The ride goes on regardless of President

It is fair to say that the reaction in the Channel Islands to Mr Trump winning the November 2016 election was bleak.

Policy & Resources took its time to send ‘congratulations’, with chief minister Gavin St Pier opting to scribble a few lines on the celebrated novel’s frontispiece about the shared history and values of the Bailiwick of Guernsey and the USA.

If that looked begrudging, Jersey’s chief minister sent nothing at all.

Just in case there was any doubt about the mood, Deputy St Pier then launched a thinly-veiled attack on President-elect Trump in the States Assembly with a speech about how often women and girls were sexually abused and that such assaults should never be dismissed as ‘locker room talk’.

Nor was Deputy St Pier alone in his doubts about President No. 45. Within weeks, Britain was locked in a row about the wisdom of inviting the newly-inaugurated ‘leader of the western world’ over for a state visit and protests were springing up across the country.

Guernsey joined in and a few dozen people holding placards gathered in the Sunken Gardens to protest ‘those who would use hatred and xenophobia to divide’.

Such sentiments might seem prophetic now, but little did the world know the rollercoaster ride it was about to go on, fuelled by a fusillade of CAPS-heavy Tweets and an utter disregard for political or societal norms.

Little wonder then that the anxious mood of 2016 has been replaced in 2020 with a more optimistic tone. Congratulatory notes have been sent – including by Jersey – to President-elect Biden and Kamala Harris, the first woman and the first black vice-president.

Such new-found optimism has its work cut out. The UK’s and Guernsey’s fortunes are intertwined with the world’s biggest democracy, and while the USA struggles to bridge its divisions, let alone defeat Covid-19, the rollercoaster ride goes on.