It is safe to say that Joe Biden’s election victory over Donald Trump last year was greeted with near-universal relief in Scotland.
His is a presidency and a leadership which offers hope in the battle against climate change, the fight against Covid and the challenge of global economic recovery.
As the president heads to the UK for the G7 summit, we can only urge our own governments to follow his example and fund the recovery from Covid with borrowing and investment to create jobs and infrastructure that will outlast the economic trauma.
Scotland is well placed to take advantage of new energy sources and we have to go through that same transition from oil and gas production to wind and wave which many parts of US have to undertake too.
Biden’s will be the most influential voice this year in making change happen to ensure the world’s environment can be sustained.
The decisions made in Glasgow in November, when he next returns to the UK, will have a massive impact
We need no lessons in the urgency of global warming. Unchecked, rising sea levels would leave many Scottish coastal communities uninhabitable within the next 30 years.
There is no avoiding the changes that need to come in all our lives to reduce carbon output but it will take immense political co-operation and leadership to get there. Biden can provide that leadership but he needs back-up too.
Yet in Cornwall this weekend the president will meet with a Prime Minister who is not representative of mainstream thinking in this part of the United Kingdom or on board with the need for global recovery and co-operation.
Boris Johnson would rather take his lead from Biden’s predecessor Trump. Biden, the Democrat president who stopped populism in its tracks, is actually something of a threat to the Tory showman turned Prime Minister.
There is little support in Scotland for Johnson’s plans to cut foreign aid, to turn back refugees, or to turn away from our closest neighbours and allies through a disastrous Brexit which created a border in the Irish Sea.
Our hope for Scotland is the same as Biden’s hope for America, that we can share the values of tolerance, diversity and inclusiveness and that we can maintain and strengthen our common bonds across the Atlantic.
The challenge is to make sure President Biden hears Scotland’s distinctive voice and different approach on so many issues before he returns in November.
