In a matter of weeks, the United Kingdom will mark the end of Sir Keir Starmer’s premiership and the sixth change of head of government since David Cameron’s swearing in sixteen years ago. Since Cameron took the oath, each successive prime minister has served a shorter term in office than the former Conservative leader. In terms of days, Cameron served 2,254; Theresa May 1,106; Boris Johnson 1,140; Liz Truss 49; Rishi Sunak 619; and Starmer will leave with about 800 days in office. Considering that Margaret Thatcher was prime minister for over 4,200 days and Tony Blair for about 3,700 days, the recent decline in leadership tenure has been both steady and rapid. What this says about parliament, democracy, and the country may reveal what Canada can expect as we face similar challenges culturally, demographically, and philosophically.
WHY HAS PARLIAMENT BEEN SO UNSTABLE IN THE U.K.?
The era of two-party dominance could be over. Both Labour and the Tories have held power for the past 81 years, since the end of World War II. The Tories have been in office for 47 years, and Labour for 34. There was some shuffling of the leadership as one leader retired or a new leader emerged. Still, changes have been coming more swiftly, reflecting a high level of dissatisfaction among voters who send powerful messages during off-year or mid-term elections. Starmer won 412 seats in the 650-seat parliament, a gain of 211 from the previous one, while the Tories lost 244 to fall to their lowest total ever, worse even than the 131 they won in the 1906 national election. These extreme back-and-forth swings do nothing to create stability and point to a larger issue that may better explain why the British voter has become so unpredictable. Charles C. Cooke, an expatriate Brit journalist who has become a naturalized American and writes for National Review, recently suggested the British public has become ungovernable because it wants a host of policies that are contradictory and dysfunctional. As Cooke points out, Britain has grown by about 0.6 per cent per annum since 2008. Wages have stagnated, with U.K. per capita GDP landing at $53,000. The lowest-ranked American state, Mississippi, has a per capita GDP of $56,000, meaning that if Great Britain joined the United States, it would be the 51st state by economic standing. Cooke does not blame Starmer for the decline, but he calls him a symptom because the British people know things are awry on their island yet are unwilling to do anything about it. As he wrote in a recent National Review article:
“British voters, this supposition runs, want housing to become more affordable for the young and for the existing housing stock to retain its value; they want taxes to stop rising and for more money to be spent on the health service, on pensions, and on care for the elderly; they want the price of energy to go down and to achieve ‘net zero’; they want Britain to start inventing things again and for their island to retain its sprawling archipelago of regulations; they want to be welcoming and ‘diverse’ and to acknowledge that the country’s infrastructure is already bulging at the seams. As a descriptive matter, this may well be true. As an excuse, however, it is thoroughly inadequate. Substantively, there is no real difference between it and the suggestion that the median voter in Britain is seven years old. Voters want everything, all at once, with no trade-offs or sacrifices to be seen? Of course they do. Who wouldn’t? But adults ought to know that this is not possible. Where are the adults in British political life?”
As Cooke sees it, and it would be hard to disagree, Starmer is merely one prime minister in a long line who, while inadequate, had little chance because the people set him up to fail. The Labour government will survive for a couple more years, but the revolving door to 10 Downing Street will continue.
LONGER-TERM IMPLICATIONS
With the end of the duopoly in Parliament, it looks like a new party, Nigel Farage’s Reformers, will take centre stage. In May’s local elections, Farage’s party gained 600 seats, the majority, about 450, from Labour. If a snap election were called today, they would probably clean up and form a government. Blaming Brexit, a referendum that passed over 10 years ago, doesn’t explain events in Great Britain today. The de facto open-door immigration policies lie at the root of the problem. Demanding more scrutiny about who gets in and who stays does not mean being nativist or xenophobic. But people in the country cannot say they can ignore government mandates because Sharia law or something like that means more. Sorry, those people have to go, or you are surrendering your nation to something other than what centuries have defined it to be. To be specific, British elites, living in communities unaffected by mass immigration, crime, and changing cultural practices, are forcing many to turn to other parties. They are not satisfied with tweaking policies; they want genuine change and are unwilling to trust either Labour or the Tories to deliver it. The governing class in Britain also doesn’t like the idea of nationalism very much. People enjoy cheering for their country at the World Cup, the Olympics, or other national competitions. Britain has been slowly losing its brand. What products or innovative industries reflect Britain today? There seems to be an identity crisis in a country upon whose empire the sun never set. A joke going around during the recent heat wave speaks to this problem: It is said that Britain is on its seventh prime minister in ten years, enduring balmy weather at 30 degrees Celsius, and has hopes for its World Cup soccer team. It has finally become Italy! (And Italy’s soccer team did not qualify for the tournament).
LESSONS FOR CANADA
There are several parallels for Canadians if they wish to hear them. Canadian politicians and the parties they rule don’t see the threat circling their protected positions; they are whistling past the graveyard. The Canadian parliament already has five parties, and the growing dissatisfaction with the two major parties that have governed Canada since its Confederation in 1867 could easily lead to their overthrow. Poor economic growth, a lack of innovation, sitting on resources, national unity, the dismissal of populist concerns, elitist ideas being funded while regular citizens’ concerns go unheeded, are leading indicators and canaries in the mine. What happens in Britain does not have to happen in Canada. Every day, we are moving closer to a government that continues to overlook affordability concerns, diminishes the challenges faced by working-class and trades workers, and aligns its chief initiatives with those from globalist circles, international summits, and university think tanks. If Prime Minister Mark Carney, who praised Starmer upon his resignation as “someone who’s always acted with integrity, with determination, with collaboration…” cannot see the peril of what Britain faces, especially since he was that nation’s bank governor from 2013 to 2020, then is he disregarding the warning signs in the country he now leads? Britain’s decline began around the time Carney sat as the nation’s chief financial officer. Time will tell if he performs an encore in his home and native land.
Dave Redekop is a retired elementary resource teacher who now works part-time at the St. Catharines Courthouse as a Registrar. He has worked on political campaigns since high school and attended university in South Carolina for five years, where he earned a Master’s in American History with a specialization in Civil Rights. Dave loves reading biographies.
