Mark Steyn comments on yesterday’s U.K. election. His thoughts are consistent with Scott’s, but expressed in Mark’s unique voice:
Across the United Kingdom almost every constituency voted for lefties of various stripes – not just victorious Labour lefties, but also Scots nationalist lefties, Irish republican lefties, eco-lefties, Islamo-lefties and, of course, duplicitous pseudo-conservative lefties: you can get it in any colour as long as it’s red. So, if you’re one of those Britons concerned about, say, transformative mass migration or the right to freedom of speech, things are going to spend the next few years getting worse before there is any prospect of course correction.
“Red” in the U.K. is blue in America.
This is not 1997, and Starmer is not Blair. Sir Keir has pulled off what the commentators are calling a “loveless landslide”. He was the beneficiary, in England, of the implosion of the Conservative Party and, north of the border, of the implosion of the Scottish National Party – both entirely deserved. Yet Labour’s share of the vote is five points lower than Jeremy Corbyn’s supposedly humiliating defeat in 2017: in fact, it is the lowest share of the vote for any majority-winning party ever – just thirty-five per cent.
Britain’s demographic transformation is being reflected in Parliament:
Sir Keir has lost four sitting Labour MPs (and potential Cabinet ministers) to “pro-Gaza independents” – by name, Shockat Adam (in Leicester), Adnan Hussain (in Blackburn), Ayoub Khan (in Perry Barr) and Iqbal Hussain Mohamed (in Dewsbury). … Four “pro-Gaza” MPs doesn’t sound like a lot, but, for purposes of comparison, it’s exactly the same number as Nigel Farage’s Reform party managed to elect.
The Conservative Party’s fundamental problem is that it stopped being conservative:
Effective politicians don’t “move towards the centre”; they move the centre towards them, as Mrs Thatcher and President Reagan did. Instead, the Conservatives squandered fourteen years playing on the left’s terms, and the result is a political culture that has never been less conservative, and a land where nothing works, from the creepily fetishised National Health Service to the wanker constabulary.
***
Mrs Thatcher’s famous line was: First you win the argument; then you win the election. The “Conservative” party spent fourteen years not making any conservative arguments, and thus last night was entirely predictable.
And yet, when all is said and done, it seems pretty clearly true that in Britain, unlike America, conservatives are a distinct minority.
UPDATE: Here is some fallout from yesterday’s election that I am sure Mark would appreciate:
Migrants in northern France celebrating a Labour victory have given Sir Keir Starmer a nickname and have vowed to cross the Channel at the “first chance” they get.
Speaking to the Telegraph, some of the migrants welcomed a new government and said they would risk crossing the Channel in small boats as soon as weather permitted.
***
Amir, 23, a bean seller from Kurdistan, said migrants had given Sir Keir a nickname that roughly translates as a man who works for refugees or workers.He said: “We are calling him [Starmer] ‘Party Krekaran’ because we have heard that this guy is really helpful to the refugees.”
Amir added that he would make the crossing “as soon as possible” now Sir Keir Starmer is in power.
I’m not sure the Brits are going to like what they voted for.