Consider This from NPR - Could the U.K. election mean an off-ramp from personality politics?

Episode Date: June 14, 2024

As the U.K. gears up for a July election, polls show the liberal Labour Party ahead of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's Conservatives by a hefty margin.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

A whole lot about politics today can be traced back to a surprising election result in 2016. That's true if you're talking about the United States, where long-shot Republican candidate Donald Trump wrote a wave of populist resentment to the White House. No longer can we rely on those same people in the media and politics who will say anything to keep our rigged system in place. It's also true in the United Kingdom, where a few months before Trump won, a very similar wave of populist resentment led voters to defy and surprise that expert class by approving Brexit. The British people have voted to leave the European Union

and their will must be respected. That's Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron, who called the referendum due to pressure from within his party, then stepped down once it passed. 2016 was one of several moments in recent history where the American and British political atmospheres seemed to run in parallel. Eight years later, populism still swirls in both countries as well as all over the world. But in the UK, weeks ahead of another election, there's another major theme. Voters seem sick and tired of the conservatives who have held power for 14 years. It turns out turning Brexit into a reality was easier said than done. Mr. Speaker, I think it should be a matter

of profound regret to every member of this House that once again we have been unable to support leaving the European Union in an orderly fashion. That was then Prime Minister Theresa May in 2019, one of a succession of Conservative leaders forced out by her own party. She was followed by Boris Johnson. It is clearly now the will of the parliamentary Conservative Party

that there should be a new leader of that party and therefore a new prime minister. Then Liz Truss. The length of her tenure as prime minister was famously pitted against the shelf life of a head of lettuce in a viral stunt organized by a British tabloid, The Lettuce One. I cannot deliver the mandate on which I was elected by the Conservative Party. Now, polls show that current Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's party may be headed for a landslide defeat. Consider this, as right-wing political

movements in Europe and the U.S. continue to show strength, Britain looks like it's swinging in the other direction and may see its first power shift in more than a decade. What should we watch for in July's election and what can we learn from it? from NPR. The campaign got off to a rough start for Rishi Sunak. He was heckled by protesters playing loud music as he stood outside 10 Downing Street to announce a July 4th election day. Now I cannot and will not claim that we have got everything right. No government should.

But I am proud of what we have achieved together. He was also thoroughly soaked, drenched by rain that poured down during his seven-minute speech. Drown and out was the headline in the Daily Mirror. Add to that polls that show the center-left Labour Party with a 20-point lead, and things do not look too good for the Conservatives. Here to talk about the British election is Matthew Holhouse, British political correspondent for The Economist. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me. Let's just start with the timing of this. And, you know, I think some but not all of our listeners might know that in the UK, the party in power chooses the specific date of the election. Poll after poll after poll showed that the Tories are in a deep hole,

and yet Rishi Sunak called an election a month sooner than many people thought he would. Why did he do this? He really caught his party off guard in the process. I mean, he did not need to go to the polls until January. Most people expected October, more like November. But there were also questions about this flagship migration scheme that would deport asylum seekers to Rwanda and whether that would be really actually ready over the summer or whether that would become a farce. And it has appeared to many people as well

that the prime minister was running out of steam and that he wanted to sort of regain the momentum. Let's talk about Labour for a moment. It's been out of power for more than a decade. Keir Starmer is leading the momentum. Let's talk about Labour for a moment. It's been out of power for more than a decade. Keir Starmer is leading the party, according to polls, looks very likely to be the next prime minister. Is Labour running on a platform or is the messaging, we're not the Tories, we're not the people you're tired of? It's a bit of both. It's a bit of both. So what Labour understand very well is that this is a

change election. So the proportion of British respondents who tell pollsters it is time for change at this election is in the 70s. But they've been seeking to flesh out a platform. And there's a big debate in the UK actually how well developed it is for what they call a decade of national renewal. So a big focus on sort of restoring public services, but above all, trying to do something about the UK's chronic poor growth. And of course, the party's leadership drifted pretty far to the left in recent years and really underachieved the last election. Is this being viewed as kind of, at least preliminarily, depending on the results, a win for centrism? Or is it again more about positioning itself as a change agent this year? I think there is a really big story in the UK at the moment, which is, if you think about the story

of the UK for the past decade, it has been, you know, often it seemed like it's been on a similar trajectory to American politics. And that we've seen, you know, the rise of polarization, the rise of identity politics on the left and right, often quite radical movements bursting through Right. a real sort of cooling in the nature of public debate, a much more sort of policy-focused side of politics. And this is a bit of a paradox, I think, in that we have seen the passing of this great sort of populist wave at a time when what we think of as all the drivers of populism actually still pumping away. Historically high levels of regular migration and also, you know, a big issue with irregular migration, very visible people in small boats crossing the channel. We've had very, very poor wage growth

since the financial crisis. We've had double digit inflation, trust in the political class is very low. But despite all those factors, the country, you know, at least a big chunk of the country is turning to somebody who is a very sort of oldfashioned and proudly quite boring kind of leader. Well, what do you think the broader factors were that caused British politics to take the kettle off the boil, as you said it? Because, you know, here in the U.S., we have a president who has tried very hard to do that, and yet the overall political system continues to kind of veer into the personality politics, the spectacle of it?

I think it's an absolutely fascinating question. And if you go to any sort of university library, you'll find shelves upon shelves of books that explain the rise of populism. Very little work explaining how you come down the other side of the hill, as it were. I think there's several factors. One is that the Conservative Party, whilst many people would sort of still agree with the values and the policy propositions that it was putting forward when it was under sort of Boris Johnson in the Brexit years, its failure to

deliver has been quite catastrophic with the voters that it has sought to court. I think the other factor, and I think this is what makes Keir Starmer such a fascinating figure, is that he has been much, much more assiduous and successful in courting those voters, the people who voted for Brexit and the people who like Boris Johnson, than he is given credit for. So even though he is, by background, a human rights lawyer from a very sort of liberal, fashionable part of North London, his whole political operation for four years has been utterly consistent in winning back the trust of those voters. And he's not done it by sort of shouting or antics or coming up with very sort of radical policies. It's by a very sort of quiet,

sort of small C conservative cultural agenda. So if you look at the Labour Party platform today, it's sceptical of globalisation. It really venerates blue-collar workers, talks about respect for the blue-collar worker. It's very tough on crime. And so it's been a very, very patient effort. But he seems to have slowly got people to accept that, you know, as he would see it, he sees the world through their eyes. The last thing I want to ask you is that, like, I personally am deeply fascinated by British politics and follow these elections closely, but I think a lot of people might not necessarily be in that boat. You've touched on it here and there, but what is your best argument for why people in the US

should care about what's happening politically in the UK right now? I think the UK is interesting because it's often been a sort of laboratory for ideas that are seen elsewhere around the world. My argument would be that if the election proceeds as we expected to, and importantly, if Keir Starmer can govern in the way which he hopes, which he hopes is a very methodical, focused, quiet, slightly boring, but diligent and effective administration. Here we have a case of a country whose politics sometimes has echoes of the United States that has marched up one side of the hill

and has come down the other side. That is Matthew Holhouse, the British political correspondent for The Economist. Thank you so much. Thank you. This episode was produced by Connor Donovan. It was edited by Jeanette Woods. Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan. And we want to thank our Consider This Plus listeners. Your contribution makes it possible for NPR journalists all around the world to do their jobs. Supporters also hear every episode without messages from our sponsors.

You can learn more and sign up at plus.npr.org. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Scott Detrow.