I’m a casual observer of British politics, but it’s clear that something went badly wrong after Labour’s big victory and the elevation of Keir Starmer, who seems like the emptiest empty suit, to the position of Prime Minister. Just as with my Mexican politics fixation, i want to see what we can learn from Starmer’s utter failure.
Jamelle Bouie has an excellent video on this, comparing the Labour strategy to the “popularism” that centrist Democratic consultants are still trying to jam down everyone’s throat. I’ve edited some of the transcript and inserted it below the video:
The British public was hungry for change, and Starmer was the change, but he didn't govern with an eye towards change. He governed with an eye towards stability, sensibility. He governed with an eye towards keeping things calm and, more than that, he adopted this theory: the reason voters had been attracted to the far right in Britain was that they were fundamentally dissatisfied with the center left's views on immigration and various cultural issues, in particular transgender rights.
In this vision, far right parties don't really have agency. They merely exist as a reaction to the failures of center left parties. They're not trying to pursue their own ends and interest for their own sake, they are merely responding to deficiencies left by the center left parties and those voters also are responding to the deficiencies, responding to the failures as they perceive them. The only reason why Reform might have support in this view is because Labour has not done enough to meet those voters where they are. If they could meet those voters where they are — if they could diffuse and co opt issues around immigration and trans rights — then they could box out the far right they could keep the far right from gaining traction. Because, otherwise, voters like Labour's overall economic and policy platform.
So Starmer pursued sort of two courses. The first was really to implement some left leaning measures in terms of running the government. [The second] was to try to outflank the right on immigration and migration, and transgender rights. Under Starmer the UK became so much more hostile to immigrants and so much more hostile to trans people. All of this under the theory that by doing this the voters who have left Labour to vote for Reform will come back into Labour's fold, understanding that they can have the economic policy and the social policy they want at the same time.
But this didn't work. What happened instead was that by going against immigration and migration and transgender rights among, and doing this in a prominent way making it really the centerpiece of Starmer's political approach, Labour alienated its core voters who are not the hard hats, but are rather the kind of college educated urban professionals — younger people, social liberals — that are the core of Democratic Party support in the United States. Those social liberals wanted a party to advance social liberalism, and Labour didn't just abandon that, but kind of poked their fingers in the eyes of those voters. [This was] under the theory that in poking at socially Liberal voters, at scoffing at them, they could win support from voters on their socially conservative right flank.
Not only did poking in the eyes of socially Liberal voters cause those voters to leave Labour and support the Greens, but also the voters they were trying to attract didn't care either. In their view, if Labour is going to vindicate our views of immigration vindicate our views of trans people why would we not still vote for Reform? Why wouldn't we just go for the the pure thing the hard stuff and not the half assed imitation?
The whole thing is worth a listen. Bouie is very good at extemporaneously voicing a position, coherently and succinctly.
From what I’ve read, Starmer had a record somewhat similar to Biden’s. He did some good things that didn’t get emphasized, and when he backed away from traditional liberal social policies (e.g., for both Starmer and Biden, immigration) that got a lot of attention in the press, and a lot of negative attention from the base. However, I’d say that British anti-immigration rhetoric was a lot more extreme than Biden’s policies, plus the Democratic anti-trans stuff was more ignoring anti-trans ads in 2024 than it was following an explicitly anti-trans agenda (until Democratic consultants freaked out after Harris lost).
Still, Starmer’s fall is a cautionary tale for Democrats. One thing that seems to be dogging Democrats, which isn’t something I’ve seen said about Labour, is the rank timidity of our messaging: “Affordability” all over the place. In a piece yesterday, Steve M called out this Talarico ad:
Talarico has a lot of money, and this ad is a classic, consultant-driven “intro” ad. It strives, in 30 seconds, to both show the candidate in a good light, and identify an issue that’s important to voters. It’s an impossible task that leads to a mush ad, and this one is pretty mushy. Steve M thinks it’s a big missed opportunity to hit out at Ken Paxton. He’s worried that Talarico isn’t going to tap the populist anger bubbling under the surface. You can read Steve M’s take — it’s not going to shock anyone who’s been reading this blog.
I guess my response to this ad is a little more muted than Steve M’s, because I frankly don’t think that TV ads work. Steve M points out that a cut from one of Talarico’s speeches on his website is far more compelling than this ad. If Talarico does what someone like Allred did, which is to raise a ton of money and then rely on airbombing the state with ads, he’s going to lose, no matter the content of those ads. Unfortunately for Talarico, his big opportunity is also a big risk: he needs to figure out a way to break through on the media people actually watch (mainly social media) with both a positive vision and pointed attacks against Paxton. That’s hard. Mush ads at the start of the campaign might be part of that, but if that’s all we get from him, he’ll lose, bigly.
Kay mentioned that there’s some kind of Talarico/Crockett feud going on in Texas, so that’s an issue. The most recent poll shows Talarico and Paxton neck-and-neck, with 10-13% undecided. That same polling also shows that people hate data centers. Instead of visiting a grocery store, Talarico should visit some folks living around a data center and make some promises about that.
