Forty-eight hours before President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump faced off on stage in Atlanta on Thursday, the leaders of Britain’s two main parties, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer, faced off in Nottingham, England.
To say their debates were different is not enough to capture the Atlantic-sized gulf that separated them.
In content, tone and atmosphere, the British debate showed two politicians at their best, arguing over the often heated issues, not without personal blows but focused on the political nuances of taxes, immigration and healthcare. Neither Sunak, 44, nor Starmer, 61, mentioned his golf handicap.
Britain and the United States are often seen as operating under the same political climate: the conservative turn under Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, the youth- and center-left turn under Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, and the populist, anti-establishment backlash that fueled Brexit and Trump. But this week’s back-to-back encounters showed how sharply these democracies diverge, at least in this election cycle.
“These are two countries that are in very different places and have very different visions of their place in the world,” said Kim Darroch, who served as Britain’s ambassador to Washington during the Trump administration.
“The tone between Sunak and Starmer was that of two deeply serious politicians,” Darroch continued. “Between Biden and Trump, things were sharp, nasty, childish, but not serious.”
To some extent, that reflects the different nature of the candidates: Sunak, a former hedge fund manager, and Starmer, a former public prosecutor, are more technocratic and detail-oriented figures than Trump or Biden. Neither is known as a charismatic politician.
There is also little personal animosity between Trump, 78, and Biden, 81. Both entered parliament in 2015 and barely knew each other until Sunak became prime minister in 2022.
But the change in tone also reflects how British politics has moved beyond toxic divisions over Brexit. Eight years after Britons voted to leave the European Union, they are back to the usual debates about taxes, spending, planning permission for housing and how to reduce waiting times in the overstretched National Health Service.
“Sunak tried early in the campaign to introduce some American-style culture war issues into the debate, but there was no appetite for doing so,” said Robert Ford, a professor of political science at the University of Manchester.
There was also a shift in Britain’s political personalities. “Who was absent from that stage? Boris Johnson,” said Professor Ford, referring to the flamboyant prime minister who led the Brexit campaign and drew comparisons to Trump.
The Conservative Party ousted Johnson after several scandals, including social gatherings held during pandemic lockdowns. His successor, Liz Truss, lasted just 44 days after her tax cut proposals sparked a backlash in financial markets.
“Our system seems to have healthier formal and informal mechanisms for getting rid of leaders,” Professor Ford said. “With Biden and Trump, there are no obvious mechanisms for getting rid of them” other than defeating them on Election Day.
When voters go to the polls in Britain on July 4, they are expected to oust Sunak’s centre-right Conservative Party after 14 years in government, in favour of Starmer’s centre-left Labour Party. The debate was seen as one of Sunak’s last chances to avoid a crushing defeat.
The prime minister insisted that Labour would raise taxes and open Britain’s borders to immigrants. “Don’t give up,” Sunak repeated several times to the studio audience (another difference from the US debate, where there was no studio audience).
Starmer’s angry response that the prime minister was lying about taxes was the closest the two came to the jabs traded by Biden and Trump. He otherwise seriously laid out the party’s plans to build 1.5 million new homes, calling the lack of affordable housing the “tragedy of the last 10 years.”
There were many critics of the debate. Some criticized Sunak for being overly aggressive and bullying Starmer. Others said Starmer was unstable, particularly over how he would try to stem the influx of asylum seekers crossing the English Channel.
The back-and-forth over taxes seemed tedious to some. The writer Jonathan Coe compared it unfavourably to European football championship matches, which were broadcast at the same time on another channel.
“Can I bear to spend another hour watching these people kick a ball around pointlessly, or should I just turn around and watch the football?” Mr Coe posted on X.
Darroch noted that televised debates are a relatively recent American import into British politics; The first between prime ministerial candidates were held in 2010. Unlike in the United States, where they can change the trajectory of a campaign (as many Democrats fear Biden’s faltering performance will), debates rarely change public sentiment in Britain.
First, British politicians debate each other almost every week in the House of Commons. Sunak and Starmer have clashed dozens of times during Prime Minister’s Questions, a Wednesday ritual in which the leader of the opposition grills the prime minister while journalists keep score.
“If they’re both good at debating, it becomes very tedious because no one is making big blunders,” Darroch said. “The British public expects a game of cricket, not too many cheap shots. “We live in a grayer world of politics, compared to the Technicolor of debates in the United States.”
