The Obama Phenomenon in Great Britain

Richard H. King

If Britain were an American state, it would be a “blue” one. And if British voters could vote in American presidential elections, they would pretty overwhelmingly vote for Barack Obama. Even before Obama visited Britain in late July, a poll indicated that 53 percent were pro-Obama, 11 percent were for McCain and 36 percent were agnostic. Why the great support for the junior senator from Illinois? At present, British voters, particularly natural Labor supporters, are occupying a political vacuum. Conservative leader David Cameron now outpolls the sitting Labor prime minister, Gordon Brown, having done a superb job both in reviving the Conservative Party and attracting floating voters away from Labor. Thus progressive voters in Britain, including some Tories, clearly find Obama’s call for change and his general style very attractive.

Ironically, some of the qualities that make Obama attractive to British voters also make David Cameron more palatable than one would expect. Both promise new departures for the country and/or their parties, and both have been attacked for offering a politics of style rather than substance, one at odds with their party’s dominant traditions. With the aura of youth about them, Cameron and Obama are more appealing to centrist voters than the dour Brown, whose political appeal roughly equals that of Jimmy Carter in the waning days of his administration. Yet the parallels between Cameron and Obama only go so far. Obama is more liberal, Cameron more conservative, than their vaguely progressive image indicates. Moreover Obama’s race (“black” in American terms) and his family background add a subtle depth to his politics that are lacking in David Cameron’s, an Etonian and graduate of Oxford.

Obama’s campaign has received a remarkable amount of attention in the British press. The Guardian coverage of the long nominating season has been the most extensive in years—and largely lacking the soft anti-Americanism of the “some of my best friends are Americans, I love visiting there, and isn’t the music great BUT . . . ” variety common among middle class Labor voters in Britain. Like most Europeans, Britons tend to patronize American politics and politicians, quadrennially trotting out tired old chestnuts such as “Why don’t more Americans vote?” and bemoaning the costs of political campaigning in the U.S. Indeed there is a tendency for them to be highly critical of any American president until he leaves office at which time he becomes a figure of nostalgia. Bill Clinton, for instance, is now regarded with considerable affection, but when he was in office, The Guardian ran articles referring to him as “white trash” and a “redneck.” This time around things seem different. Overall, the Democratic primaries in general, and Obama’s candidacy in particular, have refocused the image of America in a more positive way than anything else in recent memory.

Another, more serious point related to the fascination with Obama is that Britain has its own set of “issues” revolving around race, ethnicity, and religion. University students are perennially fascinated by “the race question” in America and subscribe in significant numbers to courses on race, civil rights, and African American history, culture, and literature. In some ways, white Britain is less self-conscious about race—interracial dating and marriage are much more common here than in the U.S.— but Brits can be uneasy with explicit “race talk” and less sophisticated about what it is “like” to be a “person of color” in overwhelmingly white Britain. From that perspective, the primary campaigns in the U.S. provided an opportunity to watch the public deployment, exploration, and, it has to be said, avoidance of race on the American political stage. Still, when it comes to dealing publicly with race, the U.S. is much more experienced than Britain.

Put another way, it is not that Obama is perceived to be beyond race but that, perhaps more than most American politicians, he allows Britons to see in him a variety of things rather than just one thing. For instance, an older conservative friend recently surprised my wife and me with his reactions to Obama. Once a Labor supporter but now a Tory, our friend is given to good-natured joshing about Old Labor “lefties” and the media politics of Tony Blair. He reads The Spectator, the British version of National Review, along with the daily Times (London) and the Sunday Telegraph. Like intelligent and nonaristocratic Tories, he is generally pro-American. (Back in the 1980s, he also lived in America.) He recently asked us what we thought about Barack Obama. We expressed our general support and were taken aback when he said quietly and seriously: “I think it would be an awfully good thing for America. He seems very capable and attractive.”

Overall, then, a good bit of Obama’s appeal both to Americans and people abroad has to do with an ability to transcend the usual categories and ideological expectations. Unlike many charismatic leaders, for instance, Martin Luther King, Jr., or John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy or Malcolm X, Obama is not a polarizing figure, eliciting great love and great hate. Rather he has a cool persona, which he stands above even as he uses it to his advantage. If he is elected, Obama will certainly be one of most intellectually and rhetorically accomplished presidents since another, rather inexperienced Illinois politician, Abraham Lincoln. The other Illinois politician he calls to mind is a failed presidential candidate from the 1950s, Adlai Stevenson, who was also a thoughtful and sometimes eloquent speaker. Obama shares some of Stevenson’s detachment and thoughtfulness, but if he is to win, he will have to galvanize the American electorate in ways that Stevenson was never able to. Britons cannot vote in American elections, of course, even though four years ago someone at The Guardian had the bright idea that their readers should write Ohio voters urging them to vote for John Kerry. Still, some of the pro-Obama sentiment, the feeling that his election would do much to redeem America’s image not only in Europe but around the globe, might exert some subliminal effect on the American electorate. But I wouldn’t count on it.

Richard H. King is professor emeritus at the University of Nottingham and author of several books, including Race, Culture, and the Intellectuals (2004).