Paxton Is Already Pivoting to the General

Today is the day that, barring the unexpected, Donald Trump will eject a perfectly electable U.S. Senator from his seat, and will replace him with just about the worst candidate imaginable. If the Republicans do lose control of the Senate in 2026, or even in 2028, it is likely that Trump's prioritizing petty personal needs in Texas will be the linchpin of the whole thing.

As we noted yesterday, even if you had no idea what the state of the race was right now, a review of the ads currently in heavy rotation would tell you what you needed to know. Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), who is about to be sacrificed on the altar of Trump, has shifted into desperation mode, and is accusing state Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) of being even more enthusiastic about gender-reassignment surgery for minors than Kamala Harris is. This is nonsense, of course, but desperate times call for desperate measures, as they say. Meanwhile, Paxton has gone positive, and is running ads full of sunshine and rainbows. Paxton is one of the least positive people in American politics; for him to spend his last-few-days-of-the-primary ad budget on these ads is plainly an effort to sorta rebrand the candidate in anticipation of the general election. The message, to normie Republicans and independents, is "I'm not such a bad guy! Don't believe all the stuff you've been reading about me for the last 20 years!"

We do not believe, for one moment, that Paxton has any real hope of reinventing himself. His reputation is well-established and well-earned. And, it would seem, Paxton doesn't really believe it's possible either. That being the case, all he can really do is try to portray his general-election opponent, state Sen. James Talarico (D), as somehow even worse. As part of his pivot to the general, Paxton is already hard at work trying to do that. Part I of the plan, so far, is to use the old Trump trick of adopting a snotty name. Thus far, it would appear that the best that Team Paxton has come up with is "Tala-freak-o." Very clever!

Part II of the plan is... interesting. Roughly 4 years ago, Talarico made a speech in which he said that human beings should aspire to reduce their meat consumption, for both health and environmental reasons. This is not a particularly radical idea; one can find numerous bestselling, non-fanatical books that make the same point (the collected works of Michael Pollan come to mind). Texas, however, is a state where meat—particularly the barbecued variety—is central to many residents' identity. And so, Paxton has decreed that Talarico is a literal meat-hater, a weirdo who eats—hold on to your chair—a vegan diet. Ewwwwwwwww!

We obviously do not know Texas political culture as well as someone who has been elected statewide three times, as Paxton has. So, we are open to the notion that if Talarico really was a vegan, that might be effective as a signifier that "He's not like us regular folks." Not unlike Mehmet Oz and his crudités. We are less persuaded that this will work on someone who is not a vegan, which Talarico is not.

Indeed, the moment we heard about Paxton's rather desperate attempt to slur his likely soon-to-be opponent, our thought was "This is an engraved invitation to Talarico to visit every damn county fair in Texas, and to get photographed eating a hot link, or a beef rib, or a turkey leg." It would seem that the Talarico campaign had the exact same thought, since the candidate's PR team quickly released this "statement":

In case you can't tell, that is a barbecued turkey leg he is eating.

The bottom line is that just as Cornyn is running from a clear position of weakness in the primary, Paxton is already running from a clear position of weakness in the general, despite the fact that the general hasn't even started. We suspect that many Texas voters might just notice that Paxton has nothing to offer besides "The other guy suuuuuuuuucks!" Other Texas voters might just notice that a dishonest, adulterous Republican is doing a worse job of living up to the message of the Bible than a seminarian who happens to be a Democrat.

Finally, it is at least possible that if Paxton stumbles coming out of the gate, and there are several polls showing him as a significant underdog to Talarico, Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) and the NRSC might just conclude that they are better off using $250 million or so to try to protect three or four or five GOP-held Senate seats as opposed to protecting one that might be a lost cause. For what it is worth, Paxton's worst Paxton-Talarico poll had the AG down 8 points, 42% to 34%. A couple of others had Talarico at 46% or 47%. If the leading candidate is at or above 50%, or the trailing candidate is down by 10 points, those tend to be "time to think about cutting bait" polls.

