Britain needs Biden to succeed, but US decline might now be unstoppable The president’s speech struck the right notes, but I still can’t help fearing for the United States’s future 20 January 2021 • 9:30pm Our fate is inseparable from America’s: if the Republic falls, if individual liberty, constitutional democracy, free markets and equality before the law fail, so does the whole of the West. The United States may never have lived up to its ideals, but it remains a beacon among nations, a beautiful idea, a country with a unique, liberating mission. In stark contrast to his predecessor’s inauguration four years ago, Joe Biden’s speech was befitting of the office he has inherited: this was indeed “democracy’s day”, with all of the proper iconography, and his message of healing and renewal exactly what the world was hoping for. As he put it, “politics doesn’t have to be a raging fire, destroying everything in its path.”