On the former, Labour’s situation is radical, simple, and instructive.
Under its previous leader, the cantankerous old socialist Jeremy Corbyn, Labour was arguably the most far-left major party in the Western world, with the worst case of the Progressive virus. Corbyn’s woke-equivalent battalions took over the party as their leader allowed antisemitism to run rampant and flirted with Latin American communists, Hezbollah terrorists, and other enemies of the West. So Labour was crushed in 2019, even though the Tories were led by the divisive and buffoonish Boris Johnson. The party was about as unelectable as the Democrats would be had The Squad taken over the asylum.
Chastened, Labour proceeded to carry out a spellbinding self-operation, replacing Corbyn with a man who seems his polar opposite: Sir Keir Starmer, a boxy former prosecutor who projects reliability, sturdiness, and a refreshing absence of dangerous ideas. Indeed, Starmer seems terrified of saying anything interesting at all, for fear of blowing his monumental advantage, and he is sticking to the center.
Biden should consider the same; his potential victory lies with centrists who might hold their nose and vote for Trump because they can’t stand wokeness; any one of them he flips is mathematically worth two votes.
Which brings us to the other main issue: immigration. Or, as the Brits call it, Brexit. Allow me to explain.
Much has been written about what caused the British public to vote, by a margin of 52 percent to 48 percent, to leave the European Union of which their very own London was the effective capital. Analysts have focused on the instinct to blow off bureaucrats in Brussels who are capable of ruling against bendy bananas, driving diabetics, and eggs sold by the dozen (all happened).
Many Brits also believed the Leave campaign’s lies about the economic benefits that would come; when economists said that trashing free trade with the world’s largest economic bloc would bring huge harm, Leavers declared that „the people have had enough of experts.” But the experts were right.
For all that, I’m convinced that what put Leave over the edge was average people’s discomfort with what they viewed as unchecked immigration as a consequence of free movement between European Union countries.
To the extent that this attaches to racism, it does invite more ridicule: EU countries are fellow Europeans, whereas Jamaicans, Pakistanis, and Nigerians are from the Commonwealth, the club of former colonies who often have heightened immigration privileges. Indeed, as Britain now needs labor urgently, and the Poles cannot easily come, immigration from the developing world is fast rising. The racists appeared to have exited the wrong club!
Yet it is also not so simple. Over the past decade, many in Britain were concerned to see Europe opening its doors to masses of migrants—mainly from the Middle East, but also from Africa—whose ultimate destination they believed was not Germany but English-speaking Britain. And it’s not just a question of race—they feared for British culture and, ironically given Brexit, European values.
That is worth taking a second to reflect on. There is growing pushback among even non-racist Britons (and Dutch, and French, and Italians, and Swedes) at the idea that European countries are dutybound to let in mass immigration in a way that China is not—whether the motivation behind such a duty be colonial guilt, rescuing others from poverty, or a love of maximal diversity. An articulate proponent of this perspective is the British journalist Douglas Murray, author of The War on the West and The Strange Death of Europe.
And the Democrats might consider that this concern, hugely potent in Europe, is quite analogous to the displeasure of many Americans with what they think is tolerance of unchecked illegal immigration from Latin America. The U.S., unlike Britain, is not a nation-state and is more diverse by definition, but it too has created an identifiable culture. And in both countries, indeed in Japan and elsewhere, people tend to want their country to retain its culture, not change quicker than they desire, and not become another country.
Even non-racists generally want immigrants to arrive at such a pace that they may, while enriching the local culture, also not upend it, and perhaps adopt the new one as their own. The Asian-descended Sunak plainly has done so, as my watching of Prime Minister’s Questions underscored: he grins and bears it, his upper lip stiff, even while facing a rum kettle of fish).
While to simply dismiss such widespread preferences as intolerant may be popular on some elite campuses, it is almost surely a pathway to electoral disaster (and I recognize that as the son of immigrants). So Labour today does not. There is some regret about Brexit, due to the clear economic harm it induced (the GDP is estimated to be down perhaps a tenth versus its potential). But a large minority still fully support it, most people would not now reverse it, and many of them are Labour voters.
So, Starmer is giving the issue a very wide berth. Biden, similarly, should show, loudly and quickly, some respect for concerns about immigration.
Beyond that, it must also be conceded that the Tories have simply hung around for too long, with 14 straight years in power, and have been too incompetent. The party’s five different prime ministers since 2016, each bumbling in their own way, veered too wildly between radical policies, and not just over Brexit—austerity under David Cameron, then higher taxes under Boris Johnson, then the short-lived plan by Liz Truss to hand over the economy to free markets.
Like the United States after Trump, the Brits seem ready for a little calm. So, an unentertaining safe pair of hands it will probably have to be.
Dan Perry is the former London-based Europe/Africa editor and Cairo-based Middle East editor of the Associated Press, and served as chairman of the Foreign Press Association in Jerusalem. Follow him at danperry.substack.com.
