Who could have seen it coming? The historic center-left party of government triumphantly elected to replace their discredited center-right rivals—who were in office for over a decade—ends up combusting once in charge of the levers of power. Weakened by the rise of an insurgent left and a nationalist right, the center-left party under the helm of a weak leader ends up bleeding voters election after election, only to stare down the barrel of political extinction.
You’d be forgiven if you thought I was describing Labour’s first two years in office under Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Last night, the country went to the polls in elections to choose local councillors in England and representatives for regional parliaments in Wales and Scotland. And the results for Labour were apocalyptic. The party is set to lose the Senedd, Wales’ parliament, for the first time since it was established in 1999. It is also on track to lose well over 1,000 councillors in England—around half the seats it was defending.
And yet, in painting the portrait of an embattled left-of-center government, I had in mind the demise of the once-dominant Socialist Party of France under President François Hollande. Elected in 2012 to replace the very unpopular Nicolas Sarkozy, Hollande came into office with a strong mandate. But his even more unpopular tenure ushered in the rise of La France Insoumise on the far left, the National Rally on the far right, and Emmanuel Macron in the center. Ultimately, Hollande’s presidency led the Socialists into complete political marginalization in a mere five years. To this day, the party remains a shadow of its former self.
Like so many of their continental brethren, the French Socialists discovered that, despite their glorious history, they too are mortals. The British center left, no longer coddled by the electoral comfort of being in opposition, are now brutally coming to grips with that same reality. Labour won a triumphant victory in parliamentary elections in 2024. But Britain’s entrenched structural problems, the difficult tradeoffs the country faces, and Starmer’s hapless leadership sunk Labour to Conservative levels of unpopularity in a mere three months. Last night, the electorate sanctioned them for it.
As the Romans used to say: there is but one step from the Capitol to the Tarpeian rock.
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