Sir Keir Girds for a Reckoning

The English, Welsh, and Scots head to the polls Thursday for local elections that could deepen the gloom at 10 Downing Street — and herald chaos at Westminster. Labour is expected to come in for a defeat, squeezed between a surging Reform UK on the right and the rising Greens on the left. A poll shows that some 70 percent of Britons reckon that Prime Minister Keir Starmer is performing “badly.” A drubbing is in the offing for listing Labour. A professor of politics, Jonathan Tongue, expects “a huge amount of losses for Labour.” He reckons that the scale of the attrition could even precipitate a leadership challenge. Some are calling this “Starmer’s Referendum,” and predicting an “unprecedented” wipeout for Sir Keir. The Guardian is banking on a “catastrophe” for Labour in England and even worse results in traditional strongholds like the Welsh Senedd and the Scottish Holyrood. The BBC’s chief election watcher, Sir John Curtice, declares that “We’re going to see records tumble. We are living in unprecedented circumstances. The opinion polls suggest that the traditional Conservative-Labour duopoly is facing its biggest challenge since its advent in the 1920s.” Sir John adds that “British politics looks more fundamentally different than it has done at any time in postwar history.” There is now room to Labor’s left and the Tories’ right.Less than two years after Sir Keir stormed to power to end 14 years of conservative rule, that revolution looks to have been built on sand. In 2024 Labour secured only 33 percent of the vote but snagged 411 seats, making the party the beneficiary of the least proportional general election in British history. The bill on that asymmetry now appears to be coming due. Reform’s Nigel Farage is angling for a “decisive blow” against the premier.Mr. Farage’s pitch is pithy: “Vote Reform. Get Starmer out.” He is also promising a hard line on immigration combined with a vow to “cut expenditures,” find waste a la DOGE, and keep council taxes to a minimum. Also looking for a breakthrough is the Green Party, which has adopted an anti-Israel — at times antisemitic — bent as a central feature of its political program. A new poll suggests that Muslim voters in Britain list Gaza as their top issue.A Green victory over Labour in the Gorton and Denton by-election earlier this year could be a sign of what is to come. That vote at Greater Manchester saw the victory of a keffiyeh-clad candidate, Hannah Spencer, flip a seat that had been held by Labour for nearly a century. One Green candidate for a seat at Lambeth has been arrested for an antisemitic post, and another, at Newcastle, has called for “every single Zionist” to be killed.Remaining to be seen is whether such vitriol will help or hurt the Greens as expressions of hatred toward Jews surge. A hero on this head has been the leader of the Conservatives, Kemi Badenoch. While her party is expected to shed even more seats, her vow to “stop the hand-wringing”and stand with British Jews “openly, unapologetically and without fear” is the kind of stance that could one day make her an heir to Churchill and Balfour.

Sir Keir Girds for a Reckoning

Sir Keir Girds for a Reckoning

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