In a way, the UK election highlights what a weird and terrible spot America finds itself in.

Labour won a massive 290-seat majority in the UK after a campaign based on the one-word title of its manifesto: “Change”.

But there won’t be much change and beneath the surface, it wasn’t much of a win.

By contrast the US stands at a T-intersection, looking right and left: The paths on offer this November go in opposite directions; the stakes couldn’t be higher.

Voting patterns

And as an aside, thank heavens Australia is more like the UK than the US.

The UK’s first past the post voting system has delivered Labour a whopping 63 per cent of the Parliament with 33.8 per cent of the vote, the smallest share of any government since World War II.

The Tories’ share collapsed from 44 to 24 per cent, but none of that went to Labour; instead, it went to other parties that had no chance of winning seats – mainly Nigel Farage’s Reform, which ended up with five seats.

It was definitely a landslide in terms of seat numbers, but not otherwise, so Labour’s huge majority was a quirk of the voting system.

If they had used Australia’s preferential voting – introduced by Billy Hughes in 1918 to prevent the two conservative parties cannibalising each other – it would have been a different story.

‘Change’ unlikely

And as for “change”, it seems there won’t be any that matters, apart from climate change. Labour has committed itself to policies that are indistinguishable from the Conservatives in three key areas: Limiting government spending and borrowing, not restoring the relationship with Europe and not developing closer ties with China.

Sir Keir Starmer will no doubt be a better PM than his five Tory predecessors, which won’t be hard, and Labour’s is likely to be a more capable, caring and stable ministry, but unless there are U-turns on fiscal policy and the EU, they will be wearing an economic straitjacket that will preclude any kind of revolution.

Actually U-turn is almost certain on fiscal policy at least, as well as the other two, but only after a year or two, which is how long it will for the party, and the public, to realise that Starmer can’t deliver any of his promises on housing, health care, education, social welfare, environment, defence or policing, until he abandons the arbitrary fiscal rules inherited from the Tories, who never honoured them anyway.

Similar scenario

To that extent, the situation is identical to Australia, where Labor continues to honour the Coalition’s fiscal rules, which the Coalition never followed anyway, and which would limit Albanese’s ability to pursue a radical economic agenda … if he wanted to, which he plainly doesn’t.

The ALP and Coalition work hard to create and emphasise differences, but the reason they have to work so hard is that there aren’t many. That was reinforced this week with the expulsion of Fatima Payman from the ALP: Labor has given up a Senate number to avoid upsetting the Jewish lobby over a pointless statement that will have no impact beyond Australia’s domestic politics. It wasn’t necessarily irrational politics, but the Coalition would have done the same.

Nuclear is the latest attempt to manufacture a difference, but it’s a Potemkin policy that won’t happen and now Peter Dutton, for heaven’s sake, is suggesting he’d break up the supermarkets, which will also never happen, but weirdly makes him appear more left-wing than Labor, although it’s a version of agrarian socialism designed to please the Nationals, not the Soviet variety.

Trumpian unknowns

Meanwhile in the US, the differences between the two sides, and the stakes in November, couldn’t be greater and might be greater than we know, since we don’t know what Donald Trump would do, and we don’t know who his opponent will be.

There are now three outcomes of this year’s US election: Trump wins, Biden wins, someone else replaces Biden and wins. The difference between the first of those and the other two is vaster than very few other elections I can think of in world history, and the difference between the third of them and the first two (old men) is also immense.

The only reason to think Trump won’t be a disaster for America and the world is that it’s just four years, but by all accounts, Trump’s conservative backers have been doing a lot of detailed planning about how to embed deep changes in the way America is governed, and possibly extend their rule with changes to the electoral system. Trump himself is an autocrat in waiting.

Over the weekend Trump distanced himself from the Project 2025 conservative policy blueprint developed by the Heritage Foundation, but if you believe that I’ve got a bridge to sell you.

And Biden gave an interview in which he declared firmly that he is still going to run, and then rather spoiled it later by saying he was proud to have been the first Black woman to have served with a Black President.

Time against Biden

Democrats are focused on whether he can remain coherent through the campaign and defeat Trump, which is debatable, but the question on voters’ minds will be whether he could see out four more years as president.

The answer is obviously not debatable – it’s no. Nobody thinks Joe Biden will be able to function effectively as US chief executive until 2029 when he turns 85, and nobody will vote for someone they don’t think will last the term of government for which they are voting. So if Biden stands, Trump wins.

Surely the only serious question is whether Trump’s opponent will be vice-president Kamala Harris, the governor of Michigan Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of California Gavin Newsom, or the governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro.

There are a few others in the mix, but those four seem to be the main ones. They’re all under 60, and would likely be two-term presidents.

Obviously the first female president would be a big deal in itself but even if it’s one of the men, it’s a new generation without Washington baggage.

In November America might be choosing between a 78-year-old criminal and liar who will take America another step closer to The Handmaid’s Tale, and a young(ish) woman who would take it in exactly the opposite direction.

Alan Kohler writes weekly for The New Daily. He is finance presenter on the ABC News and also writes for Intelligent Investor