Why is dawn breaking in America, while economic gloom gathers in Britain?

Rishi Sunak is blamed for not delivering an upturn. Joe Biden has delivered one and not reaped the benefits.
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If Britain reported a “misery index” — the US term for a collection of data that made voters feel depressed — the results would make unsunny reading for the Prime Minister. A number of events in the past week have crystallised unease as bad news pelts the PM.

Inflation, he told a Commons committee yesterday, has proved “more persistent than people anticipated”, which is a politician’s way of saying he had expected faster progress. A plethora of other miseries prevails, from another court roadblock to the Rwanda plan to relocate large numbers of asylum seekers for processing, to the struggles of privatised Thames Water to stay afloat.

The economy skirts recession (just) while mortgage holders and renters alike, especially in London and the surrounding counties, feel added pain because repayments in the South represent a relatively high proportion of income — and renters are at the mercy of added costs passed on by landords.

Rishi Sunak, a natural Atlanticist who spent his early career in the US, must look enviously across the pond to where the national holiday of July 4 this week has marked a benign turn for Joe Biden’s presidency. The US looks far more safely out of the recession danger zone than Britain — adding jobs in tech and industry at gangbuster rates and with growth settling in at around two per cent in the last quarter. Crucially for a leader who promised to heal the wounds of blue-collar America hankering for better jobs, business investment has surged.

The odds on a frail Biden surviving at over 80 in office are higher than the political life chances of Rishi Sunak

And while both countries can now claim a healthy employment record, the US outdoes Britain (allowing for population and size of the economy) on new jobs in manufacturing, as it doubles down on domestic production.

This is not just good luck. The Inflation Reduction Act supporting green technology and on-shoring production of sensitive parts, like computer chips, has broadly paid off, even if it has irked European competitors (who are frankly not in much of a position to complain, given that the US is paying far more for the defence of Ukraine).

On a recent trip to Washington, I listened to one leading Democrat note that the mood had changed from a rearguard action against Trump (or a near-avatar) to how Biden could aim for his own iteration of Ronald Reagan’s defiant “Morning in America” message.

Sunak faces an election at around the same time as his US counterpart but can hardly dream of going to the polls in anything like that frame of mind. His rating among grassroots Tory members has fallen into negative territory in a Conservative Home poll this week. Biden’s approval rating is far healthier with his party, but at just over 40 per cent nationally makes his bid to remain in the White House uphill work.

In short, Sunak is blamed for not delivering an upturn. Biden has delivered one and not, so far, reaped the benefits. Both leaders hope that fixing the stubborn “core inflation” problem will unlock other benefits.

From this vantage point, though, the odds on a frail Biden surviving at over the age of 80 in office (barring a major health setback) are higher than the political life chances of a man just over half his age, inheriting a government weakened by its many miscalculations. Sunak is in some ways a politician Americans would understand — with an immigrant family background and professional success, with a swearing fondness for sporting metaphors (I tried to follow a conversation in a group with him last week and then peeled off at the third cricket reference).

He is happier hashing out problems in his office and in the close circles of experts and advisers than in the punchbag world of the Commons, which has earned him opprobrium for missing two consecutive Prime Minister’s Questions. Biden is faulted for saying the wrong thing with clockwork reliability — my last sighting coincided with a moment in which he was overheard muttering to an aide “why am I here?”

Sunak, meanwhile, has perfected saying so little that it risks the charge of unsubstantiality. They are, in many ways, worlds apart — an ingenue faced with navigating Britain’s choppy waters and an old-timer determined that a more prosperous US will see off the return of the Trump menace. One big thing they have in common is that the “graphs and charts” of economic factors are a better guide to their destinies than much they can do or say. And only one of them has a tide turning his way.

Anne McElvoy is Executive Editor of Politico

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