8:00

the personality politics, the spectacle of

8:02

it. I think it's an absolutely

8:04

fascinating question. And if you go

8:06

to any sort of university library,

8:08

you'll find shelves upon shelves of

8:10

books that explain the rise of

8:12

populism. Very little work explaining how

8:14

you come down the other side of the hill, as

8:16

it were. I think there's

8:18

several factors. One is that the Conservative

8:20

Party, whilst many people would

8:22

still agree with the values and the policy

8:25

propositions that it was putting forward when it

8:27

was under Boris Johnson in the Brexit years,

8:30

its failure to deliver has

8:32

been quite catastrophic with the voters that

8:34

it is taught to court. I

8:36

think the other factor, and I think this

8:38

is what makes Keir Starmer such a fascinating

8:41

figure, is that he has

8:43

been much, much more assiduous

8:45

and successful in courting those voters, the people

8:47

who voted for Brexit and the people who

8:49

liked Boris Johnson, than he

8:52

has given credit for. So even though he

8:54

is, by background, a

8:56

human rights lawyer from a very sort of liberal,

8:58

fashionable part of North London, his

9:00

whole political operation for four years has

9:02

been utterly consistent in winning back the

9:05

trust of those voters. And he's not done

9:07

it by sort of shouting or antics

9:09

or coming up with very sort

9:11

of radical policies. It's by a

9:13

very sort of quiet, sort of

9:15

small C conservative cultural agenda. So

9:18

if you look at the Labour Party platform

9:20

today, it's skeptical of globalization. It really

9:23

venerates blue collar workers, it talks about

9:25

respect for the blue collar worker. It's

9:27

very tough on crime. And so

9:29

it's been a very, very patient effort, but he

9:31

seems to have slowly got people

9:33

to accept that, as he would see

9:35

it, he sees the world through their eyes. The

9:37

last thing I wanna ask you is that, I

9:40

personally am deeply fascinated by British politics and

9:42

follow these elections closely, but I think a

9:44

lot of people might not necessarily be in

9:46

that boat. You've touched on it here and

9:48

there, but what is your best argument

9:51

for why people in the US should care about

9:53

what's happening politically in the UK right now? I

9:56

think the UK is interesting because it's

9:58

often been a sort of laboratory. for

10:00

ideas that are seen

10:03

elsewhere around the world. My

10:06

argument would be that if

10:10

the election proceeds as we expected

10:12

to and importantly if Kiestama can

10:14

govern in the way which he

10:16

hopes, which he hopes is a

10:18

very methodical, focused, quiet,

10:21

slightly boring but diligent and

10:23

effective administration, here we have

10:25

a case of a country

10:28

whose politics sometimes has echoes

10:31

of the United States that has marched up one

10:33

side of the hill and

10:35

has come down the other side. That

10:38

is Matthew Holhouse, the British political correspondent for

10:40

The Economist. Thank you so much. Thank you.

10:45

This episode was produced by Connor Donovan.

10:47

It was edited by Jeanette Woods. Our

10:49

executive producer is Sammy Yennigan. And we

10:51

want to thank our ConsiderThis Plus listeners.

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