Keir Starmer, Reform UK and Britain’s populist paradox

OPPOSITION leaders usually dream of entering Downing Street to the roars and bellows of a triumphant crowd. According to , the arrival of a new Labour government after the next general election will sound more like the start of a yoga class. There will be “a collective breathing out,” he said in a speech on January 4th. “A burden lifted. And then, the space for a more hopeful look forward.” Fourteen years of Conservative government will end not with a bang but an Call it Britain’s populist paradox. Across Europe—in Austria, France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands—radical-right parties are in fine fettle. Many draw inspiration from Donald Trump, who has a remarkably good chance of returning to the White House. Britain is on a different trajectory. A Conservative Party which has often echoed the policies, rhetoric and tropes of what academics call “national populism” is on course for an electoral defeat, and possibly a calamitous one. Instead, the country is likely to elect Labour under Sir Keir, a stiff social democrat who offers a worthy recipe of restored institutions, fiscal rectitude, diligent public service and healed social divisions.