All the words that have been used to describe the UK in Europe recently are about to change. Everyone I have known for the best part of a decade – certainly since the referendum to leave the EU – would refer to the Britain of the last few years in terms that were either gently mocking or laughingly dismissive. Clown country. Boris the buffoon. Party island.
That has all changed. The UK has been transformed overnight from the land of cheap entertainment to potentially the standard-bearer for serious mainstream politics to which many will turn and certainly envy. The pendulum has swung as far as a pendulum can swing, on both sides of the channel.
The two motors of the European Union, France and Germany, are now in deep crisis. Even if Emmanuel Macron staves off a far-right government this week, his authority as president is unlikely to recover. Far-right leader Marine Le Pen is waiting in the wings and may not have to sit it out until the scheduled date of that election in 2027.
The three-party coalition in Berlin led by Olaf Scholz is battered and bruised. During the European elections, the vote of the ruling Social Democrats and their partners, the Greens and the liberal Free Democrats, was below that of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), a group so extreme that even Le Pen steers clear.
And, of course, there is the spectre of Donald Trump breezing back to the Oval Office as Joe Biden stumbles haplessly and forgetfully.
By contrast, Keir Starmer settles into 10 Downing Street with an enormous majority equivalent to that enjoyed by Tony Blair in 1997. The Labour leader has more parliamentary power than virtually any counterpart in the Western world.
At a time of right-wing and populist-authoritarian dominance across the Channel and beyond, this cautious but determined technocrat could be a standard-bearer for social democracy for a decade or more.
So, is Britain fated always to be the outlier, the contrarian in Europe? Going left when others turn right and vice versa. The short answer is yes and no.
The fundamentals of the public mood are a little different here than elsewhere. As in any EU country, including the UK, the mood is generally sour and surly. The term “loveless landslide” has already been coined. The Labour share of the vote, at 35 per cent, suggests little enthusiasm beyond core supporters for the new incumbent.
It is rather a howl of rage against everything that has come before, sweet revenge against the bombast and deceit of Boris Johnson, the economic madness of Liz Truss, and the desperation of Rishi Sunak.
Starmer’s victory was secured by an incredibly astute campaign, focusing on maximising votes in Conservative-facing seats and by a “Ming vase” approach which allowed for no risk. He would have won anyway, but the extent of the margin can be pinned on the decision of Nigel Farage to range his populist Reform troops against the Tories, thereby splitting the right-wing electorate.
To say all this is not to denigrate Starmer. He would be the first to admit that the UK is in an unhappy place. He said so in his first speech as prime minister at the lectern, acknowledging a “weariness in the heart of a nation, a draining away of the hope, the spirit”.
While he has borrowed much of his positioning and tactics from Blair, the atmosphere of the campaign could not have been more different to the pre-millennium buzz enjoyed by his predecessor.
In 1997 the economy was comparatively robust (thanks in large part to his predecessor John Major), the state of the world, while always containing pressing problems, was not nearly as dark and foreboding.
Starmer and his MPs, at their various counts in the early hours of Friday, thanked the public for “lending” their votes. Unlike previous generations, few voters nowadays back parties for class or social reasons, or out of habit. They will transfer allegiance in an instant, as the Tories have discovered.
On Thursday, voters’ message to Starmer was: go deliver, be radical, deliver the “change” that you promise on your election posters. If you do not, we will go elsewhere – and that elsewhere could be the far right: a refashioned (possibly renamed) Conservative Party led by Farage or the likes of Priti Patel or Suella Braverman, more aligned to Trump or Le Pen (or any of the many far-right movements) than anything that has come before.
Why not? After all, everyone else seems to be doing it. Any country, it seems, is capable of acts of egregious self-harm. It’s just that Britain went through its moment of madness in 2016, one that is far harder to reverse than a mere electoral setback.
On a night of stunning success for Starmer, Labour and what he calls the politics of service, it might seem churlish to focus so much on threats. But it is worth dwelling on it, if only for an instant.
In just six weeks, Reform has gained a 15 per cent share of the vote which is not that far below that of the AfD in Germany and is at a level of other parties of the populist-nativist extremes across Europe. Under another voting system, that party would have dozens of seats, not just five.
The second phase of populism is already more dangerous than the first. The new generation epitomised by Giorgia Meloni in Italy and Jordan Bardella in France is more politically astute than the first generation of showmen like Silvio Berlusconi or Johnson. No matter what lies ahead in a second Trump presidency, whoever succeeds him as Republican leader will be even more menacing.
Starmer knows all this. This is why the most significant line in his speech on Friday outside the door of No 10 was his promise to “end the era of noisy performance”. He wants to make a virtue of politics by increment, by delivery. It is as unsexy as it sounds, but he believes it is the only way to take on the populists. This will be extremely hard to deliver, given the shrill nature of British political and media discourse.
Britain is returning not so much to the left but to the middle ground, to grown-up politics. After the basket-case behaviour that we have seen recently, that is a supreme irony. If Starmer succeeds, he will be showing the way for his European colleagues who are now feeling the heat of their own chaos of the “upside down”.
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