Compare and contrast.
This week, Britain’s voters discovered that unprecedented levels of migration had grown their population by the equivalent of another Birmingham in just two years. They responded by giving our centre-left opposition its largest poll lead in a year, and by forcing the only viable leader of any putative anti-immigration party to gorge on a four-penis pizza on national television.
Meanwhile, across the North Sea, the Dutch – friendly, attractive, liberal types hitherto known only for their fondness for windmills, prostitution, and dope – gave a quarter of their vote to Geert Vilders, a man whom columnists are contractually obliged to label a ‘firebrand’. Although he may want to sound more conciliatory than when he called Islam “the ideology of a retarded culture”, this is a seismic moment.
Whether he enters government or not, Wilders holds the whip hand for any future right-wing government. As with the Sweden Democrats in Stockholm or Giorgia Meloni in Italy, the centre-right is now reliant on their radical rivals. As Tories debate whether to grant Nigel Farage party membership, our European cousins are getting into bed with parties that make him look like Michael Heseltine.
Europe is changing. Marine Le Pen is odds on to be France’s next President; the AfD are set to be Germany’s opposition. The Freedom Party – think the Liberal Democrats, but for former SS officers – are set to be Austria’s largest for the first time. Victor Orban sits pretty in Hungary. Even in Spain or Poland, where the centre-left has won, it has done so amid right-wing advances and controversy.
I cavail to no reader in my faith in English exceptionalism. But in currently having Keir Starmer on course for Downing Street, Brexit Britain really is setting itself apart from our European friends and neighbours. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Wasn’t Brexit a fit of nostalgic pique, a retreat into isolationist nationalism, with a whiff of the old Reichstag Fire lurking in the background?
Instead, delivering Brexit torpedoed any nascent populist turn in British politics. It killed both UKIP and the Brexit Party’s raison d’etre. As successful as it might have been in earning ex-MEPs slots on TalkTV, the small boats issue has failed to galvanise a new right-wing challenger. First-Past-The-Post once again proves its worth in preventing new parties from entering Parliament.
Liberals of Europe thus turn their lonely eyes to Keir Starmer. By killing off the major challengers to the two established parties, Brexit made Britain’s politics the continent’s most normal. As Aris Roussinos has pointed out, Europe is lifting the cordon sanitaire on the radical right imposed by the Second World War. Never having needed one, the voters of Britain continue swinging from centre-right to centre-left regardless.
Of course, it is not only on this side of the Atlantic where elections are currently generating attention. As Peter Franklin has highlighted, next year, for the first time in 60 years, Britain and the United States might be having elections simultaneously. But whereas 1964 brought the centre-left pairing of Harold Wilson and Lyndon Johnson to power, 2024’s frontrunners are not so aligned.
A timeline where a newly-elected Starmer has to make cute with a Donald Trump restored to the White House is objectively funny. His putative Foreign Secretary protested Trump’s previous UK visits; his Chancellor-in-waiting has made abundantly clear her preference for Joe Biden. But if Starmer has any faith in the cringeworthy fantasy of a ‘Special Relationship’, he must make it work.
Yet Labour’s leader may well find himself in a position we can dub a “Reverse Harold Wilson”. Keeping in with the Americans has been the central plank of Britain’s Cold War foreign policy, but the sage of Huddersfield did manage to keep us out of the Vietnam imbroglio. By contrast, Starmer has pledged to continue support for Ukraine. But Trump wants to cut it off.
Volodymyr Zelensky is yesterday’s news. Overshadowed by the Israel-Gaza conflict and undermined by his persistent failure to live up to his promises on the battlefield, he finds himself reliant on a United States whose voters are increasingly unwilling to pay for his nation’s security. His calls for EU membership fall on deaf ears amongst so-called allies worried about the staggering cost.
Germany, France, Poland, and the rest are imminently set to cut off support. But one imagines, after another year of expensive stalemate, the Chancelleries of Europe will not be entirely inattentive to any Trump’s foaming about value for money. Since Starmer is in lockstep with the Government’s support for Ukraine, this would put Britain in an even more awkward position.
Picture the scenes. As country after country in Europe turns to nationalist governments, ignoring Brussels in reimposing border fences and negotiating repatriation schemes, Starmer scraps any form of deterrent policy and hands effective control of our asylum policy over to the EU. As Western leaders urge Zelensky to cut a deal, Starmer finds himself isolated in calling for Ukraine to fight on with whatever he can find in the MoD’s lost property cupboard.
The cynic in me suggests Starmer’s liberal posturing won’t survive long in office. Managing migration will be one of Europe’s great 21st-century challenges, even if the Home Office may want to wish Africa away. Retaining any influence in Washington will always be more valuable than taking selfies in Kyiv. Starmer is more likely to spend a night in Trump Tower than go out on a limb for Zelensky.
Even so, the Labour leader cannot be expected to observe his potential geopolitical inheritance with anything more than dismay. Maybe he’ll get lucky. Biden may yet triumph over his opponent’s youth and inexperience. Europe’s social democrats may rally, the continent’s current rightwards turn proving less a return to the 1930s, and more the equivalent of a frustrated teenage emo phase.
Yet this seems unlikely. The arc of history is long, but it bends towards the politics of our Atlantic cousins and European friends becoming ever crazier. Today’s America looks more in tune with Curtis Yarvin’s dark ramblings than Martin Luther King’s inspiring dream. Today’s Europe looks like one with which Farage would be more comfortable than Starmer. Second referendum, anyone?
It’s not an impossible prospect. If a Labour government buckled under pressure over migration, a recession, or war in the Far East, the right-wing critique of our current settlement will only grow in strength. If it can break through, British politics may yet look more European, but just not in the way that Starmer might hope.
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