Rosa Prince

Barring an unprecedented upset, in a few days each of the four nations that make up the UK will be ruled by a different political party. Polls suggest three of the four will be separatists dedicated to the breakup of the union of England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales that has existed since Ireland seceded in 1922.

Even before the last votes have been counted and full results declared, it’s obvious that this week’s “Super Thursday” of local and regional elections has left Keir Starmer a lame duck. After months of dire poll numbers, the disdain with the UK prime minister and his governing Labour Party has been confirmed by actual voters casting actual votes.

As Keir Starmer’s unhappy reign enters its end game, he makes one point worth hearing: Britain cannot return to the constant psychodrama of previous Tory governments that landed us with Boris Johnson and Liz Truss as prime ministers. Whoever replaces No. 10’s current inhabitant must be a credible figure capable of navigating the violent economic and political seas buffeting the country. That means the contest which now looks inevitable cannot be rushed, and should not be a narrow one.

As Keir Starmer’s leadership teeters after last week’s disastrous local election results, his allies have taken to quoting a predecessor as British prime minister, the wily Harold Wilson. Facing similar calls to quit amid cabinet plotting, Wilson took to the stage at a 1969 May Day rally and declared: “I know what’s going on, I’m going on.”

There’s an old joke about Andy Burnham, the Manchester mayor whose gamble to become UK prime minister from outside Parliament just might pay off. A Blairite, a Brownite and a Corbynite walk into a pub, it begins. “Evening Andy,” the barman asks. “What’ll you have?”

I have a guilty pleasure: reality TV, the trashier the better. A few years ago, I had a job that involved writing an early morning political email, which necessitated working through the night. At the end of a grueling shift, I’d reward myself by unwinding with the most tawdry show of all: Married At First Sight, known in fan circles as MAFS.

It says a lot about the speed of events in British politics that Westminster is already moving on from Prime Minister Keir Starmer. In less than a month, a make-or-break special election takes place in which Andy Burnham will either be reelected to Parliament or fall to the hard-right Reform UK party, plunging the governing but rudderless Labour Party into yet more chaos.

It’s become fashionable to say Reform UK has shifted the Overton Window, the concept that encapsulates the range of opinion acceptable to the mainstream at a particular time. Nigel Farage’s hard-right party has indeed moved the terms of the British debate on immigration, much as its predecessors created the spark that ultimately fueled Brexit.

With grim inevitability, Elon Musk’s social media-fueled mission to stoke racial division has been playing out in scenes of riots on British streets. The spark for recent unrest in Southampton, a port city in southern England, was the murder of a young White teenager who died in police handcuffs after his Sikh killer falsely accused him of racism.

Nine decades ago, George Orwell spent several months living among the mining communities around the bleak, impoverished town of Wigan. In two weeks, a special election taking place in the same corner of northwest England could determine the course of British history for decades to come.