On the surface, there appear to be many positives coming from the latest presidential elections in the US.

Americans seemed to embrace the democratic process like never before going to the polls and recording the highest number of votes in the country’s history. In his victory, Democrat challenger Joe Biden scored no less than 78 million votes to oust sitting President Donald Trump.

Four years of turmoil, division and misinformation was coming to an end after the US was led by such a divisive and authoritarian reality television star.

The result is a landmark moment with Trump’s replacement promising greater consensus and reconciliation while paving a path for national repair, recovery and progress.

Although the self-proclaimed leader of the free world has yet to elect a female president, there was perhaps some compensation with getting their first woman Vice-President, Kamala Harris. In a country riddled with prejudice, xenophobia and racial tension, she will also be the first African-American and the first Asian-American to take on the role.

Raised on Hinduism and Christianity, the daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants can hardly be more of a hybrid also being married to a Jewish lawyer. The outlook looks brighter already for equality, diversity and justice. But that’s just the headline facts.

Biden faces a mammoth and almost impossible task in healing the deep social divisions at home as well repairing foreign relations with so many countries that received the ire of his undiplomatic predecessor. The initial major issue is Trump’s defiant refusal to concede defeat amid fears that he had been planning a coup to stay in power.

Under transition rules previously routinely followed, a letter of ‘ascertainment’ declaring Biden the winner of the November 3 election should have been automatically issued by the General Services Administration, authorising necessary communication between the outgoing and incoming administrations ahead of the changeover in January.

But up to the time of going to press, no such communiqué had been produced. Showing his usual contempt there was no sign of Trump of accepting defeat in an election he repeatedly alleged was ‘stolen’ from him without having the slightest evidence.

Americans need to do much soul-searching about their future. Although Biden received a record number of votes, so did Trump with the second-highest ever, albeit around five million less that his challenger.

Those who voted for the incumbent President remain dissatisfied that their needs will never be met. Gun-wielding white supremacists are no longer just bland stereotypes of a few pockets of Americans, who have been failed by the country’s political system.

The new President, who will be the first Catholic to hold office since JFK was assassinated in 1963, is handicapped on domestic policy largely by the Democrats having no majority in the Senate to pass legislation similar to what Barak Obama faced.

Biden, the oldest US President starting office at the age of 78, faces a no less daunting though perhaps easier tasks to rectify simply because many can just be basically sorted by executive orders that were issued like confetti by his adopted Republican predecessor.

Expectations are that the US is set to rejoin the Paris climate accords and reverse Trump’s controversial withdrawal from the World Health Organization at a time the country is suffering the most from the Covid-19 pandemic largely through misguided policies.

A repeal of the highly-discriminatory ban on almost all travel from some Muslim-majority countries is also likely at least to a certain extent.

What’s not clear is how far Biden will go to rejoin the nuclear deal with Iran which Trump unilaterally tore up. There were reports of Trump trying to make future deals impossible by threatening military strikes against Tehran that could ignite a war the US has long targeted, largely at the behest of strange bedfellows, Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Likewise, there is uncertainty how far a new Democrat President will go to reverse such a conspicuously biased policy towards Israel at the expense of breaching all semblances of norms and international laws.

Harris has pledged to immediately restore relations with the Palestinians but it remains unclear how balanced if at all US policy with change because of the strength of the Israeli lobby in Washington.

A new US Adminstration also holds important consequences for the UK and similar popularist policies by PM, Boris Johnson. There is huge doubt over the much-needed trade agreement with the US and the prospect of a no-deal Brexit with the EU.

It suddenly seems much more difficult for London to run roughshod over the international Good Friday peace agreement for Northern Ireland. And what many are asking how much the prospect of Trump no longer being in the White House influenced Johnson to suddenly sack his controversial chief adviser Dominic Cummings.

It’s hoped that the changing of the guard in Washington terminates some of the excesses of the uncompromising right-wing Government in the UK. Perhaps others who have similarities to Trump-like India’s Narendra Modi, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Poland’s Jarosław Kaczyński are too feeling uncomfortable.