As the U.S. and U.K. leaders are discovering, dullness can be an electoral asset. Until it’s not.
With his gelled hair and fondness for dark blue shirts worn under a sensible jacket — like a teacher about to hit the dance floor at a school disco — Keir Starmer may not appreciate being called boring.
The question, now that Starmer is preparing to govern, is whether he will be able to keep making boring work — or whether, like Biden before him, it will come back to bite him.For now at least, Britain’s new prime minister is happy enough to have won a historic victory.
After four years of U.S. President Donald Trump — who spent his term in office ripping up established norms, provoking allies, ditching international agreements and getting himself impeached — a majority of the country rallied behind the unstated theme of the Biden 2020 campaign: Make the White House Boring Again.
“Americans overwhelmingly chose President Biden’s competent leadership over Trump’s chaos and weakness,” said Charles Lutvak, campaign spokesman, speaking before the U.S. president’s disastrous debate performance kicked off another round of concerns about Biden’s age, leading to calls he should step down to make way for another candidate.
Recently, White House and campaign advisers have grown frustrated with how difficult it has been to take their message — of Biden being the competent adult in the room — and break through the cluttered, fractured media landscape, according to three officials not authorized to publicly discuss internal conversations. Part of the problem has been the messenger himself: Biden, like Starmer, isn’t the most dynamic communicator.
A Labour aide likened Starmer’s challenge to that faced by Clement Attlee, the party’s most celebrated historical prime minister, who won power after World War II with a mandate for change and introduced Britain’s iconic state-run National Health Service offering free care for all. Elected in 1945, Attlee was known as competent but outwardly quite dreary. And he was thrown out of office again within six years.
According to one senior government official, Starmer and his team are intent on “long-term thinking” and view their mission as a project to rebuild Britain over the next 10 years. That will require him to win the next election, too.
Keir Starmer Nigel Farage U.K. Election 2024 U.S. Election 2024 United Kingdom United States
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