The Election No One is Talking About
not the Corporate media, not FoxNews, and not Left leaning publications
On July 4, 2024, the 248th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Great Britain and occupied Northern Ireland will be having parliamentary elections.
The Republic of Ireland has historically been refused any participation in Prostestant British society — and once that participation was allowed, it was premised on bowing to a British Monarch.
That Irish-American departure aside, it seems that the reign of Tory ineptitude is, at last, at its end.
In the past 45 years, the U.S. has had 8 presidents and 11 elections (2024 will be the 12th quadrennial presidential election since 1979). Great Britain and Northern Ireland, have had 9 Prime Ministers and 17 elections.
Before one thinks that 17 sounds like a lot, the U.S has had 22 congressional elections (2024 will be the 23rd such election since 1979). It is the nature of parliamentary democracies to test themselves politically more that the U.S. constitutional system.
That said, from 1979 to 2010, our friends across the pond had four prime ministers1 and 9 elections. Politically, the Tories held power for just shy of 18 years2 and Labour held power for just over 13 years.3 Since then, there have been 5 PMs and 8 elections — all Tories and each one remarkably worse than their predecessor.
David Cameron gambled on the Brexit vote fixing his nation’s economic distress, Theresa May got stuck with the economic isolationism that grew from it, Boris Johnson played the Trump card — quite badly, Liz Truss stumbled further down, and the extremely wealthy Rishi Sunak has been compelled to ask the King Charles I to dissolve parliament and set elections for early next month.
July 4.
To an amazing degree, elections in Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States have mirrored each other in political sentiments and shifts in the political middle over the past four and a half decades.
Thatcherism presaged the Reagan Revolution. Bill Clinton and his “It’s the Economy, Stupid” messaging was the blueprint for Labour returning to power after what seemed like a lifetime out of power. The rise of the Tea Party in the United States in 2010 was met concomitantly with a conservative backlash in Great Britain that put Gordon Brown out of No. 10 Downing Street.
Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, and Sunak have led England et al. through a series of Conservative government crises of confidence, political do-overs, and a rather dismal economic record.
Since 2010, the GOP has controlled the House for 10 of the past 14 years and the Senate for 6 of the past 14 years.4
By the way, the Democrats have “controlled” the Senate since 2021 with a mere 50 seat majority (which includes numerous independents aligning the Democrats).
If you've done the math, you likely notice that the Conservatives have been the majority party roughly 32 of the last 45 years. Even if you shave off time power sharing coalitions and caretaker governments…it's still nearly 3 decades for the Tory control of things. By contrast - since 1979, the GOP has controlled the White House for 24 years and the Democrats for just over 21 years.
Polling in the race between the Tories (Conservative Party) and Labour shows two bits of political realism: one that Keir Starmer, the head of the Labour Party, will be Prime Minister within a day or so of the election (it takes very little time to transition between governments across the Pond) and two that Starmer will likely have a 400 seat plus majority in the House of Commons. In a place where it takes a mere 326 seats to form a government, 400 seats is enough to render the political opposition weak, cowed, and muted.
The impact of a Labour government will like be Keynesianism, a more “pro-democracy” foreign policy, and much less fealty to the far-Right Nationalism that has infected Europe and the United States.
More importantly, it tilts the Europe leftward — not by much but it will mean that of 6 of the 10 most populous nations in Europe will have Left of Center governments.
And it also means that a second Trump Administration would face a very different and less friendly Europe.
Margaret Thatcher, John Major, Tony Blair, and Gordon Brown
May 4, 1979 to May 2, 1997
May 2, 1997 to May 11, 2010
By Chris Houston - File:Control of the U.S. Senate.PNGFile:Control of the U.S. House of Representatives.PNG, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28885585
While I certainly agree with the thrust of the article, there's a couple of errors I need to comment on. Northern Ireland occupied, maybe, certainly it is an artificially created entity, but it has existed for a long time & at least at the moment the majority want to remain in the UK. There are definite signs that that is changing, eg Sinn Fein winning the last assembly elections. It is also a moot point as to whether the Republic would want NI to rejoin. As for Cameron wanting Brexit, he was a strong remainer & was shocked by the result, hence his immediate resignation.