A Decade After Brexit, British Politics Is Coming Apart

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Brexit was a shot heard ’round the world a decade ago next month, when the British voted to reject the recommendation of their political, economic and cultural establishment and leave the European Union. Its global significance was its loud expression of deep disaffection with the self-satisfied, self-serving elites in Western democracies who dictated the boundaries of acceptable debate on immigration, national sovereignty, the globalized economy and the modern gospel of cultural progressivism.

It echoed with thunderous effect across the Atlantic a few months later, when Donald Trump rode similar discontent to the White House.A decade on, the political instability, economic malaise and social disorder that are the hallmarks of modern Britain have led many—even some of those who discharged the weapon—to conclude that the target of that shot might have been their own foot. But last week’s local elections across the country, a kind of national midterm, indicated that the revolutionary spirit is as vibrant as ever and, if anything, intensifying and spreading.

The ascendant forces are populist nationalism and a more radical progressivism that has risen to challenge it. Like Brexit, the mood there could presage similar developments in politics here.The results confirmed that Keir Starmer, the Labour prime minister elected less than two years ago with a landslide—in parliamentary seats, but not votes—is about as popular as a hantavirus patient on a cruise.

Labour hit historic lows in the popular vote—barely 1 in six 6 backed the party. Across England, cities and towns that had never known anything but Labour rule fell on one side to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK and on the other to a Green Party