Starmer, Labour and the United Kingdom: Hitting rock bottom and still digging

“My mother gave birth to twins: myself and fear.” The line is from Thomas Hobbes: the English philosopher’s mother was terrified by the arrival of the Spanish Armada. Five centuries later, fear remains alive in British politics, and across much of the West. Everything that happens today has a political origin in 2008: poorly resolved major economic crises breed monsters, and the fiercest of those leviathans is fear.

The Great Recession left in its wake formidable instability and the unstoppable rise of the far right — another name for that blend of fear and resentment so typical of our time. And by way of consequence, it brought about the collapse of the centrist parties: liberals, conservatives and social democrats, who handled that crisis badly and have yet to recover from it.

Macron’s France has had eight prime ministers in eight years, and the far right is polling close to 40%. In Germany, the grand coalition is falling apart, Merz’s popularity is in tatters, and the far right is the leading force. And Europe’s center-left seems to be the protagonist of that 1950s film, The Incredible Shrinking Man. The latest chapter of this story is now being played out in the United Kingdom, which just a century ago was vying with the United States for global hegemony.

Today its economy is languishing. Its politics are in disarray: six prime ministers in six years, and there too the far right is leading in the polls. That Hobbesian fear, combined with a certain post-imperial nostalgia, explains many of the missteps accelerating this abrupt decline — starting with Brexit, and ending with Keir Starmer.

A successful human rights lawyer and former prosecutor, Starmer entered Parliament in 2001. He came from a working-class background; a middle-class area of north London. He swept away 15 years of Tory disasters in 2024 with a campaign in which he presented himself as a steady, unflappable figure capable of managing the ungovernable political kitchen of Westminster.

With that peculiar, bland style, he won one of the largest majorities since the world wars. And right then the ailments of a sickness that afflicts social democracy across the board began to show: Starmer has not stopped wavering. He broke his promise of stability. He has made constant shifts in strategy. He has been all talk and no action, unable to restore the economy’s former sheen. To be fair, he did inherit a poisoned fiscal legacy and a stagnant GDP. And on the external front, he has had to contend with the difficulties posed by Trump’s flamethrower approach. But he has also made a number of unforced errors, like a struggling tennis player.

In his first budget, he cut energy support for poor pensioners and saw his popularity plunge. He was unable to carry out bold reforms. He appointed Peter Mandelson as ambassador in Washington, a figure prominent in the Epstein files. He betrayed his electorate with migration policies more typical of the far right. And he has been unable to articulate a clear vision for his political project, or to keep control of his party after its first electoral setbacks

He will be succeeded by Andy Burnham, “the king of the North.” Social democracy has a long track record of comebacks that contrasts with the frequent requiems the ballot box seems to write for it: Burnham stands out for his ability to connect with voters and for a tidy record running Manchester. His proposals have a distinct Tony Blair flavor; political scientists say that if the center-left wants to revive, it should not return to the much-debated Third Way. The model to follow may instead be closer to New York City’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, or Australia’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese, who speak openly about redistribution and restoring purchasing power.

That does not appear to be Burnham’s profile. He has pledged to strictly respect fiscal rules to reassure bond markets; he promises not to raise income tax or VAT and even to cut social security contributions; he is considering drilling in the North Sea in search of oil despite warnings from environmentalists; he promises to regulate water, energy and railways, but flatly rejects nationalizing them. He has also spoken in favor of going “further” in tackling irregular migration. It is hard to know what that “further” might mean: Starmer had supported housing irregular migrants in camps outside the United Kingdom.

But there is a glimmer of light in his record. Burnham opposed Brexit in 2016 and supports a reset in relations with the EU. He wants to strengthen trade ties with Brussels and deepen cooperation on defense and security. That may well be the major reform the country needs — afflicted as it is by a cloying post-imperial nostalgia, an epidemic of fear and a mediocre political class that has spent nearly 20 years hitting new lows, from Boris Johnson to Liz Truss, from David Cameron to Theresa May. And once it hit bottom, it has kept digging, with the dull Starmer and his Blairite Labour.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition