It might seem as if there were two general elections here in the UK last week. One was staged in the fantasy Britain of the political and media establishment; in this make-believe election, the Labour Party reportedly won an “historic landslide,” giving new prime minister Keir Starmer a “huge mandate for change.”
The other election took place in the real Britain where voters live and work. In this, actual, election, the majority of voters and non-voters rejected both the Tories and Labour as two wings of the old establishment. The sort of ‘change’ millions voted for was best reflected in the overnight breakthrough of Nigel Farage’s insurgent sovereigntist party, Reform UK.
