30 Thoughts on the General Election

Overall, this was an immensely entertaining election result. Here are some reflections on it.

1 - Stanley Starmer: The new prime minister’s first remarks from Downing Street were those of a man who would not object to, one day, being recalled as “Labour’s Stanley Baldwin”. This is quietly audacious but sombre ambition is at the heart of whatever we might deem “Starmerism”. Listen up: “You have a government unburdened by doctrine, guided only by a determination to serve your interests. To defy, quietly, those who have written our country off”. And in case you did not hear that properly, there was more, for this is the time to “end the era of noisy performance”, replacing it with a government that will “tread more lightly on your lives and unite our country”.

Starmer’s government, he said, is “committed” to “a calm and patient rebuilding” and he invites all of us to “join this government of service in the mission of national renewal”. Yet he was careful, too, to advise that “changing a country is not like flicking a switch” for “this will take a while”. No New Jerusalem was ever …