British fascinated by ‘greatest show’ in politics as American election nears

LONDON – While spending a week in the rain and relentless traffic of London, an American might expect a break from all the nonstop talk of the U.S. presidential election – but that’s not the case.

Donald Trump vs. Kamala Harris is a top news story in the United Kingdom, a nation where political swings sometimes run parallel to those in the United States.

“You can’t really avoid it,” Jessica Womersley said as she shopped around the Portobello Road market in London. “I’d rather not have so much attention focused on it, but it’s everywhere.”

From Oct. 13 to Oct. 21, a small team of student journalists and faculty from Penn State traveled to England and Scotland to gauge interest and gain insights about the U.S. election. After dozens of interviews with British voters, academics, politicians and journalists covering the United Kingdom, three things stood out: a deep sense of frustration and fatigue with government; anxiety about the future of U.S. politics; and, a strong desire for change, whatever that may look like.

It all starts with anti-incumbent sentiments.

“The big theme globally is kind of throw the bums out,” said Mark Landler, London bureau chief for The New York Times, noting 2024 is a year with scores of national elections around the world. “All over the world, in many different countries, different political systems, there’s this kind of general pent-up frustration.”

But anti-incumbent flavoring has a different taste in America. With Harris as part of the current administration and Trump having held the presidential office previously – who really plays that role?

Parallel politics

The United States and its close ally, the United Kingdom – the nation made up of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – have sometimes echoed each other’s political shifts over the last half century.

Margaret Thatcher became leader of the Conservative Party in 1975 and, from 1979 to 1990, served as prime minister. Ronald Reagan unsuccessfully ran for the GOP presidential nomination in 1976 but defeated incumbent Democrat Jimmy Carter in 1980 and served two terms as president, from 1981-89.

Democrat Bill Clinton’s center-left politics in the United States from 1993 to 2001 were seen as influencing a historic victory for Tony Blair and the Labour Party in the United Kingdom in 1997, ending a run of Conservative rule that dated back to Thatcher.

More recently, British voters rejected being part of the European Union in the Brexit vote of June 2016, a campaign spearheaded by Boris Johnson, later a Conservative prime minister. Trump was elected just months after the Brexit vote that signaled a rightward political shift.

This year, the Conservatives were required to call an election when voters would choose 650 members of Parliament. They did so earlier than expected, on July 4, and the result was a resounding rejection of 14 years of Conservative rule, driven by economic hardship and a run of scandals. They included outrage over Johnson’s team breaking rules on socializing during the COVID-19 pandemic, at a time when the rest of the country was severely locked down.

Disenchanted voters turned to the main party on left side of the political spectrum, Labour, which won a tremendous 411 seats. Yet Alex Scholes, a senior researcher at ScotCen Social Research, said Labour’s 33.7% was the lowest percentage of the vote since the Second World War for a winning party. Voters also turned to independent parties, such as the centrist Liberal Democrats, the anti-immigration Reform Party and the environmentalist Green Party.

“There’s the question really: Was it an election Labour won, or is it an election the Conservatives lost?” Scholes said. “And in many respects, it’s an election the Conservatives lost.”

All eyes are on America with the election so soon. Will the political parallels continue, and if so, how will they show themselves in a country that has a stronger two-party system?

Greatest show on Earth

“Some people here might look to the U.S. as a macro example of some of the forces we’ve experienced here. I don’t know whether we’re comforted by that or dismayed by it or whether it’s just intellectually interesting,” said Gabriel Pogrund, Whitehall editor of The Sunday Times, on British attitudes toward American politics.

Walking down the street in London’s Notting Hill neighborhood, Daphne Cronin, a U.K. resident and senior climate campaigner for Ekō, said climate change, clean energy, LGBTQ+ issues, immigration and women’s rights are American political issues she follows closely.

“What the U.S. does obviously impacts us,” Cronin said.

Whether it’s for entertainment or concern for how their own governments and policies will be affected, the presidential election is center stage in the world’s theater.

“The U.S. has been an incredible spectacle,” Pogrund said. “I don’t think the U.K. is alone in having been engrossed by American politics. It’s probably, up to a point, been the greatest show on Earth for the last 10 years.”

Britons on Donald Trump

Though they can’t vote in the election, the British have firm opinions on what they would do in America’s shoes. Journalists that the Penn State team spoke with universally agreed Trump is very unpopular in Britain.

“He’s probably one of the most well-known politicians in the U.K. Full stop,” Pogrund said about Trump. “I suspect most people have a greater idea of who Trump is than they do, say, a second-rank member of the U.K. cabinets. That’s not to say visibility is the same as popularity. Trump is not popular in the U.K.”

Among other things, the British understand Labour party would likely have a strained business relationship with the MAGA leader.

“If I could help to not get Trump elected, like I would do that,” Cronin said. “I know about Project 2025. We know about those things here, and that’s terrible news for the climate and for all people all over the world.”

Lauran Jones, who works for housing charity in London, shared similar sentiments.

“I would say Trump is a bit of a joke,” Jones said. “But I also said that last time when he managed to become president. I just don’t see where the votes are coming from.”

Britons on Kamala Harris

Jones, like other Britons the Penn State students interviewed, had less definitive ideas about Harris. While Jones said she didn’t know the specifics of Harris’ policies, she would be more confident with the Democratic candidate in the White House.

“I think she’s definitely a stronger candidate,” Jones said. “She actually has policies that exist and might actually work.”

Scholes said Harris’ does not have a large profile and citizens were much less aware of her than Trump.

“But even so, political attitudes were more in favor of Kamala Harris winning, even though she was maybe more of an unknown,” Scholes said, citing YouGov polling data and an IPSOS poll published in the summer. “Generally, the take outs from those two polls are that the British population would prefer Kamala Harris to win over Donald Trump, but actually, British people, if you ask them who they expect to win, they expect Donald Trump.”

The U.K. general election demonstrated the citizens’ dissatisfaction with the incumbent Conservative government. But Sir John Curtice, one of Britain’s leading pollsters and a professor at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, said he questioned taking it as a major change in the nation’s political attitudes.

“It’s a mistake to think of it as an ideological move in either direction as opposed to a classic valence election, a classic election in which voters vote against the incumbent government in all sorts of ways because they think it’s done a lousy job,” Curtice said. “This is a rebellion against an incumbent government, an incumbent government which had issues about integrity and issues about competence.”