Farewell then, Sir dull-and-weak Keir, as the UK gets set for its seventh prime minister since Brexit, with a disconsolate, populist chimera howling at the gate.
The likely incoming new ruling Labour Party leader, Andy Burnham, was a successful mayor of Manchester for the past 10 years – a diverse, gay-friendly city, whose £100bn/yr (€115bn/yr) economy was larger than the GDP of several smaller EU member states.
Burnham’s foe in the next election, due by 2029, but likely to be brought forward, will be Nigel Farage, a far-right populist MP with no executive experience, whose Reform party leads in polls.
And if it seems insane that a man of Farage’s low calibre might lead the world’s fifth largest economy and a nuclear power, in the line of King Arthur and Winston Churchill, it would be on trend for recent British prime ministers, who plumbed nadir (Boris Johnson) after nadir (Liz Truss).
It would also be on trend globally, in the US presidential line from Barack Obama to Donald Trump, or Russia’s from Mikhail Gorbachev to Vladimir Putin.
