Leftwards

Get used to the name Keir Starmer. The leader of the Labor Party is the next prime minister of the United Kingdom.

Last month, in elections for the European Parliament, support for the right-wing parties surged. The trend continued in France last week as voters threw their support behind behind the right-wing National Rally party of Marine Le Pen. The outcome was largely expected.

This week, in British parliamentary elections, it is the left-of-center Labor Party that is headed for a breathtaking landslide victory. According to the exit polls (extremely accurate in the case of UK elections), the Conservative Party is condemned to its smallest ever representation in Parliament.

There are no surprises here either. Every poll predicted the Conservatives, in power for 14 turbulent years, were headed for a rout. A large number of constituencies traditionally held by the Conservatives were overrun by the Labor Party. Even the Scottish National Party (SNP), dominant in Scotland for a generation, lost seats to the Labor surge.

Exit polls predict Labor will win 410 seats against the Conservatives’ 131. Liberal Democrats will win 61 seats while Reform UK will get 13. The SNP will get only 10.

Labor’s landslide victory gives the party outright control of Parliament and ensures the party will remain a dominant force in British politics for many years to come. This echoes Labor’s dominant win in 1997 under the leadership of Tony Blair.

This week’s results could not have been imagined in 2019, when Labor suffered such a crushing defeat the party ended up with its smallest share of parliamentary seats ever. At that time, the Labor Party was led by doctrinaire Jeremy Corbyn and presented voters with the traditional left-wing agenda spiced by such shocking proposals as withdrawing the UK from NATO. Corbyn was recently expelled from the party for his antisemitic views.

This time around, the party is led by a centrist who chose to stay away from divisive items in the old Labor platform, especially proposals to raise taxes to fund social spending. With the Conservatives clearly headed for repudiation at the polls, Starmer kept his party’s platform as bare as possible, promising to