Anyhow, it's going to be very interesting to watch. Absolute crack for politics junkies. (Z)

Massie Is Pivoting, Too... to 2028

Freshly off being defeated in his primary last week, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) made clear yesterday that he's not going away anytime soon. He filed paperwork to run for reelection, in 2028, to the seat that he will vacate on Jan. 3 of next year.

Massie says that he has not officially made a decision about his political future, and said that while he thinks he will probably run to win his seat back, he might just mount a presidential campaign. As a practical matter, for the moment, Massie's status as an "official" candidate means he can legally raise and spend campaign money. It is acceptable, under federal law, to transfer money donated for one type of campaign (say, for the House) to another type of campaign (say, for president).

If Massie tries to get his House seat back, well, that's not completely crazy. It might be a little bit crazy, though. Donald Trump will still be around in 2028, probably, and will still hate Massie with the heat of a million white-hot suns. Since Trump would be on his way out anyhow, he could decide (again) that defeating Massie (again) is Priority #1. Trump might be less popular in 2028 than he is now, but he won't be THAT much less popular, since he doesn't have much further to sink. And also, "less popular" isn't enough; it has to be "less popular with the kind of folks who populate KY-04."

If Massie tries to run for president, then that is completely crazy (unless his goal is just to get some attention). He's basically a libertarian. That is not a mainstream position, even within the Republican Party. And that's before we consider that MAGA hates Massie. Meanwhile, Democrats certainly appreciate Massie's war on Trump, and his unflinching support for releasing the Epstein files. But they are not going to vote for someone like him (who is very NON-Democratic on most issues) over an actual Democrat. After all, there are plenty of actual Democrats who hate Trump and who have pushed hard for the Epstein files to be released.

In any case, we're not actually all that interested in Massie's political prospects. What we ARE interested in is that he will be the face of "Republicans who hate Trump" for the foreseeable future. He's fairly high-profile, he's unfiltered, and until he formally decides otherwise, he's a candidate for federal political office. Massie is going to get interviewed all the time. They might as well give him his own dressing room at Meet the Press right now. Between him and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), who has also grown to be very outspoken, Trump may eventually come to understand what Lyndon B. Johnson was talking about when he said it's sometimes better to have someone inside the tent pi**ing out, rather than outside the tent pi**ing in. (Z)

Platner Is Meeting the People Where They Are, It Would Seem

When teaching history (and presumably other subjects, though history is the subject Z happens to know), it is often helpful to explain things via analogy. For example, when talking about the humiliations that the Germans visited upon the French at the end of the Franco-Prussian War, (Z) asks students to imagine a hypothetical Canadian-American War, in which Canada conquers the United States. He then poses this question: "If Canada really beat the U.S. badly, and wanted everyone to know it, in what building and room would they force Donald Trump to formally surrender?" It usually doesn't take long for the students to correctly guess "The Oval Office in the White House." And that parallels the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles, which is where the French were forced to surrender in 1871, thus helping lay the groundwork for what happened at the end of World War I.

Anyhow, it would seem that the presumptive Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate seat in Maine, Graham Platner, picked up this lesson at some point. Among the planks of Platner's platform is that private equity is evil and needs to be reined in. But "private equity" is a bit abstract for most voters, so the Platner campaign found a way to make it accessible, posting a video to eX-Twitter talking about how private equity has ruined the Boston Red Sox.

The Red Sox are owned by the Fenway Sports Group, which is a consortium of people whose money came from private equity, with private equity billionaire John Henry as the managing partner. The Henry years got off to a good start, as far as fans were concerned, with some serious investment in talent and a World Series championship in 2018. However, sports ownership is built on a tension between what owners want (profits) and what fans want (wins). Some teams are better at balancing that tension than others (or, at least, keeping the tension out of public view).

In the past several years, the management of the Red Sox has done a pretty terrible job of hiding the fact that they are there to make money, and winning is, at best, a nice bonus. Red Sox fans are among the most devoted in the majors, but the fact is that the media market is on the smaller side, and so is the stadium. So, the franchise can't exactly compete dollar-for-dollar against teams like the New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Dodgers. And the Sox have let several popular and/or talented players go in the last half-decade, as a cost-saving measure.

