“Still don’t know what I was waitin’ for
And my time was runnin’ wild”
The PM was the change candidate who became the continuity PM.
Before he became PM, I christened him light-blue Kier, a closet-Tory advised by Blairites, who are Thatcherites.
Starmer also suffers from a personality crisis; what he campaigned for when he became labor leader, and then in the general election is totally different to what he has delivered.
He is proof that the more things change they more they remain the same.
The local elections confirmed what we already suspected, Britian is now a multi-party democracy. The question for the former big-2, labor and Tory, is how they respond.
Love or hate them, Reform have changed the narrative. The voters the big-2 have lost to them are likely gone forever. No amount of tacking further right will be sufficient.
The answer is to look “left”, to progressive voters.
‘He is proof that the more things change they more they remain the same’
The LibDems are quietly dismantling the blue wall, as moderate Tories become increasingly disenchanted with party’s Reform-lite antics.
The LibDems and Greens are also taking votes from labor, often splitting the progressive vote and letting Reform in.
For labor, the answer is to remember its roots, forget Blair, cool Britannia, and being Thatcher, its back-to-basics. The workers not the Islington elite.
Starmer isn’t the right person. His job-saving speech today was long on determination but underpinned by little substance.
He again promised change, yawn! Really? His three immediate priorities:
- British Steel is to be nationalised.
- A new deal with the EU, including a youth mobility scheme.
- A guaranteed offer of a job training or work placement for young people.
The only glimmer of hope was his attack on Farage’s Brexit: “It made us weaker. He took Britain for a ride, and unlike the Tories, actually, [who] at least had to face up to it, he just fled the scene. And now he’ll talk about almost anything other than the consequences of the one policy he actually delivered. Because he’s not just a grifter, he is a chancer.”
But? Then, nothing! Undoing the harm Brexit did would constitute real change. Why not rejoin the single market, the customs union? Remember trade? We used to be good at that.
The numbers don’t lie, Brexit was never an overwhelming demand from the electorate; 52:48 is hardly a sweeping majority.
‘he’s not just a grifter, he is a chancer’
The biggest supports of Brexit were the over-65’s, 64% voted “leave”. Many have since passed. At the other end of the demographic spectrum are the 6m who have since attained voting age; YouGov’s data suggest that they back rejoining the EU by 5:1.
Then there is regret. YouGov finds that 29% of “leavers want to rejoin.
As a result, a new referendum could look very different:
One of “leaves” big boasts was the super, shiny trade deal we would be able to negotiate with the US. That went out-of-the-window with Trump II, along with the Pax Americana, which had provided 80-yrs of peace and stability, supported by U.S.-led alliances, economic openness, and liberal-democratic values.
Today, alliances have been replaced by a protection racket where you forgo sovereignty. US support is now conditional, a bargaining chip: let me use your military bases; drop taxes and regulations for tech; give me Greenland.
Trump’s America is, at best, an unreliable ally. He has threatened to throw Spain out of Nato, something he does not have the power to do, and to withdraw troops from Germany.
As a result, Europe must be accept that they are vulnerable to the vagaries of the fickle US president, and provide their own military.
In dealing with Russia’s Ukraine war, Trump has increasingly sided with Moscow in trying to force Kyiv to hand over swathes of territory to Russia.
‘Trump’s America is, at best, an unreliable ally’
In the US-Israeli war on Iran, Trump called Nato a “paper tiger” and European allies “cowards” for failing to support his foolishness. Aside from the partial troop withdrawal from Germany, there are threats of further cuts and possible sanctions against European governments that withheld the use of their bases or airspace for Operation Epic Fury.
Europe is now thinking the previously unthinkable; Europe can no longer expect US military support. The response has to be a European defense union, and the UK must be a key part of it.
Along with defense, another area of vulnerability is technology. If AI is going to have the impact it threatens, then the US, spurred by rivalry with China, is pulling away from Europe.
Liz Kendall, the science, innovation and technology secretary argued that AI is the “currency of the future”, buying economic, scientific and military advantages, leaving countries at risk of dependency on a handful of companies with oligopolistic control over vital digital infrastructure.
The discredited former US ambassador Mandelson, in a lecture on the geopolitics of technology, argued that Britain was destined to side with Washington in a world carved into Chinese and US spheres of digital influence.
