Britons spent Independence Day voting yesterday, sweeping the Labour Party to a landslide win after 14 years of rule by the Conservatives and such memorable prime ministers as weirdass pandemic party animal Boris Johnson, alleged bathrobe-hoarder Liz Truss for six weeks, and most recently, Rishi Sunak, who was mostly notable for not being a head of lettuce.
The United Kingdom does elections a lot more efficiently than the US: Six weeks of campaigning, an election, and bam, the winner become prime minister right away, Bob’s your uncle. Labour Party leader Keir Starmer was appointed PM this morning (London time) by King Charles, Rishi Sunak tendered his resignation, and Larry the 10 Downing Street Cat will remain in the residence to greet the sixth PM he’s served over. Larry’s very real but unofficial Twitter account shared this important message kicking the Tories when they’re down and out:
The Daily Mirror reminds us that Larry has been Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office since he was adopted by Downing Street staff in 2011, and that like the other civil servants working there, he is not subject to dismissal when governments come and go.
Oh, yes, we should probably talk about the politics at play here, and who is this Keir Starmer, and why we’re never going to spell his name right the first try, and the lot of it, shouldn’t we?
The election was a huge repudiation of the Conservatives, with Labour winning 412 seats in the 650-seat House of Commons, which NBC News notes is “just six short of its highest-ever total.” The Tories, who are also the Conservatives but you knew that we bet, won only 121 seats, the fewest they’ve ever held in the 200 years the party has been around.
And as NBC News explains, Labour’s victory mostly seems to be the result of widespread dissatisfaction at the state of everything in the UK — problems that are all now on Labour’s plate.
The party inherits a stagnant economy, crumbling public services, rising child poverty and homelessness, and a National Health Service that, though taxpayer-funded and beloved, has become decrepit and dysfunctional.
Meanwhile, prisons are about to overflow, and some city and regional governments are about to go bankrupt or have already done so. Several colleges also look likely to go bust.
Polls also show that voters were more motivated by “a desire to punish the Conservatives for 14 years of scandals and policy missteps” than any deep commitment to Labour’s reform agenda. Also, in worrying news for Starmer, at least some seats went to Labour because the right-leaning vote was split between the Conservatives and Nigel Farage’s much farther-right “Reform UK” party, formerly the Brexit Party. Farage himself won a seat in Parliament, after seven failed earlier runs.
As far as we can tell, on this side of the Atlantic, Fox News hasn’t yet blamed all that on Joe Biden yet; now that Starmer is prime minister, he can take all the blame if it’s not all fixed by September.
Starmer has moved Labour a bit away from its more lefty roots, aiming for a Tony Blair-ish center-left image:
He has hewed closely to some Conservative policies by vowing to control budgetary spending and not raise taxes, as well as talking tough on immigration and social security. He has also been unafraid to deploy the Union Flag and other imagery that plays well with older, more socially conservative voters, even though plenty of younger, left-wing voters find it trite and nationalistic.
They forgot “being shitty to trans women,” saying they have no right to pee.
Keir, we have a suggestion for you (after seriously, stop being shitty to trans women): Since you have a huge majority in Parliament and no Joe Manchin to throw a spanner in the works, how about the UK’s own version of a climate and jobs bill, only with a more catchy name than “the Inflation Reduction Act”?
And make more appearances with the cat. People like cats! And again with the don’t be shitty to trans women. It’s important.
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All right, what's all this then?
Apropos of this post, I hopped over to NPR to see what was happening in the world. This was not the lead story. Hurricane Beryl wreaking havoc on the Caribbean was not the lead story. The lead story was "Who is going to replace Biden? Here are our top choices."
Fuck that, and fuck them. I used to think that NPR was the only reliable news source. Now they're just the New York Post with a slightly better website.