British Elections-European Populism and Its Impact on the UK

Well , this was just one of the craziest election cycles around the world , I think , including , by the way , not you know , looking at the United States is not necessarily the exemplar of the world . But let's get into it . Joel , do you want to start us off ?

That's their worst ever results by any serious metric . But it was a really weird election insofar as in the end the Labour Party only got around 34% of the vote , which is the lowest percentage which any majority party has got in the post-war era . Really odd kind of election we've had .

Turnout was down to 60% , which is , I think , the second lowest turnout figure that we've had in a general election on record . And so you put those two numbers together and you basically had Labour getting this incredible 170-something seat majority , but on the basis of about 20% of the voting public actually voting .

So really the story of this election is very much the collapse of this election is very much the collapse of the Conservative Party .

It's bleeding of support to this insurgent right , populist party called Reform to its right , and it's very much the kind of the collapse of the post-Brexit Conservatives really than it is Labour which kind of just won by default really , in this election , well , and given the fact that it's the centre-left that now has won , what is it you think voters are saying ?

Particularly , I think kind of professional , managerial class type voters , public sector workers and whatever have got increasingly enraged with the Tory government for kind of obvious reasons .

Kind of coalition that was carved out in the previous election in the wake of Brexit , which was this new alliance between the kind of Conservatives' more traditional support base and this new support that they carved out in the Midlands , in the North , amongst working class voters , constituencies which had voted Labour for as long as there was a Labour party .

That coalition broke down so you had large sections of the kind of Northern working class vote go to this reform party . A lot of them also just go back to not voting and some of them going back into the Labour column . But really again the story is of is of Tory collapse rather than the public deciding .

You know what we're desperate to return to sort of technocratic , technocratic Labour Party .

Of course , the elections we've just seen in France , the second round of their parliamentary elections saw a more radical left coalition led by Jean Mélenchon , who leads this France Unbowed Party , where that's again got some of the kind of old socialist party in it , but also parties of the quite radical left and the Greens .

So they topped the poll , didn't get anywhere near a majority . And then the most striking thing is the fact that the Le Pen-led National Rally block was actually pushed into third place , even though it came first in the first round .

So this is obviously under the kind of context of something which happens in France from time to time , where you have a party of the radical right often led by Le Pen , as it turns out who almost breaks through , and then what you have is the centrists and the left wingers unite in what is often referred to as a Republican front to keep out the right wing

party . Essentially , that's what happened here . Once again , you saw loads of parties , even from Emmanuel Macron's centrist bloc or from the Mélenchon-led leftist bloc , withdraw their candidates so as not to split the ante , and the pen votes , le Pen votes .

What was different this time was that usually it would be the establishment centre who would be the bigger partner in that Republican front , whereas this time around it was the left who actually got more support .

But again , it was a very strange election as far as the fact that , yes , le Pen's bloc came third but also kind of topped the poll in terms of vote share and just had their best results ever .

So , in classic kind of European establishment style , as soon as they have an election in which the populists are pushed back , they say , oh , we've dodged a bullet there . But this is not really what dodging a bullet looks like . I don't think .

But I think , because of the kind of particularities of French politics in this particular election , it's hard to draw too many comparison points from this and what's happened in the UK recently , I think .

We're going to reopen the Brexit question .

In this election they explicitly ruled out joining the European Single Market or the Customs Union , the kind of two key institutions of the European Union , but at the same time they're having to kind of give a lot of nods and winks to a lot of their support base in the metropolitan centres who are basically desperate for us to re-enter the European Union .

So there's been kind of general talk of maybe we need to reopen the trade agreement it's up for renegotiation anyway . Since that we need to basically bring United Kingdom and its kind of regulatory framework closer to the European Union , to ease trade barriers and so on .

It's very euphemistic but you can't help but feel , rather than it be a kind of big repudiation of Brexit , we're going back in or we're going to renegotiate drastically different terms .

I think it's going to be a kind of salami slicing that we'll see under a Labour government and just getting closer and closer and aligning more with European Union rules and institutions , without necessarily throwing ourselves back into them .

But it's undoubted that Starmer , in particular , is going to come under tremendous pressure from a lot of his more vocals or cheerleaders in the media and in politics to be quite bold where that's concerned , because Brexit is still something that really enrages a certain section of our ruling class even all these years later .

The Tory vote delivered Labour seats to a lot of those because in a lot of those constituencies , but it's worth pointing out that , the way the electoral map sits now , reform came second in the election in 98 seats , 87 of which are now Labour seats , and so , particularly in places in the North East , particularly in places in the Midlands and the North in

general , you've got seats which have either been Labour this whole time or have been returned to Labour after the 2019 Tory incursions to those parts of the world . But they're heavily Eurosceptic .

They have no interest in reopening the Brexit question , and that's the balance that Starmer is now going to have to strike , which is to try to keep these two very different sections of his voting coalition together .

