Keir Starmer
winner and loser
Rishi Sunak
I know little about the Labour Party leader and new Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, which is to say that I know little more than what has been in the American press, supplemented by occasional deeper dives into a few extensive opinion pieces in reasonably trustworthy British commentators. (The British press can be quite as propagandistic and partisan as the American, but I find there are more honest brokers among English commentators than among American ones.) But there seems to be a fair consensus concerning him: a highly competent lawyer, undramatic to the very border of putting you to sleep, yet said to be a man of strong opinions, strongly held perhaps but most cautiously advanced. But the proof of the pudding is in the eating. He just spearheaded a huge revolution in British electoral politics. Though he was aided in his task by the natural desire of an exhausted electorate for change and by the fecklessness of a Conservative Party no longer clear on what it thinks it is conserving, it was still a remarkable feat. It was also something of a resurrection act, given the doldrums in which the Labour Party languished under Jeremy Corbyn. The reshaping of his party—the necessary prelude to its success—can have been no easy task. On the other hand, in winning its record majority the Labour Party only got about a third of the total vote, which was more clearly a boisterous rejection of Tories than a heartfelt endorsement of their conquerors. The victory was huge, perhaps even staggering in breadth, but not necessarily very deep. The Liberal Democrats, who had seemed dead in the water, also made a significant comeback. A very important development: Nigel Farage’s new UK Reform is now very much on the map. Farage himself, though roundly denounced by the American commentariat, is, if I sense things aright, about to become a serious force in British politics. He now has his own seat in Parliament. Farage will probably continue to be treated as a nut job by the bien pensant Anglo-American press, but in my view he is the only major political figure in the British landscape of whom the adjective “charismatic” might be used. At the very least he is remarkably articulate and skillful. The fragmentation of the vote, which also suggested a serious eclipse of the Scottish National Party, looks much more like that in several other European countries than it has in the past. Britain is not alone in refuting the idea of an uncomplicated rightward lurch throughout Europe. The second round of French elections has also seriously questioned the trend, though only at the cost of creating a parliament almost tailor-made for inaction.
Rishi Sunak, the Tory leader whom Starmer trounced, can be accurately described, I suppose, as the most sensational loser in British politics. Commentators have had to go back more than a century in political history to find even an approximate parallel. But I italicize the word loser for a particular reason. What it means in this context is that the Tories were defeated by the Labour Party in a political election. But in the American English used by Donald Trump the word is an all-purpose insult denoting personal inadequacy of all sorts. A rough analogy to its semiotic degradation is evidenced in the adjective “pathetic”. Both words are among Trump’s staples in his lexicon of invective. According to Trump’s one-time chief of staff and Secretary of Homeland Security, John F. Kelly, President Trump used the term “suckers and losers” of some American service men killed or wounded in military action. Trump has vehemently denied having made any such remark, as he also denied having had sexual relations “with a porn star.” These are disputed matters. Just as in Clintonian times it all depended upon what the meaning of is is, who can know precisely at what moment an ordinary actor achieves stardom? All this became relevant in the disastrous debate when President Biden invoked the memory of his late son, Joseph, generally known as Beau, who had served in the Army in Iraq in 2008-9, and who died of cancer in 2015. Beau Biden, widely admired, was a decorated veteran who was already advancing in his own promising political career at the time of his death. President Biden, indignantly defending the memory of his dead son, attacked Trump for his reported remarks about “suckers and losers,” denying that his son fit in either category. On the contrary, his Irish up and coherent for a brief moment, Biden said “You’re the sucker, you’re the loser.” Better late than never, perhaps, and certainly more defensible than the debaters’ childish finale about golf handicaps. But hardly Douglas versus Lincoln.
Among Shakespeare scholars there is a kind of literary urban legend concerning Gladstone (or alternatively “a Victorian British matron”) who having viewed a performance of Hamlet (or perhaps Anthony and Cleopatra ) is supposed to have thus summed up the evening: “How very unlike the domestic life of our own dear queen!” Comparisons inevitably invade my mind at this time of political drama both for Britain and for America. At the center of Sunak’s brief and dignified concession speech was his unequivocal and unqualified statement that “…I take responsibility for the loss.” Loss is what is suffered by a loser. This was not said in a perfunctory or incidental way. It certainly was not said with even a hint of extenuation, let alone rationalization. He did not suggest that the election had been rigged or insinuate that he had lost because of a head cold, or that the press had been against him, or that the moon had been in the eighth house. He accepted responsibility because he had been the leader of the Conservative Party in an election that was for him and his colleagues a catastrophic defeat. But though the concession speech was quite brief, it was memorable not only for the economy of what it went on to say but what it refrained from saying. In the latter category conspicuously was any hint of personal animus or of grievance based in a suspicion of unfairness or shadiness and any badmouthing of the victorious party. This brings me to what he did say. He made clear that there would be an orderly, efficient, and civil transfer of power, and that that was a fact that should be reassuring to all Britons. Few people can have a more accurate view of the difficulties his successor faces than does Sunak; but Sunak expressed only encouraging hopes for the country’s success. He made no attempt to evade his own responsibility, even while stressing that his lack of success came not from want of trying. He reported that he had already conveyed his congratulations and best wishes to Keir Starmer, who received them with the same courteous professionalism with which they were offered. Nothing about suckers and losers. And the only thing about “I’m the guy…” was in essence “I’m the guy who lost the election.” Honesty, modesty, civility, courtesy. These qualities appear to be too delicate to endure the Atlantic crossing. What losers!
