by N. Peter Kramer
Local elections rarely warrant broad attention, but we do not live in normal times and the votes Britons cast Thursday don’t count as a normal local election. The results mark the next step in what is becoming a major political realignment in the world’s fifth largest economy, the United Kingdom. Voters across the UK elected a bevy of local councillors, a handful of mayors and regional parliaments in Scotland and Wales.
Even Boris Johnson was flabbergasted by the scale of the Tory win in England. But the most significant result was the Conservative victory in the sole parliamentary by-election. The Tories won in Hartlepool, in northeast England, for the first time since 1974. This is the latest brick to fall from the so-called Red Wall of historically Labour seats that used to stretch across northern England. Prime Minister Boris Johnson won a historic parliamentary majority in 2019 by flipping large numbers of these seats to the Conservatives, and now he has flipped another one. It is clear that Johnson keeps on winning by appealing to the man in the street.
In itself the loss of another seat in the House of Commons does not really matter. Prime Minister Boris Johnson already had a majority of eighty seats. But the blow he deals in Hartlepool will divide Labour further. Labour is in big problems. ‘Hartlepool proves that people no longer know what Labour stands for’, a union leader said. A fellow union leader even fears that Labour will become ‘irrelevant’. It is clear that the party needs a leader with charisma.
After Tony Blair, Labour no longer had leaders who could appeal to a wide audience. Gordon Brown was too gruff, Ed Milliband too nerdy, Jeremy Corbyn too left and the current party leader Sir Keir Starmer is billed as a ‘dull and bloodless intellectual’. ‘Labour needs someone who can win elections’, Andrew Adonis, minister under Blair and Brown summarised the state of his party.
Boris Johnson has made important promises to benefit the North of England. It will be a part of the ‘green industrial revolution’ he promised. The British economy is slowly gaining momentum. The Bank of England predict the greatest economic growth in seventy years. That is not in line with Brussels’ Brexit doom scenarios.
Anyhow, the lower educated workers put their money on Boris Johnson. They recognise themselves in his optimistic and nationalistic discourse. They are even willing to condone the expensive wallpaper of his wasteful fiancee Carrie Symonds.
