‘The Donald Trump nightmare is over’

AS people around the world look towards the US with the victory of President-elect Joe Biden, trying to understand what this change in presidency could mean for them, there are some changes that we can all embrace.

Of course, no one can predict what road lies ahead, but we can be sure that the Donald Trump nightmare is finally over.

I still recall Donald Trump standing for the presidency. Despite everything, he stood for and believing that there was no way someone, with his views and ideas, could ever be the President of the United States, yet he was elected. The last few years with the United States presidency, it felt like everything we fought for and progressed with as a human race had all been undone with Donald Trump as President.

Let us not forget, his out and out open sexism; or that he described Mexicans as rapists, Black Lives Matter as a symbol of hate, shared a video of a man shouting white power to millions of his supporters, retweeted the likes of Katie Hopkins in the UK and proposed that Black athletes standing up to racism should be fired.

From his vile, misogynistic descriptions of women, his discriminatory policies such as the Muslim ban, to his disgusting attacks on disabled people or through his attacks on minority communities, he emboldened hate, fear and prejudice.

The era of Trump is over, and now, especially with the incoming Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, there is some hope that the world might be able to move forward once again. Kamala Harris will be the first female US Vice President, the first African American, the first Asian American and the first Caribbean American to hold the post in US history. She will also be the highest-ranking female elected official in United States history.

For many, including us here in the UK, she won’t just be making history in this new role but providing a light for those of us who found the last few years truly difficult. She will be the symbol against everything Trump stands for, and that defiance in itself can only be a positive thing.

The challenge now is for the new leadership to show the world that the United States is once again, ready to act upon the values of democracy and the rule of law. Both of which were slowly withering away. This challenge may also be expected of the current government here in the UK, which is currently hell-bent on breaking international law in a “limited way”.

However, with the Internal Market Bill, which contains measures to overrule parts of the UK’s Brexit agreement with the EU, on Monday night being rejected by the House of Lords, if the government is adamant in continuing this plough, it might find it isn’t just standing against the EU this time, but the US too.

President-elect Joe Biden has been a passionate advocate for the preservation of the Good Friday agreement and has already warned the UK against taking steps to undermine it. Adding to this, Democratic Congressman Brendan Boyle told Channel 4 News this week: “If the UK moves forward with this Internal Market Bill… there will be no US-UK trade deal – period.”

It has only been a few days since the US election but the Trump era of ‘do whatever you wish’ may already be coming to an end and it may be the time that our government is also pushed to abide by the rule of law. Whether the new presidency will provide the change that the US and the world will need, only time will tell. The US record on foreign policy was never one to be proud of, even before Trump, and those challenges remain ahead. The millions of Trump supporters still exist and those pockets of hate that he emboldened will continue to spew their hatred. The challenges for the US still exist but thank God that the rule of the Twitter President is over.

Nothing changes overnight, but we hope we can at least continue moving in the right direction, a direction that puts the values of democracy, freedom and the rule of law first. That direction for our nation, I believe, is best described in the words of the Labour Leader, Sir Keir Starmer.

“Equally, when our allies are wrong, Britain should be prepared to speak out and say so. We are at our best when the world knows we have the courage of our convictions and a clear moral purpose. That we are standing up for our beliefs and our shared values. In recent years, this has been absent. For the United States of America and for Britain, this is the time to return to the world stage.

“This is the time for us to lead.”