How bad can it get? The centre-right has collapsed or is collapsing in the USA, UK, France, Italy to name just a few countries. To be fair, centre-right, centre-left moderates are hanging on in Sweden, Norway, Poland, Germany, Australia, and Canada, but the populist threat is rising across the board. Picking a row with Donald Trump seems to be the short-term route to salvation.
As for the UK, bloody hell! This blog welcomed Starmer’s pragmatism, but if that is a substitute for absolutely no core beliefs, we have a problem.
Starmer, like Sunak, seems to be deaf politically and cuts an unsympathetic figure. I have repeated this before, but he needs to be brutally honest on taxes, cut through on housing, the NHS, and small boats. Actually, just get things done. Otherwise, this government is toast and currently it is our last hope. After Rayner’s departure, I think he might have the cabinet he wanted even if by accident. Let’s see. Umm… as I write this Starmer has just lost his US Ambassador, Peter Mandelson, over his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. Did nobody check these links, particularly when we had a good Ambassador already in situ who had built close ties with Trump’s administration? It smacks of general incompetence laced with hypocrisy guaranteed to infuriate voters.
One law for moderates, another law for voters…
Despite day to day errors, the unpopularity of moderates generally has come about because of their fundamental incompetence in relating, managing expectations and delivering for voters. You can combine this with a fair amount of dishonesty, as mainstream politicians treat politics purely as a career rarely built on a set of consistent beliefs which chime with the electorate. Often self-serving and easily judged as hypocritical (see above), why shouldn’t voters go for populists? They feel there is nothing left to lose (until they have lost big time as they would be worse off on every front), as little seems to change, living standards have plateaued or gone backwards, and nobody is levelling with them. Respect for state institutions and indeed democracy itself is disappearing. Just look at how it is playing out in America. The self-serving, grotesquely incompetent Trump destroys government but incredibly moderates having nothing to offer except to self-flagellate over whether they should stay moderate or not.
We need clever, politically astute (not the same thing), brutally honest, perhaps even charismatic politicians (a change of view here) with gravitas to cut through and deflate the populist balloon before it is too late.
Where are they?
P.S. An uncomfortable UK state visit for Trump. If Mandelson has to resign because of his ties to Epstein, what does it say about the US President’s past and the company he kept…
Inside Right Politics 