It’s almost as if the Brits have adopted the American electoral system.
They haven’t officially, of course, but I’ve never seen the consternation that has overtaken the country now, in 2026, after their local elections. Not living in the UK I have to admit that I am not intimately familiar with their overall system; for example, in Canada our party system doesn’t carry across levels of government. Here in BC, our provincial “Liberal” party (since renamed “BC United” and not even having a website any more) is right wing, and not even associated with the federal Liberal Party of Canada. And on the municipal level, parties are formed — as near as I can tell — based on local issues, and they come and go at the drop of a hat. One might know that Joe Blow is a “liberal” or a “conservative” based on his (or her) political positions or who supports them, or even their having previously represented a particular party at some time in the past, but on the municipal level they don’t run under one national banner or another. On the other hand, in the UK they do.
So I can see that if one party or another loses a lot of seats, that (of course) reflects badly on the party itself, at all levels. Which makes me wonder why parties at the national level associate themselves with municipal parties of dog catchers, etc., which make me wonder about the wisdom of such a system. I don’t pretend to be a political scientist, and I don’t even play one on TV, but there must be a historical reason for such a system that I missed while I was passed out in class. (The topic didn’t interest me when I was a kid.)
Anyway, I see little of Starmer except when he’s being a decent international leader on the TV news (that’s infinitely more than I can say about trump!), so it’s a little surprising for me. It’s particularly surprising since the Conservative Party just went through six (!) leaders since 2016, and the Labour Party should have used that as an example of how not to run a party. However, the Brits seem determined to play musical leaders, no matter which party we’re talking about.
Should I then support Reform UK (kinda the successor to UKIP), who have apparently been major beneficiaries of the largesse of the UK public? Not really. Nigel Farage has been a leader in search of a party, which is no different than a party in search of a leader. And really, the voting public can’t complain if they are so fickle that they toss out party leaders as quickly as the calendar turns. If they don’t have the patience to let a prime minister serve out his four- or five-year term, they don’t deserve to have a prime minster for his/her full term. If Farage ever makes it into the prime minister’s post, one wonders if the British public will let him last. That said, even without being prime minister, he’s fucked Britain by bringing about Brexit!
A relative in Scotland claims that Starmer “is not popular as [he is] very woke”. But if he is “very woke”, are not Labour supporters also “very woke”? And would they not continue to support a “very woke” prime minister? This is the whole problem with that very word; what, exactly, is “woke”? I’ll save that question for another day, but I will say that there is a happy medium on the “woke” scale, it’s just that users of the word seem to assume that there isn’t; you’re “woke”, or your thought process is pure.