Dear Director,
The reflection on the relationship between the President-elect of the United States, Joe Biden, and British Labour is useful and interesting and stimulates many considerations also about our future. Some of these I would try to summarize briefly.
1) Not all European political parties greeted Biden's victory with satisfaction: the progressive and socialist democratic forces did. It's not causality. The main commitment in these months of pandemic has been to relocate Europe on a new frontier, that of a new protagonist in the name of the green revolution, digital modernization and social inclusion.
It has finally been realized that high rates of inequality undermine not only the lives of millions of human beings but the democracies themselves. The theories of single neoliberal thought and the triumph of the markets have produced fears and loneliness and have given strength to nationalist and sovereign madness based on isolation and on walls to defend themselves. A dangerous spiral put into crisis precisely by the pandemic which confirmed how much the answers lie in the strength of collaboration, investments of justice and environmental and social sustainability.
2) This Europe in the making lacked a credible interlocutor in the world. Biden reopens the season of multilateralism, of the green choice, of work, of inclusion as a strategic option to strengthen democracies in the West. An axis of Biden with British Labour is therefore important, but even more so than an opposition party and a non-EU country, it is strategic to go back to strengthening bridges with the Europe that we want to build.
3) Luckily we don't arrive unprepared. The choices of these months, most recently Next Generation Eu, also thanks to the commitment of the Italian democrats and progressive forces, are heading in the right direction. But now something new and extraordinary is possible and necessary.
The transatlantic relationship is fundamental for a democratic and plural international order but the outcome of the US elections and Biden's first steps tell us that this relationship to be even stronger cannot be limited only to the strategic defence, military or geopolitical aspects but must concern also the environmental, social and value challenges. Thus a new global opportunity will open for the primacy of democracies against the attacks and simplifications of recent years. In a democracy that excludes it is easier to be populist and more difficult to be popular and to be popular, the USA and Europe need each other.
4) What is the ground of comparison is clear. The end of the pandemic will have to coincide with a new era of politics in which democracies put the value of the person back at the centre. Europe must have the intelligence to understand that the choices it is making must involve a leap forward in the unity of its political dimension and therefore in the strengthening of European democracy. In the darkest time we once again have an opportunity before us. The goal of democracies cannot be to go back to the precovid times: too many inequalities, too many injustices, too much gender discrimination, too many wars, too much hatred, too much violence, little work, little respect for the planet, little innovation in particular digital. There was no Biden, there was no this Europe. So we don't want to go back there. Together we can build something better.
5)
This is the function of the Democratic Party, to build a more democratic,
popular and courageous political Europe together with the progressive and
democratic forces. A Europe that once again bets on re-launching the option of
democracies as the choice for the development of a better world and in the
strategic axis with the USA!
Comments
Post a Comment