The most notable case of putting profit before winning came in 2019, when the Red Sox traded their best player, Mookie Betts, to the aforementioned Dodgers. It was a wildly imbalanced trade, in which the Dodgers got a superstar and the reigning AL MVP, and the Red Sox got three prospects. The Red Sox simply didn't want to pay the hefty contract that Betts was due for (he eventually signed an extension with the Dodgers for $365 million). Since joining the Boys in Blue, Betts has won three World Series, and, for those who know their advanced stats, has been worth 32.2 wins above replacement. By contrast, the three players the Red Sox received (Alex Verdugo, Connor Wong and Jeter Downs) put up a total of 11.6 wins above replacement. Only one of the three (Wong) is still in the majors.

The point is that Red Sox fans, including Red Sox fan Platner, know all of this. And so, in his ad, he uses the Betts trade as an exemplar of the harms wrought by private equity. Platner promises that, if elected, he will "reverse the curse" of private equity (a reference to the "curse" that supposedly kept the Red Sox from winning the World Series from 1918 to 2004), and he ends the spot by decreeing: "I am Graham Platner, and I approved this ad because I miss Mookie Betts."

Note that we do not presume to judge the validity of Platner's message—that's beyond our pay grade. We are just very interested in new and different ways of communicating with the voting public, and Platner is certainly giving us some intriguing things to think about on that front. Oh, and the Red Sox' privately owned sports network, NESN, has banned the ad, which certainly seems like a gift to Platner, from where we sit. Apparently, the White House isn't the only entity that doesn't understand the Streisand Effect. (Z)

The Case of the Missing Members

We mean members of Congress, not... any other kind of members.

Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-NJ) is the son of a former governor of New Jersey and the kind of moderate Republican who can win in a New Jersey district with a PVI of EVEN. But, for 2½ months, he has not voted on the floor of the House and is nowhere to be seen. He hasn't appeared in public since March 5 and has missed 90 roll call votes since then.

For anyone in an EVEN district to vanish from sight is very unusual. Members in such competitive districts try to be in the news all the time and want to be seen helping people in the district as often as possible. The speculation is that Kean has a serious undisclosed health problem. He probably has excellent health insurance—all members of Congress do. It's just his constituents who don't.

Democrats are already salivating at the prospect of running against him. There is a four-way Democratic primary a week from today. The four Democrats are Rebecca Bennett, a former Navy helicopter pilot; Tina Shah, a physician; Michael Roth, a former Small Business Administration official and Brian Varela, a businessman. Bennett is the establishment favorite and her background parallels that of Gov. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ). They even have the same name. The governor's actual name is Rebecca Michelle Sherrill. Mikie is a nickname her father gave her when she was 2 and it stuck.

While it may not be polite, the Democrat who advances is going to demonstrate his or her health by being filmed jogging, doing pushups, playing tennis, or other things that require exertion. Then, they will say the people of NJ-07 deserve a physically fit representative who will be there for them full-time. Kean's health is likely to become a big issue—unless he gives up and drops out.

New Jersey Democrats currently hold a 9D, 3R majority in their congressional delegation. If they beat Kean, it will be 10D, 2R. With a huge effort, which would require a voter-approved constitutional amendment, they might be able to make it 11D, 1R. If they win the seat in November, they could decide it isn't worth the redistricting effort to flip one more seat.

One oddity here is that despite his absence from Congress, Kean was able to approve his chief of staff's junkets paid for by special interest groups. Dan Scharfenberger got permission to go to Las Vegas and then Middleburg, VA. Our staff cartographer confirms that neither one is in New Jersey. Kean is also not so sick that he can't trade stocks. From March 10 to March 31, he bought or sold stocks in eight companies. The total value of the trades was between $50,000 and $190,000.

Meanwhile, the Democrats have their own vanishing House member. It's Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-FL), who is 83, and has missed more than 50 votes since going AWOL about 6 weeks ago. She has been a little less secretive than Kean, and says she is recovering from eye surgery. That said, she (or more likely her staff) have been recycling photos from last year on the Representative's social media accounts. They are not trying to pass them off as new, but they are also not doing anything to discourage people from thinking that.

