PREPARATION and planning. Vision and audacity.

President Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris are hitting the ground running.

So much for all those jokes about Biden being a senile old man. Since inauguration on January 20, with his proactive VP, this new team at the top has already issued an entire four-year term’s worth of executive action. And all this while Biden recovered from a broken foot – “Sleepy Joe” has woken up!

Re-joining the Paris Accord and initiating domestic action on climate change, taking control of the Covid vaccine roll-out and re-engaging with the World Health Organisation, introducing mask mandates, reuniting incarcerated children with their deported parents at the border, stopping the border wall build, reversing the Muslim travel ban – Biden and Harris have been busy.

They’ve pledged to “undo” the “moral shame” of the Trump era. That will take some undoing, it’s a big task. But actions speak louder than words, and, together, they are wasting no time in resetting America.

Now of course not every executive order they have brought to the Oval Office for signature is everyone’s mug of coffee – indeed they are not all my cup of tea. And we’re yet to see if they will be effective given the serious rifts between Republicans and Democrats that are a dirty legacy of Trump’s inability to see beyond his own orange nose. But you cannot fault the Biden/Harris commitment or their forward planning, or their overarching ethos reflected in a host of audacious appointments to their staff.

Listening to the new national climate advisor, Gina McCarthy, talk about climate change as an “intersectional issue”, where tackling this emergency is both vital for people’s health and an opportunity to boost the economy while creating well-paid jobs, as well as a racial justice and human rights issue, is like a breath of fresh air. The grown-ups are back in the White House, with a plan to build back better and repair the giant gaping rift of a society torn asunder by Trumpism.

On a personal level, the new administration’s removal of the Muslim ban has had particular resonance for me. Trump used the excuse of so-called national security threats to negatively categorise a large proportion of the world’s population just because of their faith. Biden and Harris’s reversal of this bigoted move sets the agenda for a new, rights-respecting immigration system, one based on dignity and humanity where families are brought together not torn apart by dog-whistle politics. Are you watching Priti Patel?

Biden has pledged to “undo the moral and national shame of the previous administration that literally, not figuratively, ripped children from the arms of their families, their mothers, and fathers at the border, and with no plan – none whatsoever – to reunify”. He has created a taskforce to reunite these children with their parents, after they have been kept long-term in callous conditions, with many suffering from severe mental and physical health issues as a result. Let’s hope this taskforce has real teeth, concrete action is needed to right this heinous wrong.

There are echoes of Trump’s zero-tolerance policy on migrants in the UK Government’s inhumane “hostile environment”. Last week we learned that undocumented minors, as they coldly call them, or actually, vulnerable youngsters under the age of 18, who arrived on perilous journeys across the English Channel, have been held in “processing centres”, with one child allegedly detained for 65 hours without proper sleeping facilities or access to fresh air.

Remember these are youngsters who have already witnessed intolerable suffering and dangers we cannot even imagine in our darkest nightmares. That they have to make this journey due to the UK Government cutting off safe and legal routes for them to rejoin their families here is bad enough – to treat them like cattle on their arrival is even worse. Whatever happened to human compassion or the ethos of “suffer the little children”.

This hostile environment has become a health hazard to us all. Unofficial migrants worry that registering with their GP will put up a red flag in official data sharing systems on their immigration status, preventing them from being vaccinated. They’d rather take their chances with catching Covid than risk deportation. The Government has said that residents will be offered the vaccine without charge or checks, but with trust at such a low point, many might prefer to stay under the radar.

Boris Johnson is still more beholden to Trump-style politics than a Biden/Harris progressive makeover. The UK is mired in a similar moral shame and xenophobia that paralysed America these past four years – where migrants and refugees are the scapegoats for all our ills, regardless of empirical evidence and truth. Unfortunately on this side of the pond there is no dynamic duo waiting in the wings with a clear and necessary plan to fill this moral void.

The Penguin may be gone in America but there is no sign of Batman and Robin or indeed a Wonder Woman saving the day at Westminster.