‘Brexiters will tell you that Europe is old, tired, finished, it’s all about America’
Fortunately, Kendall sees the real world, supporting cooperation among “middle powers” – fellow democracies in Europe, Japan, South Korea, Canada and Oceania – to develop a resilient digital ecosystem that isn’t reliant on “the powerful, unaccountable few”. A view first proposed by the Canadian PM, Mark Carney, at Davos earlier this year.
Brexiters will tell you that Europe is old, tired, finished, it’s all about America.
Echoing this, at Davos in January, Howard Lutnik, Trump’s Commerce secretary, gave a speech that was so insulting toward Europe that Christine Lagarde, the president of the European Central Bank, walked out.
A traditional way to compare the two would be GDP per capita. If so, Germany is 85.7% of that of the US, whilst France is 72.9%.
However, when you consider labor productivity, Germany is 96.7% of the US, whilst France is 90.7%.
How do we explain this apparent contradiction?
The answer is that America is the “no-vacation nation”, there is no federal law mandating paid annual leave. However, most employers offer paid holidays as a benefit, with the average being C.10–11 days annually.
In Germany, full-time employees are legally entitled to a minimum of 20 days of paid annual leave for a 5-day work week. In practice, most employers offer 25-30 days
Employees in France are legally entitled to at least 5 weeks of paid annual leave.
‘US GDP growth in the H1 2025 was almost entirely driven by investment in data centres and information processing technology’
There is also the distortion that the tech industry brings to US GDP
Harvard economist Jason Furman found that US GDP growth in the H1 2025 was almost entirely driven by investment in data centres and information processing technology. Excluding these categories, GDP growth would have been just 0.1%.
Whilst investment in information-processing equipment and software was only 4% of U.S. GDP for the H1 2025, it accounted for 92% of GDP growth.
‘This isn’t 1940, we can’t standalone, Europe is our only option’
Other comparative metrics between Europe and the US, are:
- Life expectancy in France is 4.7 years higher.
- The overall US literacy rate is well below rates in other wealthy nations, and far below levels in Europe.
Income inequality, which is much higher in the US than Europe, is another important metric not captured by GDP per capita. The World Bank, using the GINI coefficient calculated income inequality as:
- France (2023) 31.8
- Germany (2022) 33.7
- US (2024) 41.8
Source: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.GINI
As Paul Krugman wrote: “It is arithmetically inescapable that the high share of US income going to the top 1% and the top 10% renders most Americans worse off than the overall high level of GDP per capita would indicate.”
Europe, along with China and the US, is an economic superpower. Arguably, Europe is the world’s only democratic superpower.
This isn’t 1940, we can’t standalone, Europe is our only option.
“Elegance and decadence
(Europe endless)”
Starmer’s is going to be a long, slow demise.
In truth, it was over before it started: the £22bn black hole, pensioners heating. Voters don’t want the truth, that’s why the likes of Johnson and Farage are successful: tell them what they want to hear.
Voters were promised change, not excuses. You’re the government, solve it!
There are few options. In my opinion, it’s get Europe, trade and the customs union.
Instead, we will have more “send ‘em back.”
It’s fascinating watching the right get all indignant about racism. They really are the racist’s racist!
As an example, on Friday the Guardian asked the Reform MP Richard Tice for a response to the concerns some communities in Birmingham may feel about the rise of Reform.
Tice interrupted several times and said: “If they were fearful, why would they be voting for us?” He added: “I’m concerned for the Jewish community and about the antisemitism, the abuse they get, and I want people at the Guardian and other lefty newspapers to focus on that rather than one other particular community. Are we clear?”
So, 80-yrs after almost exterminating European Jews, the right have decided they are alright. Any others, Dickie? Muslims, maybe?
Lyrically, we open with Changes” by David Bowie, and end with “Europe Endless” by Kraftwerk.
Fino a domani (an eagerly anticipated ‘editorial meeting’)
Philip.
@coldwarsteve
Philip Gilbert is a city-based corporate financier, and former investment banker.
Philip is a great believer in meritocracy, and in the belief that if you want something enough you can make it happen. These beliefs were formed in his formative years, of the late 1970s and 80s
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