The good news for the blue team, such as it is, is that the new Florida maps make Wilson's district (FL-24) very blue; its new PVI is D+34. So, there is little Wilson could do to cause it to flip, short of it coming out that she is actually hiding out at Epstein Island or Mar-a-Lago. However, the filing deadline for House primaries in Florida is June 12, so Wilson's age and extended absence might cause a serious Democratic challenger to jump in. But still, unlike Kean's seat, this one is safe. (V & Z)

Ken Martin Might Be Safe

DNC Chair Ken Martin is in some pretty hot water right now. The DNC is awash in a sea of red ink, of course. His various initiatives, like the midterm political convention, have crashed and burned. And he made a complete and total hatchet job of the 2024 autopsy. First he said he'd release it, then he said he wouldn't, and then he finally did, but what he released was at best a rough draft, and at worst was doctored to remove the really touchy stuff.

Despite all of this, however, Martin might keep his job, for two primary reasons. The first is that it's not so easy to get rid of a DNC (or RNC) chair who doesn't want to go. If there was a sitting Democratic president, and that president "hinted" that the chair should resign, they would have little choice but to do so. In the absence of a sitting president (and, thus, a clear-cut party leader), then the pressure would have to come from the DNC members, or maybe from the two party leaders in Congress. Thus far, none of those folks has shown an inclination to call for Martin's head.

The other problem is that the DNC is a mess. That is (partly) Martin's fault, but it might also be (partly) his salvation. Nobody who might plausibly take over the job seems to want it, since they would instantly inherit all the headaches, including the cash crunch, the problems of being out of power, an angry base, and party machinery that has become moribund. A few folks have reportedly already been approached, just to feel them out, and they've all said "no, thanks!" That list includes former DNC Chair Howard Dean, former Montana Senator Jon Tester, and former Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Ben Wikler, who lost out to Martin just last year.

The bench is still pretty deep, and some Democrats hope they might find an interested party among former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julián Castro, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-NM), former president of the Service Employees International Union Mary Kay Henry, former Texas Rep. Beto O'Rourke, former EMILYs List president Stephanie Schriock, and a few others. But thus far, no luck. Indeed, Martin's situation somewhat parallels that of Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), who isn't especially popular with his conference, but who has no clear replacement, either. (Z)

AI Week, Part I: The Pope Does Not Like AI

This was not exactly by design, but it turns out we have four AI items we want to write. So, we officially declare this to be "AI Week." Note that this is a real "week," not a fake one like "Infrastructure Week."

Today, we will talk about how AI has now taken on a spiritual dimension. Well, OK, maybe it already had a spiritual dimension, we don't know. It definitely has one now, because Pope Leo XIV issued the first encyclical of his papacy, and it's a takedown of AI. The full title is:

ENCYCLICAL LETTER
MAGNIFICA HUMANITAS
OF HIS HOLINESS
POPE LEO XIV
ON SAFEGUARDING THE HUMAN PERSON
IN THE TIME OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

It starts by comparing AI to the Tower of Babel, and pretty much goes from there. For a total of nearly 43,000 words.

The Roman Catholic Church, as you may have heard, is not exactly known for enthusiastically embracing change. That said, Leo knows full well that AI is here to stay, and that nothing he can do will change that. And so, the main argument of the encyclical is that AI must be made to serve "magnificent humanity," not the other way around. The Pope has a number of warnings, speaking to potential problems he sees if AI is not handled very, very carefully. A rundown of the biggies:

• AI can reflect the biases and concerns of those who create it. So, those people "bear a particular ethical and spiritual responsibility" to do their work well, and with a sense of fairness and justice.
• AI may cause people to confuse artificial affection with the genuine article.
• AI might destabilize the economy, by triggering widespread unemployment.
• AI could destabilize democracy by making it easier to spread lies and by blurring the lines between fact and fiction.
• AI risks making it easier to make war, by allowing humans to disclaim responsibility for lethal decisions.

Leo devotes particular attention to that last point, arguing that there can be no such thing as a "just war," and asserting that "No algorithm can make war morally acceptable." One wonders if he had any particular wars, underway at this very moment, in mind as he wrote that.

