Political trends in the United States and Great Britain often seem to move in parallel, and last week’s local elections across the United Kingdom yield some pertinent lessons for U.S. political parties.
For Republicans, the main takeaway is that competent governance matters. One big reason Britain’s Conservatives scored major gains on “Super Thursday” is that voters credit Prime Minister Boris Johnson with having done a good job of rolling out COVID vaccines.
In contrast, Donald Trump bungled the pandemic from start to finish in a clownish performance that his own pollster has cited as the number one reason U.S. voters denied him reelection in 2020.
For Democrats, the sad state of Britain’s Labour Party is a cautionary tale against what can happen to progressives when they abandon electoral pragmatism and indulge left-wing purists. The party seems unable to exorcise the ghost of ex-leader Jeremy Corbyn, the doctrinaire socialist who led the party two years ago to its worst drubbing since the 1930s.