I mean , I assume you've got your open borders types there , as you know . I just saw Melanchon just said there should be open borders for climate refugees , which could be , you know , I guess maybe people from Phoenix . But so I mean , how is he going to deal with that ?

Because it seems like this has been an issue that President Biden's been had tremendous problems with .

He has claimed that he's going to get a handle on the illegal immigration side of things just by setting up a new sort of border command , but it's been very vague on the details and I think a lot of people are quite are not particularly convinced that he's going to be able to get a grip on this .

But I think , in a way , because of the fact that the Tory party failed so manifestly on the immigration question , it almost diffused it as a political issue between the two of them . As strange as that sounds the scale of the deception that's happened to the Conservative Party .

They were pledging in the 2010 election , in the 2015 election , 2017 election , that they would bring down immigration to the tens of thousands it's now reached well in excess of 600,000 .

And it's one of those things which , because they have so failed to keep their promises , in a way , I think voters thought we might as well go for Labour , even though voters do want immigration to come down quite clearly .

There's one particular labor politician , a gentleman called david lammy , who at one point accused um donald trump of being a neo-nazi sympathizer . That man is now secretary . So that's going to be an interesting way of seeing how this is going to pan out . I mean , he has been kind of making entreaties to the Trump camp , trying to talk to them .

I mean , donald Trump , if nothing else , seems to have a tremendous capacity to forgive people who might have slagged him off in the past . But now , kind of kissing his backside , he seems to get out of that .

Now , obviously , in the grand scheme of things , as we always know , the UK position , despite all this talk of the special relationship and so on , is basically subordinate to the US position . But nevertheless , that's something which is pretty much settled between the two main political parties . The Gaza question is a little bit more complicated .

Essentially , the Labour position is that they've been calling for a ceasefire for some time now , which many of us know is kind of code for capitulation to Hamas , in response to the fact that they have historically had a very large Muslim vote .

And that is really where they've been challenged in this election , where the Labour Party haven't lost many seats in this election , where they have it's been to pro-Gaza often kind of Islamic sectarian independence in some of the inner cities .

And so they're now having to walk this very difficult line of wanting to keep the Jewish community on side , who are obviously very burnt and upset by the Jeremy Corbyn era , but at the same time trying to hold on to their much more sizable Muslim vote , who are furious with them or at least the more vocal sections of that vote are furious with them over the

Gaza question .

I mean , how does Starmer deal with transgender issues ? How does he deal with , you know , people who are spraying spray painting ?

He actually went for a very kind of comical and slow development on this question because he realised it was really hurting him . So there was just this series of radio interviews over the years where he would be asked to hold forth on whether or not a woman could have a penis and he would struggle to answer this question .

And he ended up coming up with this kind of middle-of-the-road answer a while ago , which is that 99.9% of women don't have a penis . But , as people pointed out , that would mean one in 1,000 women did . So he got tripped up once again . So he went to the election essentially saying that he believed in biological sex .

But even now I mean , many of his leading ministers struggle to stick up for women's sex based rights and women only spaces and so on . So he's tried to look both way on it , while still pledging in his manifesto to liberalize the rules around that kind of thing , and it's similar with various other areas of the sort of cultural climate war .

He went from praising Extinction , Rebellion , these disruptive groups , to telling them that they should get up and go home and stop causing so much damage . At the end of the day , it's quite clear which side he's breaded buttered . Then , if you look at what they're doing on policy whether it's climate , gender , race , what have you ?

It's very much from the same kind of woke hymn sheet . It's just the fact that the presentation of it is a little bit more stiff and business-like from this late government .

With the growth of immigration in Britain , is it viewed the same way , and how will the Labour government deal with economic growth policies ?

Oftentimes it kind of artificially inflate GDP figures , but when you look at GDP per head , the picture is very different . And it's been one of those things where , again , a lack of skills and training and whatever is just being masked by this .

essentially , which is both incredibly dangerous as well as obviously bad from a national security and borders point of view . But I really think that anyone expecting immigration to drastically or even measurably reduce under this government is probably not . It's probably going to be disappointed .

I mean , when Kirsten was campaigning to be Labour leader , he was saying that they needed to remake the case for freedom of movement . So this is not really in his inclination or anyone really involved in his party . Who is not to say .

I always tend to think with the kind of figures running the Labour Party at the moment , it's not as if they've thought about this issue too deeply . It's often just the case that to be seen to be any way kind of anti-migration or anti-migrant is a no-go . So they just kind of close off and resort to the usual platitudes .

So I think anyone expecting it to come down might be disappointed . But who knows ?

This strikes me as a constituency that will be loyal to labor going forward , so it's really not in their vested interest to cut it back right .

oriented than the white majority is . So , you know , I think that it may turn out to be an unintended consequence that these people may not be as loyal labor voters . And then you know , I wonder about within labor .