There are also portions of the encyclical where Leo freestyles a bit, and goes off on something of a sidebar. For example, he has quite a few thoughts on the subject of migrants, including:

A litmus test for social justice today is the treatment of migrants, refugees and those forced to move due to poverty, violence, climate change and environmental disasters. The way a society treats them reveals whether its sense of justice is driven by fear or by the spirit of fraternity. Pope Francis urged us to see migrants not simply as a problem to be managed, but as a living image of the People of God on the move. They are people with dignity, resources and dreams, who have the right to be treated with respect and to ask to become active members of the societies that welcome them.

Again, hard to know if Leo had any particular person or society in mind. Very hard, indeed.

Another bit of freestyling, which got a fair bit of attention, is this passage about slavery:

This constitutes a wound in Christian memory, one from which we cannot consider ourselves detached. It is impossible not to feel deep sorrow when contemplating the immense suffering and humiliation endured by so many in stark contrast to their immeasurable dignity as persons infinitely loved by the Lord. For this, in the name of the Church, I sincerely ask for pardon.

The Church's hands are certainly dirty here; beyond overlooking slave systems for many, many centuries, it also gave direct sanction to Spanish and Portuguese slave-catching operations as part of the "Doctrine of Discovery" in the 1400s. The Vatican repudiated that doctrine in 2023, but yesterday was apparently the first time a pope formally apologized for the Church's support of the institution.

We aren't sure what all the implications of all of this will be, but we think we're on safe ground with these two assertions: (1) The debate over AI gets more complicated on a daily basis, and (2) the relationship between the Pope and the Trump administration gets more fraught on a daily basis. In case you are keeping score at home, about 20% of the U.S. population is Catholic but about 25% of the electorate is Catholic due to exceptionally high turnout among Catholic voters. (Z)

Is Britain About to Cashier Another PM?

Between global warming, population shifts, AI, disinformation campaigns propagated over social media, at least two ongoing wars, the growing wealth gap, topsy-turvy economies, the obsolescence of many jobs, pandemics and a host of other issues, it's a challenging time to be alive. And this has had a worrisome effect in most democracies (and, very possibly, in nations with other government types, though it's most obvious in democracies). In short, you have a faction that thinks the solution to these problems is to move backward, a faction of roughly equal size that thinks the solution to these problems is to push forward, and a "pox on both your houses" faction that pretty much blames everything on whichever faction happens to be in power.

This is a recipe for, well, constant changes in leadership. The U.S. is an obvious example; the presidency has shifted parties in the last three presidential elections, and it will probably happen again in 2028. The U.K. is an even more obvious example—not surprising, since leaders there don't have the same kind of 4-year guarantee that U.S. presidents have. At the moment, the Brits are on their sixth PM in the last 10 years, and there's a chance they will be moving on to their seventh in short order, because PM Sir Keir Starmer is right now in the midst of a budding rebellion.

Of course, we are not experts in British politics. However, we have readers who are. So, we turned to A.B. in Amman, Jordan, previously known as A.B. in Lichfield, England, UK. to give us a breakdown. Readers G.S. in Basingstoke, England, UK, and S.T. in Worcestershire, England, UK, were kind enough to read over the submission, and to offer comments and suggestions. Here is the final result:

When the Keir Starmer-led Labour Party won the 2024 U.K. general election in a landslide, many of us hoped that this would bring to an end the post-Brexit Conservative Party political psychodrama that saw us cycle through four Prime Ministers in 8 years, with none of those leaders lasting more than 3 years and 45 days, and the catastrophic Liz Truss lasting just 50 days (famously being outlasted by a lettuce). It now seems, alas, that we were overly optimistic. We are less than 2 years into Starmer's term, and the Labour Party seems to be descending into similar chaos, with a very real chance that Starmer will be gone by July; he needs to last to July 5 to reach 2 years in office. By the summer, we could well be on to our seventh Prime Minister in 10 years, and the last three (Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer) may all have lasted less than 2 years each.

