Setting the bar: does Keir Starmer point the way for Kamala Harris?

There's been a "profound change" in the US election race since Kamala Harris became the Democratic candidate, Keir Starmer said this week – the latest chapter in the pair's transatlantic love-in.

Ministers have "repeatedly said" that Britain would "work with whoever ended up in the White House", but Labour is "understood to significantly favour a Democrat win" said Geraldine Scott in The Times, and pundits are noting growing similarities between the two leaders.

What did the commentators say?

When Harris said at the Democratic National Convention that "you can always trust me to put country above party", it "struck a familiar note in Britain", where Starmer "used much the same phrase" throughout his "relentless march to power", said Mark Landler in the The New York Times.

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Harris and Starmer have both "shaken off or soft-pedalled" some of their earlier positions, both are former public prosecutors who "declare a ringing commitment to the rule of law" and "both are operating in a volatile environment, where law and order is threatened by extremist elements".

Once in office their "similarities continued", said Stefan Boscia for Politico, "as each was accused of tacking to the left" and "plotting to impose a woke, liberal agenda on a sceptical nation".

Yet Harris has in fact "hardened her stance on border policy and reversed her opposition to fracking", said Landler, while Starmer has suspended Labour ministers who "balked" at his refusal to abolish a cap on child welfare payments.

Some of Starmer's most trusted Downing Street aides attended the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last week to speak to members of Harris' campaign team. The collaboration is "one strand in a growing transatlantic network" that is "shaping policy and political messaging in Washington and London".

For the first time in almost a quarter of a century, said Matthew McGregor, the former Labour digital director who also worked as a campaign strategist for Barack Obama, the Democrats now believe they have something to learn from Labour, thanks to Starmer's thundering win at the polls.

But there are "many caveats", said Landler, because Trump is "polling neck and neck" with Harris, while Labour "held a double-digit lead over the incumbent Conservative Party for 18 months before the election", and while Starmer ran "as a challenger against a deeply unpopular government", Harris "represents the Biden administration against a challenger".

Also, noted Boscia, Starmer is a "buttoned-down technocrat", more famous for his "caution and quiet ruthlessness than for his rhetorical skills", while Harris "is becoming known for an energetic campaign style mixing high politics and celebrity".

Another difference is that where Starmer "has the votes to carry out a bold programme but lacks the nerve", wrote Robert Kuttner for The American Prospect, Harris "increasingly has the nerve" but "may or may not have the votes to get her programme through Congress".

We could be facing "one of the most ideologically concerning" US-UK leader pairings "in history", argued Zoe Strimpel in The Telegraph, because their combination, "disguised in the sleek slogans and polished do-goodery", is "very bad indeed", and "the great transatlantic axis on which the whole of the West depends is about to sink under its weight".

What next?

Next month, another milestone on the campaign arrives in the shape of a debate between Harris and Trump, to be held by ABC News. As well as standing up to the bolshie Republican, Harris will "need to prove" that she will "follow in the progressive path Starmer has already beaten", namely "defining the party she now leads with an agenda that appeals to swing voters, working class voters, non-college grad voters", said Lindsay Mark Lewis for Progressive Britain.

It is a "tough task", he added, that she is "capable of achieving".