They have a big Muslim constituency and maybe they are sympathetic on certain issues , but you know , I don't think Muslims are particularly oriented towards transgender , gay rights , women's rights . Does that conflict , is that conflict going to come out in the Labour Party now ?

That's starting to crescent . It's still quite nascent at this point . But you're absolutely right about how , just you know , high levels of immigration does not necessarily kind of lock in a Labour Party sort of majority forever .

Interestingly , before the Tory collapse you actually start to see some interesting things happen with the ethnic minority vote under the surface .

I mean , british Indians are still breaking , I think , to the tory party about 50 , 50 with labor , which is a relatively new development because , um , very , you know broadly speaking , um well integrated , successful minority group , um , ones who are , you know , equally kind of skeptical about high levels of immigration .

And again it's just a kind of a reminder that that whole kind of sceptical about high levels of immigration and again it's just a kind of a reminder that that whole kind of demographics is destiny sort of way of looking at electoral politics doesn't always shake out , but for the moment at least it does feel like the Labour Party .

These issues have been slightly masked , I guess , by the level of the landslide that they've had , but it's not to say that they're going to be masked forever .

You know , let's call Trump an octogenarian because by the time he's done he'll be an octogenarian . And it seems as though this generational shift from the baby boom to the next generation hasn't really effectively happened here at the highest levels , and it seems like it actually has in the UK . Is there a sense about age in leadership in Britain ? How does it ?

How do people view ?

The silent generations have been really still clinging on to power to a point where obviously in his case that really can't go on Because at some point you're not going to be able to cling on to anything , it seems like . But in the UK it's a slightly different picture .

I mean , rishi Sunak , who we've just dispensed with , is a relatively young prime minister in his 40s . Keir Starmer is actually in his early 60s , I believe . But at the same time there is a kind of sense in which that generationalism is an issue in politics . People talk about how young people have been screwed over .

Broadly speaking , the Labour Party can still attract that significant element of the youth vote , but it's not as encapsulated in the very kind of top tier of our politics .

You know , you really wouldn't have known that there was an election I can tell you , when you're in the United States in this fall you won't be able to escape .

Avoid it I mean even you know , because the ferociousness of the of the conflict , um , it almost seemed to me that , you know , had it been farage against , against starmer , it might have been more interesting .

And you know , having sunak there was like , well , you knew this guy was going to lose no matter what , so , um , so you , it wasn't particularly interesting . But I just want to you know , before we end , that one thing I did notice in the UK is well , two things . One , almost every service job was done by an immigrant or the children of immigrants .

I mean , I mean , you saw very , very few young Britons engaged in almost any economic activity except at the high level . What is is Britain ? Does Stormer own have any vision of how to get the British economy going ? I mean , the gap between our economy and Britain's economy is the highest I've seen in my lifetime .

I mean , maybe you would have to go back to Harold Wilson or something before you would have this sort of situation . Is there any idea that what Starmer will do for the British economy ? How is the city reacting to this election and what policies could get Britain back on its feet ?

I mean , it's basically been their answer to the question of how are you going to improve public services without really raising taxes ? How are you going to ensure that we can continue to maintain economic stability even with the debt as high as it is 100% of GDP , and so on . Their answer , their presentation of this , was that we need to go for growth .

Now , obviously , no one's against growth apart from some crazy Greens , of course but that's something which , when you look at the way in which they intend to get it and what they want to funnel it into , it's quite clear that we're on a hiding to nothing really .

So today , our Chancellor , in effect , our Finance Minister , gave a big speech in which she announced we're going to really rip up the planning laws . We're going to reform the planning laws , which have been a real , genuine kind of restriction on house building and economic activity more broadly .

But the first thing she announces is that we're going to end the ban on onshore wind .

That was the big announcement and it very much marries up with their general kind of economic outlook , which is , the way that we're going to bring economic renewal to the UK is by embracing renewable energy , is by building wind farms everywhere , is by really trying to take us down that route , and I think that's the core contradiction .

They basically want to get growth via green means , which doesn't work , and I think that's something which is going to become clear sooner rather than later .

I mean , they're committed in their manifesto to basically decarbonising the electricity grid by 2030 , which , aside from anything else , is just never going to happen , and a lot of money is going to be expended towards that .

So , even though they have really made the question of economic renewal and economic growth central to their pitch at this election , and also because they're kind of a very kind of business-like middle-of-the-road Labour Party , they really haven't spooked the markets in a way that we might have seen previously .

The core of their offer is nonsensical , and so , again , anyone expecting there to be a kind of measurable difference anytime soon , I think we'll be waiting quite a long time well , and is there any discussion short term about interest rates ? that's not something which is featured as at all , really at this point .

