After 14 years in purgatory, Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour party won a huge majority in Britain’s House of Commons, dealing a crippling blow to Rishi Sunak’s 190-year-old Conservative party. It had to crash out of office with the worst electoral result in its illustrious history.
The prospect of a stable government in London is good news since Britain has been greatly weakened by a series of small political earthquakes since Brexit, its exit from the European Union (EU) on February 1, 2020.
It is high time because the British people are reeling from a crumbling economy, rickety public services, decrepit infrastructure and declining global prestige.
The results of the British general elections on 4 July may also have begun a remarkable leftward political transformation that could influence European politics for years.
Labour’s stunning victory could resonate in other democracies because political power in Britain has returned to an internationalist, center-left, social-democrat party that favors economic globalization and economic equity within the country and with its trading partners.
This sea-change happened at a time when almost all European democracies are struggling with the rapid rise to political power through elections of hard right populists determined to push forward on militarized nationalist agendas.
These populists are dedicated to penalizing immigration and foreign-made products while promoting transactional foreign policies and coercive diplomacy. They are also asserting intolerant nationalist religious and cultural identities as bulwarks against other religions and cultural influences.
For example, President Joe Biden is fighting an apparently losing battle against presidential challenger Donald Trump who is the standard bearer in America of such hard right positions heading into the November presidential elections.
Even voters in France, the birthplace of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, may not be able to stop the power grab of extreme right populists in legislative elections on Sunday, July 7.
Far right populists are already ruling in Holland and are the main opposition in Germany’s parliament, which they might take over in the 2025 general elections.
At European Union (UN) summits, eight leaders are from right-wing populist parties or depend on their support including Giorgia Meloni of Italy, which is a founding member of the Union.
She comes from a post-fascist party while France’s National Rally that could dominate the parliament as of tomorrow has strong anti-Semitic extreme right roots. In the past, many of the 19 other EU countries have had similarly strong right-wing influences as in Finland, Greece and Spain.
Countries with very little prospect of far-right government are small, such as Ireland, Malta, Portugal and Luxembourg.
Starmer has already brought deep reform to the Labour party. A sign is the pledge that his government will be friendly towards business and global trade. That is bold for Labour because it indicates that his leadership will be from the moderate centre-left instead of the usual socialist policies of past Labour governments.
Before Starmer’s rise to Labour leadership in 2019, the party was extreme left with Jeremy Corbyn at its head. His quiet technocratic temperament could be what Britain needs to get out of its despondency after the exhausting Tory years during which achieving Brexit was the dominant agenda and Prime Ministers were changed five times.
Labour has said sustained economic growth will be its first mission for government and its manifesto focuses on wealth creation. It will be “pro-business and pro-worker” and introduce a new industrial strategy that will not be protectionist. That implies Starmer will try to turn Britain into an open economy and favor equitable economic globalization with its trade partners. Unlike Washington, he will not seek to undo globalization or cause “de-globalization”.
These are tall orders and would lack credibility were they not backed by an overwhelming Labour majority in parliament. So, Starmer will not have problems in pushing laws through the House.
This is an important difference from Sunak’s government which was crippled by hard-right Tories that Sunak did not dare to confront because his own position was too shaky. In appeasing his hard-right, Sunak crashed his entire party to an inglorious defeat.
But he does not deserve the ignominy of having his name linked forever to this worst-in-history performance for the Conservative party because he is a meticulous center-right politician and pragmatic policy person.
It is creditable that he survived 18 months in a Tory snake pit of hard-right believers who placed their ideology above good policy and execution.
Starmer wants to be the leader who fixes the extensive damage caused to Britain and its foreign relations by the chaos plaguing Conservatives since 2014 and especially since Brexit. He expects setting Britain’s economic boat upright will take 10 years.
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