Electoral earthquakes beget political revolutions. Clement Attlee’s crushing defeat of Winston Churchill in 1945 heralded the creation of Britain’s welfare state. Margaret Thatcher’s 144-seat majority in 1983 signalled a counter-revolution to roll back the frontiers of nationalisation. The three consecutive terms ushered in by Sir Tony Blair’s 1997 landslide upturned his party’s historical role as an occasional interlude between Tory administrations.
The baton has passed to Sir Keir Starmer. There is, though, an important difference. Blair proclaimed a shining new dawn. The new prime minister prefers understatement. He is promising a restoration as much as a revolution.
Democracies across the west have been destabilised by the flight of voters to the far-flung fringes of right and left. Donald Trump is mounting a new bid for the White House. France is closer than it has ever been to its first far-right government since the Vichy regime during the second world war. In Britain, Starmer is offering “serious” government — a return to centrist sobriety. “Public service is a privilege,” he said on Friday outside 10 Downing Street.