Campaigns matter because they are proxies for how parties will govern. Decency matters. Competence matters.
• Democratic systems only work when everyone agrees to abide by the results. Watching live TV coverage, I was moved to see ballot boxes swiftly delivered from polling stations to “count centres” before ballots were tallied by hand and candidates lined up to hear the results.
• Graciously admitting defeat is important. In his July 5 concession speech, departing prime minister Rishi Sunak apologized for his party’s record and declared incoming prime minister Sir Keir Starmer “a decent, public-spirited man, who I respect.”
• Election campaigns matter because they are proxies for how parties will govern. Starmer’s disciplined campaign proved him capable. From the moment he called a snap election in the pouring rain, without a raincoat or umbrella, hapless Sunak led a disastrous campaign that epitomized his party’s chaotic time in office.
• Leaders quickly revert to being ordinary people when they leave office. Shortly after Sunak handed in his resignation to King Charles, his black Range Rover was spotted beetling along a narrow country road as the MP for Richmond and Northallerton went home to his North Yorkshire constituency. Within 40 minutes of Sunak leaving 10 Downing Street, the Labour team was moving Starmer and his family in.
• Diversity of public officials can and should be the norm. Sunak was born in Southampton to parents of Indian descent who emigrated to Britain from East Africa in the 1960s. Starmer’s government is the most diverse ever.
• Some right-wing, populist politicians are better as entertainers and provocateurs than as actual leaders. With his unkempt hair and “bon mots,” Boris Johnson cut an amusing figure. But he lacked character, losing his job when his government passed strict COVID lockdown rules while throwing parties at 10 Downing Street.
• Slogans do not make for good government. “Brexit means Brexit” and “Get Brexit done” were the oft-repeated maxims of prime ministers since the 2016 referendum. The empty phrases masked turmoil and lies. A recent report by Cambridge Econometrics suggests Brexit has cost the UK economy £140 billion and two million jobs. Instead of stopping the unlimited inflow of EU citizens as promised, net immigration surged, from 200,000 pre-Brexit to 745,000 in 2022.
• Competence matters. As an unnamed minister said in a June 30 Guardian article, Sunak did as well as he could given that his two predecessors were “a comedian and a nut job.” Starmer is an uncharismatic barrister with a mind for detail. In other words, he’s competent.
• Human decency registers at the ballot box. Voters noticed when Sunak abandoned aging D-Day veterans “on the beaches” to return home from French commemorations for a TV interview. They noticed when party workers used inside information to bet on the election date. Global and economic issues don’t always translate into ballot-box decisions; rudeness and greed do.
While the U.K. has its own dynamic of issues, the 2024 election has been both inspiring and instructive. Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Justin Trudeau and Pierre Poilievre et al would do well to learn from it.
John M. Richardson teaches at the uOttawa faculty of education.