DERRY JOURNAL Editorial: Biden his time?... Trump, Brexit and our Irish diaspora

Vice President Joe seems at this stage to be ‘Biden his time’ while President Donald Trump, it reports hold true, is planning legal challenges.

If Biden does make it over the finish line it will spark a glimmer of hope in the face of concerns we would become collateral damage in the quest for a US-UK trade deal post-Brexit.

Our diaspora have proved themselves a force to be reckoned with across the world, and in these uncertain times, neither the Democrats nor Republicans in the US, nor for that matter the governments on these isles, could ignore their considerable influence on world events.

Indeed, it has been those ties with Ireland, personal, societal or historical that have recently led Joe Biden and Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi (who visited Derry and other border regions last year) among other senior US politicians to issue warnings that a failure to protect the interests and future of the people here would have implications for any US trade deal with a post-Brexit Britain. This was in repsonse to the UK government’s move to try to unpick parts of its own legally- binding Withdrawal Agreement with the EU, a move which has huge implications for the border and the local economy for us in the north west of Ireland.

At the time of going to press it remained to be seen whether Mr Biden would trump Trump and get the keys to the White House, or whether the President’s supporters’ chants of ‘four more years’ will prove prophetic. It seems at this stage they won’t. In fact Trump’s chances seem to be diminishing with every exhausted TV reporter’s live update.

Like so much else in 2020, it is impossible to predict precisely how events will unfold. But there is little doubt that these months will be looked back upon as pivotal in the history of the western world, as the winds of change brought about by the confluence of a global pandemic, Brexit and a US election like no other will shape all our lives for years to come.

According to a US Census Bureau survey back in 2017, around one in ten Americans, like Joe Biden himself, identify themselves as Irish - that’s 33 million people and one potential President. While some will have plumped for Trump, a lot of US voters with Irish ancestry will have identified with Biden’s abiding regard for the Emerald Isle, and amid all the uncertainty and the gloom, and with less than two months to go until the UK goes it alone, it is heartening to know that we on this island have powerful friends and allies in the US and EU who are determined to stand up for our interests.

We owe a lot to our diaspora and the achievements of generations past from all traditions who ensured that their descendants never forgot their roots and that, come what may, we back here in the old country are not alone.