President Elect Biden’s victory will have profound implications for politics around the world including here in Britain.  It can only help that a Biden administration intends to rejoin the WHO and rejoin the international fight against coronavirus. It will help that the new President will rejoin the Paris Accord, make tackling climate change a priority and placing the US at the heart of global economic recovery.  It is also good news that the US will have a President active on the world stage who will side with democracies and not dictators.

It can be a new era in US/UK relations.  It may not prove easy.  Already in a move to protect the Good Friday Agreement and peace in Northern Ireland the new administration has expressed reservations about the UK Internal Markets Bill which legitimises lawbreaking.  Then there’s the personal relationship between the President and our Prime Minister who has been a cheerleader for President Trump seeming at times like his apprentice.

It is of course too early to tell how a Biden presidency will turn out but there are hopeful signs.  He chose not only the first woman Vice President but the first black woman . And his campaign which attracted the biggest vote in history went out of its way to promote truth and decency, healing rather than exploiting divisions and seeing working for the common good as a strength rather than a weakness.  President Elect Biden’s victory is good news in troubled times.