Opinion | ’50 Shades of Beige’: Meet the New British Prime Minister

Sorry. Sorry I’m late. Sorry I’m late. I’m not in bed yet. Wahey! No, I haven’t partied. I’m working. I’m a professional. Unlike American news organizations, here in the UK I think you’ll find that we journalists are a little more level-headed. Wahey! Oh my goodness. All right. Let’s get to it. After 14 years of Conservative rule, the Labour Party won the UK election hands down this morning, leaving the Tories with their worst defeat ever. I’m sorry. I’m just going to do that again without smiling. Sorry. I’m a professional. (PHONE RINGING) Well, the results keep coming. Hey. Dum, dum, dum, another one bites the dust. It’s a bloodbath. It’s a bloodbath. For the past six weeks, election fever has gripped the UK. It’s all very boring and predictable. A man without a coat getting wet in the rain, a man falling into the water, a man with a bin on his head. You know, it’s business as usual. But the people have spoken. This is our new Prime Minister. Yes, it’s Fifty Shades of Beige, Captain White Bread, Sir Keir Starmer. “Change starts now.” Never heard of him? Don’t worry, neither have we. If he were a vegetable, he’d be a potato. But a bit of boredom and monotony is just what the doctor ordered. That is, if you can find a doctor in the UK who isn’t on strike for a fair and decent wage. (PHONE SOUNDS) Oh. It’s brutal. It’s like the beginning of Saving Private Ryan. I’d almost feel sorry for them – if they weren’t such horrible people. This morning’s Labour landslide is a counter-trend internationally, a resounding rejection of right-wing populism – of sorts. Yes. While countries like Italy, Hungary, France and Germany have a passionate love affair with right-wing populism, and in the US there is serious talk of giving it a second wind, here in the UK we have had an abusive relationship with it for some years. It began in 2008, when the unbridled greed of investment banks brought western economies to their knees. The Conservatives came to power in 2010. And Prime Minister David Cameron declared: “We’re all in this together,” before implementing brutal austerity for the country’s poorest. Resentment and anger have taken over. And populism feeds on little else. Then Brexit, which gave every fringe voice in British politics a mainstream platform from which to promise the world without fear of having to deliver. That’s how populism works. It promises the moon, and instead gives you a DVD copy of “Apollo 13.” Soon the Looney Tunes that sold us on the idea in the first place were running the asylum. First we had Emperor Palpatine’s maid, Theresa May. She knew Brexit sucked, but she went along with it anyway. And she didn’t last long. Then Boris Johnson, populism on steroids, a man whose modus operandi is blatant lying and crazy-eyed incompetence, all the while looking like he’s been combing his hair with a kettle (SHIT). Then Liz Truss, populism on steroids, with £45 billion of unfunded tax cuts for the richest, which promptly crashed the economy, sent the pound into a tailspin and sent everyone’s mortgages through the roof. It wasn’t trickle-down economics so much as (SHIT) high-level economics. She was only in power for six weeks. (PHONE SOUNDBITE) Oh, Liz Truss, former prime minister, just lost her seat. Good riddance! And then, just when you thought you had run out of incompetent, pretentious morons running the country, along comes multi-millionaire hedge fund manager Rishi Sunak, the richest prime minister in UK history. We have finally come full circle, with Britain being run by economic terrorists and disaster capitalists, backed by a political class of crooks and ambulance chasers, who blame all the country’s woes on immigrants and the poor, while sucking every last bit of marrow from the bare bones of the rotting corpse of the state. Fourteen years of Tory populism and austerity, and what have we got to show for it? The British economy is stagnant. Real wages are lower than they were a decade ago. A third of British children live in relative poverty. And there are more food banks than McDonald’s. Our health system is in tatters, our welfare system is in tatters, and rapists are being spared prison because the prisons are full. This is an event that could well be the death knell for the Tories. It’s a bit like a really bad Jurassic Park movie, a bit like the last Jurassic Park. So while Keir Starmer may be as charismatic as a piece of lukewarm, unseasoned tofu, going back to a centrist, socially left and fiscally right party led by a potato feels like a radical change. The new radical is boring. The new radical is unradical. The truth is that Starmer can’t be radical. There’s no money. But not promising things you know you can’t deliver is itself a rejection of populism. Sadly, Labour promises nothing. Reading the Labour manifesto is about as inspiring as forgetting to take your phone with you and having to poo while reading the back of a bottle of bleach. Labour’s tax and spend promises are tiny, less than what the Tories promised. And therein lies the problem. When the system fails the people, they support politicians who promise to burn it to the ground. Enter Nigel Farage, as trustworthy as an unlicensed butcher. You may have seen him speaking at Donald Trump’s rallies. Farage has been a particularly unpleasant odor in British politics for the past few years. His Reform Party may have won only a handful of seats last night, but Farage has already proclaimed himself the unofficial leader of the opposition, with many pundits saying he could be our next prime minister before our new prime minister has even sat down at his desk and gotten out his pens. Starmer should be wary, as should Joe Biden. It’s not enough to not be the other guy. If Starmer fails to reverse the trend, and quickly, by saving our public services from the brink of collapse while putting more money in the pockets of working people, in just five years the populists will be ready to take over the country again. Keir Starmer may well be a step in the right direction, or he may simply represent a stay of execution. If so, the political landscape in the UK has never looked bleaker. Well, it’s depressing. I was in a good mood when I arrived here.