This weekend, something shifted in the public mood in Britain.
There were no street parties or jubilant scenes greeting the new Labour government, unlike the last time the Labour Party broke a long period of Conservative rule, an occasion marked with a dawn party at London’s Royal Festival Hall in 1997. But as the new Prime Minister Keir Starmer took to the steps of Downing Street to offer a new kind of leadership, and broke party traditions with a slew of expert appointments as incoming ministers, it’s like a weight has lifted.
People don’t expect miracles in this age of tight finances, but they have given change a chance. As a neighbor commented with a wry smile, “It’s a start.”
How did the United Kingdom go from electing a fourth consecutive Conservative government led by Boris Johnson with an 80-seat parliamentary majority in 2019 to electing a Labour government in a landslide less than five years later? And can this victory offer the Democratic Party hope that there is a way to defeat the political right and win big?
