The Lesson not Learnt in 2016 [Opinion Piece]

Biden’s electoral win has been announced with many being relieved to see a more conventional candidate now leading the USA. It feels like a return to some form of normalcy after the past four chaotic years but in that time it seems like little has actually changed politically speaking. To explain this, it may help if we look at why Trump was elected and how that relates to some issues we may see in Northern Ireland soon.

The reason Trump won in 2016 was not solely due to some unchecked racism hiding deep in the American subconscious (even though that may have played some part for a faction of the electorate). A more widespread and unilateral reason amongst the Trump voter base was the perception that their section of society was being left behind. Not only were they being left behind but they were being openly mocked by a ‘coastal elite’ who shrugged off the plight of those not a part of metropolitan ideals, labelled as being hill-billies, red necks, cowboys or hicks who could never adjust to a modern world. Too often did movies and TV shows depict the lives of working class Americans as being part of some joke with a cruel undertone behind the generally harmless set of stereotypes associated with those living in the fly-over-states. Unsurprisingly, it led to some degree of contempt for the other half of the nation who lived on the coasts who completely dismissed the issues experienced by middle America. Combine that with an unresponsive political system which only allowed for the election of two parties who both failed to ever answer any of the issues the working class American suffered from, a deeper resentment towards a numb political class developed.

Enter Trump. The actor who would pose as the representative for those left behind despite the fact he was a New York businessman with zero experience of how the lower classes lived. However, Trump was also an outsider to the political class, distinctively not politically correct and a decent salesman (all of this possibly creating a voyuerism within his electorate who wanted to be him as much as they wanted to elect him). He sold the disenfranchised a dream where they mattered to the political system, where immigrants stopped stealing their jobs, cronies in Washington would be ousted and the american dream would be reborn by a free market businessman. Was this an accurate dream, no. Was middle America desperate enough to seek it out anyway, yes. Consequently, Trump was able to even get traditionally blue states to vote for him in the 2016 election, vitally turning the rust belt to a republican vote. 

Here we are four years later. The dream was not achieved and it feels like that was represented in the election. The rust belt states flipped back to democrat, with (at the time of writing) even Georgia and Arizona being convinced to go blue. However, when asked the question ‘will Biden resolve the issues felt by the American working class’, the realistic answer is probably ‘no’. At best, Biden is another neo-liberal in the shape of Obama and Clinton while Kamala Harris is probably even less likely to enact any policy which would actually help anyone outside of a democratic voter base which she relies on.

That voter base become becomes obvious when looking at the election map of the USA in 2020, as an obvious pattern develops when looking at how districts voted. The population centres of the cities voted democrat, even in the south and middle america (for the most part). Trump’s most reliable votes came from the rural areas and the non-metropolitan districts. A set of people who are still willing to bet on a man who never fulfilled the promises that they hoped for despite knowing, deep down, it was an unrealistic gamble. A set of people who remain poor, unheard and the butt of the joke.

Now how does this relate to Northern Ireland? Well, it does not take much to find unheard sections of society in Northern Ireland. We could look west and see the vastly underdeveloped side of the country which has continuously been promised additional help in propping up their economy. We could look to rural communities, where there is barely any public housing and will soon experience a lack of EU funding. We could even look towards the sections of the Unionist and Nationalist communities who feel they receive no legitimate representation in government. Whether that be from right leaning Nationalists or left leaning Unionists. In some ways, it could even be argued that Northern Ireland as a whole is an unheard part of a wider system. In the Westminister, we are an inconvenience to the political class who see us as an obstacle in the way of their objectives and a sinkhole for government money.

We have seen that Trump’s brand of populism is not simply a uniquely American phenomenon. It is a global response to a set of issues posed by globalisation and neo-liberal policy making (or a lack of policy making). These are issues which Northern Ireland certainly cannot claim to be exempt from. The most obvious of these issues is the lack of investment in non-fashionable areas of society. This may be due to the fact that money does not just remain at the top, money also has longitude and latitude, areas where it not only culminates but recirculates. One of the places the money seems to recirculate is obviously Stormont, where we not only see an unresponsive system of government but a completely unstable one which has given the public a lack of trust in their ability to function.

Is it possible that soon Northern Ireland will see a populist response? It was once seen before with the DUP and Sinn Fein’s rise to power in the post-GFA government. Personally, I feel it is unlikely that we will see new parties emerge in the near future who dominate the political scene but the politicians might change. DUP and Sinn Fein are not long removed from having leadership who once espoused divisive ideas with some of their current members remaining in that bygone era. At the moment it looks unlikely but if sections of the population continue to see their government fail and their circumstances depreciate, how long will it take before new frustration emerges.