In his first speech as Prime Minister after the Labour Party’s landslide victory in the UK general election of 4 July 2024, Keir Starmer promised, “From now on, you have a government unburdened by doctrine guided only by the determination to serve your interest.” The Conservative Party’s electoral debacle after fourteen years in power and after their own landslide victory in 2019, was the result of fourteen years of ideology driven policies that have riven the country. Boris Johnson had broken through the “red wall,” winning seats in many districts that were historically safe for Labour by promising to “get Brexit done.” No one mentioned Brexit in this general election, even though Brexit has done enormous damage to the country, and Labour recovered its red wall. David Cameron blithely called a referendum in 2016 without establishing a minimum of participation or a minimum majority to make the result valid, assuming that the result would be “Stay”. The “Leave” votes of England and Wales were largely protest votes by people assuming “Stay” would win (Scotland, Northern Ireland and Gibraltar all voted “Stay”).
Eight years later, the only positive result the Brexiteers could cite was an increase in “sovereignty”, because every other result was negative. Their blind insistence on sovereignty meant breaking with the EU in every regulatory sphere, just for the sake of independence, despite the inevitable increase in transactional costs for UK business and trade that caused inflation and a loss of profits and productivity. A radical minority of ideologues drove the Tories down a catastrophic road, successively devouring their own Prime Ministers. Many of those Brexiteers have now lost their seats in Parliament. Starmer studiously avoided referring to Brexit but it is clear he will try to maintain alignment with EU regulations as closely as possible to avoid further transactional costs. In 2017, Danish Finance Minister Kristian Jensen warned the UK, “There are two kinds of European nations. There are small nations and there are countries that have not yet realized they are small nations.” In 2019, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte called the UK “a waning country … too small to appear on the world stage on its own.” The Brexiteers ignored these warnings. They still play a role on the world stage in support of Ukraine but can do nothing to help obtain what Kyiv most wants, membership in the EU.
Boris Johnson’s landslide was followed by a constant stream of outright lies or sheer incompetence, agreeing to EU conditions he either did not understand or never planned to fulfill, assuming they could be rescinded later by Acts of Parliament, thus demonstrating that the UK was not a reliable partner to international agreements. The Conservative Party projected an unrepentant image of privilege and disdain for the ordinary citizen, epitomized by the image of Jacob Rees-Mogg stretched out on a front bench of the House of Commons, smiling superciliously (thaqt may have cost him his seat) and by Boris Johnson partying at 10 Downing Street while obliging everyone else to lock-down. Theresa May’s pragmatic attempt to lessen the impact of leaving the EU’s single market and customs union by staying closely aligned to EU regulations was subverted by her own Party and for the sake of party politics she refused to seek a pact of national unity on the issue with a Labour Party led ideologically by Jeremy Corbyn. Liz Truss sent the economy into a tailspin. By the time Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister, Labour’s victory had already been assured.
Labour’s victory might be seen as the final rejection of the revolution begun in the 1980s by Margaret Thatcher in the UK and by Ronald Reagan in the US, loyal followers of the theories of Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. The immediacy of current affairs impedes historical hindsight, but many of the problems that led to the Tories’ demise and brought Labour back to power have their roots in Neoliberalism. Today the social, economic, and political models that evolved from classical liberalism have entered into crisis. As Joseph Stiglitz affirms, the “simultaneous waning of confidence in neoliberalism and in democracy is no coincidence or mere correlation”, because “Neoliberalism has undermined democracy for 40 years.” It has spawned populist and neo-nationalist movements that react against the damage caused by unfettered global markets which concentrate wealth in the hands of the few at the cost of the many, Stiglitz’s “of the 1 percent, by the 1 percent, for the 1 percent.”
Starmer’s promise to re-nationalize the trains is telling in this respect. Thatcher famously privatized them because her ideology said they would be more efficient and cheaper. Forty years later, they are more expensive, offer worse service, and are more dangerous. The Tories wanted to privatize the National Health Service (NHS), one of the glories of the post-World War II welfare state, and were running it into the ground. Now Starmer must try to re-consolidate it. Decades of steadily reducing taxes to give the taxpayer more purchasing power and business more profits (and win votes) have bankrupted public services. They can only be restored by increasing fiscal intake.
The election results in Northern Ireland (NI) have been seismic. Earlier this year, Jeffrey Donaldson, former leader of the hitherto hegemonic Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), warned his community, “We must realize that a demographic and political shift is taking place before our eyes. Either we close our eyes and ignore it, or we recognize that we are no longer in a place where 70 percent of the population are red, white and blue British.” Sinn Féin has again emerged as the most-voted Party and the DUP has lost seats, including the iconic seat of Ian Paisley Jr. Demographically and politically, unionism is in decline, but neither unionism with 43 percent of the vote nor Irish nationalism with 40 percent represent a clear majority (the other 17 percent is neither unionist or nationalist). Still, talk of holding a referendum on the reunification of Ireland has now entered mainstream politics in NI. Keir Starmer served five years as a human rights adviser to the Northern Ireland Policing Board and has announced he will be a fair broker for any such referendum, as envisaged by the Good Friday Peace Agreement (GFA). He has announced he will rescind the controversial Legacy Bill forced through Parliament by the Tories despite opposition by every political party in NI (it would have ended any further investigation or prosecution of crimes committed during the three decades of political violence in NI.) Ireland, both North and South, is hoping for a reset and a return to the dynamics of cooperation initiated by the GFA and subverted by Brexit.
Cover photo: Britain’s PM Keir Starmer during a campaign event in Glasgow on July 3, 2024 on the eve of the the UK general election. (Photo by ANDY BUCHANAN / AFP)
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