minority neighbourhoods of Republican-run states.

In the UK, the same analysis could apply. The Brexit vote, which we now know might have been influenced by the Russians, has had the most detrimental effect on those who voted to leave the EU. Research from the Centre for Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy at Warwick University, outlined in the FT, found that parts of the UK, such as the West Midlands, with high levels of low-skilled and manufacturing employment, have underperformed since 2016. Such areas heavily voted Leave in the EU referendum. Turkeys voting for Christmas but do those who ran the Brexit campaign care? No. Some pretty incredible porkies were told during the EU referendum as delivering on ideological aims outranked a commitment to democratic accountability.

Many argue that attacking the liberal elite and hiding behind ‘fake news’ is just a smokescreen. The argument goes that populists and populism is based on self-centred advancement founded on the belief that voters don’t deserve democracy and can be manipulated accordingly.

The challenge is that liberals are starting to share the same ground. There is a developing argument that if voters are stupid enough to vote for Trump, Brexit, Putin, Duda in Poland, Orban in Hungary, Bolsonaro in Brazil etc, do they really deserve democracy when the outcome of such elections is mostly so damaging to their individual prospects and a nation’s health generally? There is also a growing suppression of freedom of speech among extreme liberals for anyone deemed not politically correct enough, worthy of a blog on its own. All this leads to mutterings that perhaps voting should be encouraged only for those educated enough to know what is best for them…

Against this background, it is worth being reminded of Churchill’s full quote on the subject of democracy: “Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…”.

Food for thought. The case for democracy and full voter participation clearly has to be re-made in these turbulent times and not just in the obvious places.

According to the IMF’s latest analysis of economic ranking, admittedly pre-Covid so it is likely to be flattering, the UK is in 7th place with a 3% share of the world’s nominal GDP. We have recently fallen behind India. The US accounts for a 24.7% share and China 16.9%. The EU, post-Brexit, accounts for c16%. On a per capita basis we rank 23rd. That hardly amounts to a powerful bargaining position as we forge our new post-Brexit global trading alliances…

And there is no clearer indication of our relative economic weakness than the rows and U-turn over the role of Huawei in helping to build our 5G network. The government announced this week, under some pressure from the Trump administration and its own backbenchers, that Huawei will be banned from supplying new equipment to the UK’s 5G network from the end of the year, reversing a decision made in January. In part this is due to a ‘reassessment of security risks’ prompted by fresh US sanctions. Huawei now cannot rely on the supply of US made chips and will have to rely on home grown ones. Then there is Hong Kong…

The impact of this decision will apparently be a 2 year delay in rolling out our 5G network at a cost of £2 billion and that is before any compensation to operators. It has also damaged our relations with China where inward investment to the UK has already fallen from a peak of over $30 billion in 2017 to less than $3 billion in 2019. The Chinese Ambassador warned such a move would damage Britain’s image as a proponent of free trade and cautioned that it was “not in the UK’s interest” to make an enemy of China. Strong stuff.

The purpose of this blog is not to debate the merits of keeping Huawei at bay but to highlight the economic vulnerability of our current position. We have been dragged, albeit reluctantly, into Trump’s confrontational trade war with China in advance of trying to secure a free trade agreement with the US. To what extent are the two linked? We are also being threatened by China. Our bargaining chip of 3% of the world’s GDP is looking somewhat meagre.

Earlier this week government officials admitted that the post-Brexit bureaucracy burden of trading with Europe, even if a trade deal is reached, would involve an extra 215 million customs declarations at a cost of £7 billion a year. Even Michael Gove confessed that any new arrangements would require the hiring of some 50,000 private sector customs agents to deal with these formalities. Such is the price of leaving the single market.

Over half the world’s trade is divided between 3 trading colossi, one of which is the EU. Our economic weakness relative to the other two, the US and China, has just been cruelly exposed with the prevarications over Huawei. It will be miraculous if we hold on to our current share of global GDP in the post-Covid years ahead which, in any case, has been shown to provide little protection. Against this backdrop, the cost of this Government’s ideological obsession of leaving the EU on its own terms is increasingly plain to see.

Two characteristics of the populist surge across the globe are evident. First, populist governments simply replace one elite with another, in the process possibly speaking to a smaller room of people than previous regimes…Second, they mostly seem to be manifestly incompetent and that is what will do for them in the end.

This has sadly become all too evident with the management of the Covid-19 pandemic. Let’s look at a few of the cast to see its impact. Note Putin and Xi are excluded from this roll call. You can hardly be a true populist when you don’t invite people to freely vote for you in the first place…

Trump. A second wave of infections, which is really just an extension of the first wave is engulfing the US, particularly in Republican led states who followed the President’s lead that lockdowns are an anathema to freedom loving Americans. Trump is now behind Biden by double digits in most national polls. Crucially in key swing states, including the populous Florida, Biden is ahead by 5-10%. Infections are heading towards 3 million, there are 130,000 deaths and re-openings are being reversed. The public are increasingly of the view that the pandemic will get worse dragging down any economic rebound. Trump’s general behaviour and lack of leadership is appalling even to some of his core base. To add insult to injury he has just withdrawn from the World Health Organisation. Of course, there is always a risk that law and order issues will drag some support back to him, but one feels his ability to enthuse is draining away.

Bolsonaro. His behaviour is perhaps even more extraordinary than Trump’s and this week he has tested positive for coronavirus. One hopes his infection is confined to his earlier description of it being sniffles or ‘a little flu’. Bolsonaro has consistently urged regional governors to ease lockdowns and only on Monday watered down face mask regulations. He has lost two health ministers in the process and other cabinet ministers due to his handling of the crisis. Meanwhile infections have topped 1.6 million with 65,000 fatalities, second only to his friend and ally, Donald Trump.

Johnson. It is perhaps unfair to club Johnson together with the above two. His populism is more nuanced but he is a populist nonetheless. Whilst mindful of the science, his libertarian instincts delayed the obvious need for an early lockdown. With over 60,000 excess deaths in the UK, topping the grim league table of worst affected countries on most measures, his popularity has fallen sharply, despite decisive economic intervention, in the face of a number of issues; his key adviser, Cummings, caught flouting lockdown rules and getting away with it, confused messaging, a failure to sort out a schools reopening policy and a growing focus on the mismanagement of the crisis in care homes.

Poland. This may be a little tangential but coronavirus delayed the presidential poll due in May until this month with the final round this Sunday. It is pitting the incumbent Law and Justice Party backed candidate, Andrzej Duda, against the liberal, current Mayor of Warsaw, Rafał Trzaskowski. The coronavirus induced economic downturn has helped narrow the race considerably and the Law and Justice Party’s cocktail of right-wing nationalism, social conservatism, now with a strong dash of homophobic rhetoric, is under electoral threat for the first time since 2015. If Duda wins, then the corrosive populism dominating Eastern Europe, in turn undermining democratic institutions, will remain unchecked but if there is an upset, then the tide may start to turn.

None of the above populists will go without a fight and there is still time for populism to reassert itself, particularly if the pandemic abates more quickly than seems evident today. But to use Johnson’s ‘Whack- a-Mole’ analogy, let’s hope they (and others) go down one by one and the coronavirus leaves at least one cloud with a silver lining.