As the dust clears
Thursday 4 July was a historic moment for the UK, with the Labour Party taking an unprecedented number of parliamentary seats, overturning fourteen grim years of Conservative misrule. My first desire for the election was an end to the Tory government, and as a pessimistic person the result in this sense far outstripped my hopes. It was especially satisfying to see some of the most odious of Conservatives lose their seats, in particular Jacob Rees-Mogg and Liz Truss. But the low turnout, and the fact that the incoming vote got a fairly low share of the popular vote, indicates the challenge faced by Starmer’s Labour and the deepening of the crisis of British politics. No doubt the sense that the election was a done deal, with Labour dominating the polls so unassailably for so long, depressed turnout outside key marginals and emboldened anti-Labour protest votes. But it is also clearly the case that Starmer did not offer a positive vision for change that could enthuse the country and de