The immediate catalysts for the latest instability were Labour's poor performances in the May 7 local elections in England and the elections for the national legislatures of Scotland and Wales on the same day. But before briefly attempting to outline the causes of the current mess, it's worth taking a historical detour to stress just how unusual this period of instability is. The last time we had three consecutive Prime Ministers who each lasted less than 2 years in office was 1922-1924, when Bonar Law, Stanley Baldwin and Ramsey MacDonald each lasted less than a year. But while it is true this was a period of post-First World War instability, it is also the case that Law resigned in 1923 due to terminal throat cancer which killed him before the year was out, so this doesn't quite seem comparable (Baldwin and MacDonald would also go on to have consequential extended returns to office in the immediate future).

So, that then takes us back to 1865-1868, when Lord Russell (some readers are likely more familiar with his grandson Bertrand), the Earl of Derby, and Benjamin Disraeli each had short terms in office. This was a highly unusual situation where Russell chose to resign on a point of principle despite his Liberal party holding a majority in the Commons, and Derby and Disraeli then successively struggled to shepherd a minority Conservative government through a period of office until they were crushed by William Gladstone in the 1868 election. But all three men had or would have consequential longer terms in office, while Derby was the longest-serving Conservative Party leader in history (22 years!), so again the comparison doesn't seem wholly apt. In any case, that I'm having to reach so far back to find examples that are even remotely comparable helps to demonstrate just how unusual the current situation is for British politics.

So, back to those election results from May 7. The reality is that both of the two parties that have dominated our politics since 1945 did very badly. In England, Labour lost almost 1,500 of the 2,196 seats they were defending, while the Conservatives—defending fewer seats due to doing so badly in local elections in the lead-up to their 2024 general election loss—still contrived to lose 563 of the 1,134 seats they were defending. Of our more established parties, only the Liberal Democrats (the smaller centrist party filling, in our traditional-two-party-dominant sandwich) had cause to feel pleased, increasing their seat total by 155, and finishing ahead of the Conservatives on both number of local councillors elected and number of local councils controlled. But the big winners on the night were populist right- and left-wing parties, with ReformUK on the populist right increasing their total of councillors by 1,452, while over on the populist left the Green Party increased their seat total by 441 councillors.

The Scottish Parliament election was more difficult to parse. The governing pro-independence SNP lost six seats, while Labour lost five (still finishing second) and the Conservatives lost 19—more than half their seat total. The Liberal Democrats made modest gains, but again the real winners were arguably ReformUK, who won 17 seats (from a previous big, fat zero) while the Scottish Greens—a pro-independence party wholly separate from their English and Welsh counterparts—almost doubled their seat tally to 15. But as the SNP and Labour remain the two largest parties in Edinburgh, the Reform and Green gains weren't as seismic as they were in England.

The real political earthquake was in Wales, where Labour has been the largest party for more than 100 years, since winning a majority of national Parliament seats in Wales in the 1922 U.K. general election. In the election for the Welsh Senedd—fought under a new proportional system—Labour finished third. Their vote share collapsed to a mere 11%, and they now hold only nine seats in Cardiff. The big winners were the nationalist pro-independence Plaid Cymru and, yes, ReformUK, who won 43 and 34 seats respectively. PC will now lead a minority administration in the Senedd.

At this point the usual caveats about local elections in England not necessarily being good guides to general elections apply, alongside the caveats about the next national election still being 3 years away—an eternity in politics. Likewise, the elections for the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Senedd are only indicative for those two nations rather than the entirety of the U.K. At the same time, the election results were met with something approaching panic at Labour Party HQ, with the party already grappling with dismal approval ratings for the Prime Minister and the government. The party is being pulled in two directions, shedding traditional working class voters to ReformUK (in a process similar to the drift of working-class American voters to MAGA), while many educated middle-class progressives are drifting to the Greens. Junior ministers started resigning in the hope of precipitating a leadership election, and speculation mounted over potential replacements for Starmer.