Really they are seen as the kind of steady-as-they-go sort of party . That certainly hasn't kind of caused any kind of concern around those kinds of indicators . But we wait and see really , because , again , the economy of the UK is still so fragile . That's one thing that really hasn't been properly appreciated in a lot of the debate we've had so far .

Does that seem to sum it up as far as the public sentiment ?

But this is a government that won by default . This is a government that won because the conservative vote collapsed and because there's no real viable , more populist alternative to the Labour Party at this point . But really , the story of the last few elections is that electoral politics in the UK is more volatile than basically ever has been .

Certainly and certainly that it has been the post-war period . More people are switching parties than ever before . We're seeing governments rise and fall almost as quickly .

So whilst for now we're kind of lumbered with a ruling party which doesn't really seem to have any of the answers , and if anything could make things worse , I don't think it would be long before we could see them being quite significantly humbled at another election .

The problem is that Western countries in general UK , france , us and this may be a good thing to sort of conclude around seem not to have a political program that addresses the issues that are driving our economies and societies , and is that something you would sense in the UK too ?

I think there's a very clear sense that we're beset by real fundamental kind of structural problems , economic problems , the fundamental issues which have just never actually been addressed , whether that's around house building , whether that's around productivity , whether that's around any of these kind of core fundamentals to what allows citizens to live a good life , and it's

just been entirely absent from the election debate and to the extent that questions of economic growth and economic renewal have been there , it's this snake oil around renewable energy , this bizarre idea that we can become a kind of wind superpower , the Saudi Arabian wind , as Boris Johnson must try to put it Well , and it's obviously not going to .

Right , you know , what I was reading the other day is look , at the end of the day , unless China and India stop coal and using coal for everything , the notion that we're going to be greatly improving our carbon footprint in the world is nonsensical .

And you know , in California we are going to extremes to be able to put in green policies , but at the end of the day , it makes zero difference in terms of our carbon footprint .

So , like one of the things that strikes me and I don't mean it in a negative sense so much when you used to go to Britain you would bring back things made in Britain . The only thing I can think of now is shortbread , which I could buy in the supermarket here .

That's largely because we've just we don't make anything anymore , and increasingly we don't produce our own energy , we don't exploit the fossil fuel reserves that we have here , and that's another thing that Labour have come in saying that no new licences for oil and gas in the North Sea . I think you're absolutely right .

What's interesting to me , though , is that whilst I think maybe in America there's been a slightly more lively debate about some of these green issues for a slightly longer time , in Europe that hasn't really been the case in the same period , but now we're seeing across Europe , and in the UK as well , in the form of the Reform Party , parties and movements and

politicians who are explicitly saying get rid of net zero , who are explicitly saying the European Green Deal is going to destroy our agriculture and we're not going to have any of it . This has actually become an electoral issue and a point of , even in Europe , kind of protests in the streets in a way that we haven't seen at all .

So the kind of ironclad consensus around these environmentalists and net zero issues is really starting to break down in a way that I certainly didn't foresee happening this quickly .

I mean , I don't think that would make constitutional muster in the United States which I hope not constitutional muster in the United States , which I hope not . Unless AOC got to appoint the Supreme Court , then we might get it . But if we're looking forward , what would be your prognosis for the next few years for the UK after this election ?

And if you could put that in a European context , that would be great .

They have not got a resounding democratic mandate , they're also trying to hold together a very kind of shaky coalition , and also the fact that we're in the midst of a load of economic , let alone geopolitical , problems which , um , no one is really convinced that this Labour Party or any of the mainstream parties really have the answers to , and I think that ,

particularly in an environment in which the question of cheap and plentiful energy and the lack of it as it currently stands , has become so core to our debate , that's something which is really going to bite them . So I think , even though this seems like a very stable majority , I think the debate is going to be incredibly unstable .

I think there's going to be a lot of criticisms coming down the pipe from them very quickly , and also , I think we're going to see the sort of disaffection with the mainstream consensus on green issues or cultural issues or whatever express itself sooner rather than later . This reform insurgency proves that that is still there .

It's just kind of lacking a more viable outlet , shall we say , and I think it won't be very long before we start to see that kind of pushback from voters in the way that we have seen across Europe .

I think what often happens is whenever you see one European country have a populist government fall or another European country have a populist government rise depending on who you're talking to , they'll say that that's clear that Europe is turning to the right , or Europe is turning populist , or the populist insurgency is over .

If the inverse is true , I think what's quite clearly happened is , across Europe we now kind of have the two poles of politics are now broadly populist and anti-populist , and just different countries are a different point in that in that cycle .

So even though it does feel like Britain is just unanimously voted in a centre left government , that's really not the case under the surface and I don't think it will be long until they find themselves being battered by some of these headwinds themselves .

I've enjoyed it Great and thank you all for joining us on the Feudal Future podcast .