UK’s Starmer drives domestic agenda amid global flux

WHEN the Conservatives won the 2019 UK election, with the largest majority for the party since Margaret Thatcher’s 1980s wins, then prime minister Boris Johnson hoped to govern in Downing Street for two terms. However, within a few weeks, the political landscape was upended by the Covid-19 pandemic.

As new UK leader Keir Starmer prepares to make his first major speech as prime minister on Tuesday (Aug 27), he will be aware that Johnson’s experience highlights the famous political maxim of former prime minister Harold Macmillan – that it is often “events, dear boy, events” that decide the fate of governments. While Macmillan is widely seen as the originator of this insight, others had voiced it earlier.

After the 1918 election, for instance, future prime minister Winston Churchill asserted that the main concern for the then domineering coalition government was the “opposition of events”. The administration of the day had a 283-seat majority, over 100 more than what Starmer has today, despite the historic nature of his Jul 4 landslide win.