Britain Needs to Be a Bit Nastier

The dominant message from Britain’s local government elections is that the extreme right Reform UK party has swept the country, gaining hundreds of council seats, while the major parliamentary parties, Labour and Conservative, are left devastated. The extreme left Green Party achieved more modest gains, but still their best result by a distance. The moderate left Liberal Democrats held their ground, though failed to make significant advances.

The country faces a bleak political prospect. We continue to be governed by a Labour prime minister who seems incapable of leading the country toward a credible economic and social future. We are becalmed, getting no place, with government borrowing costs hitting multi-decade highs recently. Yet any of Keir Starmer’s plausible successors seems likely to be worse.