Keir Starmer is a Knight of the Order of the Bath, which has nothing to do with his frequent visits to the chamber, the man is not known to wet the bed. The Order of the Bath is an ancient order of chivalry, so called because its ritual included bathing as one of its elements, something currently incompatible with the water savings suggested by the planet’s precarious health conditions, the more sustainable an Order is. be.from the bathroom. That the leader of the Labor Party – and the main favorite in the next election – is a member of an order of chivalry, gives a good idea of ​​what the Labor Party is like today. It is true that the British think that Felipe González riding his yacht and smoking a cigar gives a good idea of ​​what Spanish socialism is all about. It could be that everywhere the new left has many first parties and few second parties.

Starmer contrasts with his Labor predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, whose grumpy old man appearance helped make him a true leftist. Corbyn still believes in a revolution, no matter how mild and peaceful, but one is not necessary in a world where, with little fast food and television shows where celebrities skin each other on film sets or on Caribbean islands, no one want to get out of there. sofa. That’s why Corbyn always fails. Starmer, younger and therefore aware of the tastes and priorities of today’s innocuous electorate, instead took over the baton from Tony Blair, Labor’s third line. The third way is nothing more than a pragmatic way: put ideology aside and try to promise what the majority of citizens want. A perfect formula for gaining power, even if it then means supporting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan based on lies, taking photos with Bush and Aznar who already want to be photographed.

With Blair’s example in mind, Keir Starmer promised at his party’s recent convention a “decade of renewal.” if he is in power. Promising a decade of updates is the same as promising nothing, and it’s a brilliant idea, because then no one can blame you for not keeping your word.. The world is always renewed, although rarely for the better – let’s remember the left -, even if Prime Minister Starmer spends his days locked in the bathroom at 10 Downing Street to honor the orders of his knighthood, a renewal will happens, even if accidentally. If the third way was Blair’s great discovery of being Labor without being Labour, Starmer may well have found a fourth way of renewing everything without renewing anything. This does not mean that politicians in the UK are cynical, but this is happening all over the world. In Spain, we see a minister who is considered a revolutionary taking a selfie on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan with other senior officials in his ministry, although in the UK In this case, the inclusive language they preach makes it natural and appropriate to address them all – including the minister – has a heavy burden.

Following a fourth path that is similar to the third, in terms of power, come what may, Starmer opposes Brexit, but not enough to mildly criticize it if he votes, though not enough to propose its repeal. They propose to follow the European example in many of the policies pursued by the EU, but based on British short-sightedness. One day he promises to end the outsourcing of the public health system, and the next he denies it. The British Labor Party has achieved well-understood equality. Besides, why waste time in an existing state of well-being wornis it enough to get votes by promising faster access to social networks and announcing that the BBC will premiere a new reality show?

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“Culture, without a foundation of money, cannot be practiced,” said the cynical Josep Pla as soon as he saw the buildings of Oxford, so the English – who could – threw themselves into raising money in the hope that culture would bear fruit. .their meeting. Starmer, like Blair at the time, understood that what the government, whether Conservative or Labor, had to do was facilitate this access. For now, for the money; as for culture, we’ll see.

Jonathan Coe, who with his novel “The Heart of England” He was the person who best explained the reasons for Brexit, as he warned earlier, in “Circle Closed”, what will become of politics, politics in which Keir Starmer will be the new leader, unless he was trapped in the bathroom: “left moved to right, right moved slightly to left, the circle has closed and everyone can go to hell.”