Writing in The American Conservative, Dalrymple contemplates the paradox of Keir Starmer’s premiership: a leader of no discernible talent whose most compelling argument for remaining in office is that his likely replacements would be worse still. He reflects on the crisis of political legitimacy in Britain, the collapse of the two-party system, and the dangerous illusion that change from a bad situation can only be for the better.
In politics, the usual choice is between the bad and the worse, not between the bad and the good—and history shows that those who elect a politician because he is good, and not because he is merely better than the alternative, usually end up disappointed, disillusioned, and even embittered. Politics, at least in the modern age, is not a metier for good people.