Forty-eight hours before President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump clashed on stage in Atlanta on Thursday, the leaders of the United Kingdom’s two major political parties, Prime Ministers Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer, engaged in a heated exchange in Nottingham, England.
To say their debates were different does not adequately capture the Atlantic-sized gulf between them.
In content, tone and atmosphere, the British debate showed two politicians at the top of their game, arguing vigorously over a wide range of issues – often heatedly, with plenty of personal attacks, but focused on policy details such as tax, immigration and health care. Neither Sunak, 44, nor Starmer, 61, mentioned their golf handicaps.
The political climates of Britain and the United States are often thought of as systematically aligned — the conservative turn to Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, the youth and center-left turn to Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, the anti-establishment, populist backlash that fueled Brexit and Trump. But this week’s back-to-back exchanges show how sharply these democracies have diverged, at least in this election cycle.
“These are two countries in very different situations with very different views 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 like that of two extremely serious politicians,” Darroch continued. “The tone between Biden and Trump was acrimonious, vicious, childish, but not serious.”
In part, this reflects the different personalities of the two candidates: Sunak, a former hedge fund manager, and Starmer, a former prosecutor, are more technocratic and detail-oriented than either Trump or Biden. Neither is known as a charismatic politician.
There is little personal animosity between them, as there is between Trump, 78, and Biden, 81. Both men entered parliament in 2015, but they did not get to know each other until Sunak became prime minister in 2022.
But the different tones also reflect how Britain’s political class has moved beyond the vicious divisions over Brexit. Eight years after Britons voted to leave the European Union, they have returned to more mundane debates about taxes, spending, planning permissions for homes and how to cut waiting times for the overburdened National Health Service.
Robert Ford, professor of politics at the University of Manchester, said: “Sunak tried to bring some American-style culture war issues into the debate early in the campaign, but there was little appetite for that.”
Britain’s political cast has also changed. “Who’s missing from that stage? Boris Johnson,” Professor Ford said, referring to the flamboyant prime minister who led the Brexit campaign and compared him to Trump.
Johnson was ousted from power by the Conservative Party amid scandals, including over social gatherings during the coronavirus lockdown. His successor, Liz Truss, lasted just 44 days after her tax cut proposals sparked a backlash in financial markets.
“Our system appears to have healthier formal and informal mechanisms for removing leaders,” Professor Ford said. “For Biden and Trump, there is no obvious mechanism to remove them other than defeating them on Election Day.”
British voters go to the polls on July 4, with Sunak’s center-right Conservatives expected to be ousted from power after 14 years in favor of Starmer’s center-left Labour Party. The debate is seen as one of Sunak’s last chances to avoid a crushing defeat.
The prime minister repeatedly hammered out Labour’s argument that it would raise taxes and open Britain’s borders to immigrants. “Don’t surrender,” Sunak repeated several times to the studio audience (another difference from the US debates, where there is no studio audience).
Mr Starmer responded angrily, saying the prime minister had lied about tax, in the closest the two men have ever come to a confrontation between Biden and Trump. He also laid out his party’s plans to build 1.5 million new homes, calling the lack of affordable housing “the tragedy of the last 10 years”.
The debate has been met with criticism, with some accusing Sunak of being too aggressive and bullying Starmer, while others have suggested Starmer has been erratic, especially on how to curb the massive influx of asylum seekers crossing the English Channel.
Some find the back and forth over taxation boring. Writer Jonathan Coe compares it to the European football championship, which is broadcast on another channel at the same time.
Koe posted on X, “Can I stand to spend another hour watching these people kick a ball back and forth meaninglessly, or should I just turn around and watch some football?”
Darroch noted that televised debates are a relatively recent introduction to British politics from the United States, with the first debate between candidates for prime minister taking place in 2010. Unlike in the United States, where they can change the trajectory of a campaign, debates rarely change the mood of the British public — something many Democrats fear a poor performance by Biden could change.
First, British politicians debate in the House of Commons almost every week. Sunak and Starmer have clashed dozens of times during Prime Minister’s Questions, a routine Wednesday event where the leader of the opposition asks the prime minister questions while journalists take notes.
“If you both are good at debating, debates become very boring because nobody makes a big mistake,” Mr Darroch said. “The British public expects a good cricket match and not too many low blows. We live in a much greyer political world than the colourful debates in the US.”