Labour Party rules state that a fifth of sitting MPs (the magic number is 81) have to back an alternative candidate to force a leadership election. It's not enough for the 81 to call for a leadership challenge; they have to back a specific individual. But while the necessary 81 have called for Starmer to resign, they haven't coalesced around a single person. The two leading candidates seem to be MP Wes Streeting and Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham. But Burnham has to find his way back into the House of Commons before he can be a candidate, as only MPs are eligible to stand for the party leadership. Streeting resigned as Health Secretary in the aftermath of the local elections, the most senior minister to do so, apparently hoping to force a leadership election before Burnham could find a friendly by-election that would allow him to return to Parliament. But if he believed he had the numbers, he was wrong. The challenge fizzled out. They say the first rule of politics is "make sure you know how to count votes." Streeting didn't.

Burnham has meanwhile found a Labour MP willing to resign in order to allow the Manchester mayor to stand in a by-election in the traditional Labour seat of Makerfield, in Northwest England. The election will likely be held in mid-June, and under normal circumstances Burnham would be expected to coast to victory in a seat Labour have usually won comfortably; he won some 66% of the vote in the district in the last Greater Manchester mayoral election. But in the recent local elections, ReformUK won 50% of the vote in the local wards within the Westminster constituency, while the Greens also plan on seriously contesting the seat—meaning Burnham will be facing challenges from both the left and the right (this is not a seat where the LibDems would expect to be competitive, and the Conservatives are drifting into irrelevance). It's going to be a barnburner. If Burnham wins, he would almost certainly then immediately contest the Labour Party leadership with Starmer, and could be Prime Minister by July. If Burnham loses... well, no one knows what will happen if Burnham loses. Either way, June 18 is going to see one of the most consequential by-elections in modern British political history.

So those are the basic facts. But they don't tell this site's readers why British politics are suddenly so unstable. You'll likely find as many opinions on this one as there are British voters, but several factors stand out. The first is that Starmer and the Labour Party were never that popular to begin with. Our first-past-the-post electoral system is increasingly unsuited to our fragmented multi-party politics, with Labour winning 411 seats and a 174-seat majority on just under 34% of the vote. That means that 66% of British voters supported parties other than Labour in the last election; the party's ability to win seats in that election never reflected its actual support in the rest of the country. This has arguably led to a crisis of legitimacy despite the government's huge majority.

Secondly, Keir Starmer seems to be just bad at politics at some very basic level, coming across as a particularly insipid middle manager terrified of causing offense. To put that in American terms, he's very bad at that vision thing—and no, you couldn't picture yourself having a beer with him. You could, however, potentially picture yourself being ordered by Keir Starmer to complete an obscure and ultimately pointless document in triplicate.

And then there is Brexit. Brexit continues to distort our politics, leading to long-term realignments as voters abandon their traditional generational party loyalties on the basis of other political priorities. Meanwhile, the largest parties in the Scottish, Welsh, and Northern Irish legislatures are all in favor of their nation seceding from the U.K. (though at the same time none of those parties hold a majority in Edinburgh, Cardiff, or Stormont). And all of this is happening alongside a cost-of-living crisis that has left many U.K. voters deeply suspicious of a traditional political establishment that seems incapable of coping with the U.K.'s growing list of challenges. Not that populists of the right or the left are necessarily better-placed to cope; but many voters seem increasingly inclined to give them a chance on the basis that they can hardly be any worse. None of this is particularly conducive to political stability, and the past European precedents for populism thriving under broadly similar circumstances are less than encouraging.

As an old school chum of my late father's is known to occasionally sing, you can't always get what you want. The problem right now is that voters increasingly feel they also can't get what they need.

Those Electoral-Vote.com readers who want to know more about the forthcoming by-election at Makerfield, now set for Thursday, June 18, should check out Rob Ford's article "The Makerfield by-election: High Risk, High Return."

Not only is Ford one of the U.K.'s leading psephologists, but he can also claim to have some local knowledge, being Professor of Political Science at nearby Manchester University. The article is both comprehensive and fascinating, covering a profile of the seat, its history both distant and more recent, and the risks and opportunities faced by the two main protagonists, Andy Burnham for Labour and Robert Kenyon for ReformUK. An excellent summary of what may prove to be a pivotal U.K. by-election.

Thanks to the three of you, and especially to A.B.! (Z)

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Email a link to a friend.

---The Votemaster and Zenger