I welcomed Keir Starmer as Labour’s leader, and now Prime Minister (if only for a few more weeks). I didn’t agree with all his policies; but he seemed solid, rational and decent, in contrast to all the Prime Ministerial crap we in Britain have had to put up with over the last decade.

I can understand why Corbyn was a No-No – indeed, personality-wise a gift to our scrofulous popular press. But I was hoping that Starmer might take on some of his policies, and give them a veneer of lawyerly respectability. That was probably always too much to ask of him with respect to the burning contemporary issue of Israel-Palestine; if only in view of his Jewish family (wife and children). But his government’s labelling of ‘Palestine Action’ as a ‘terrorist’ organisation, resulting in grotesque custodial sentences for some of those protesting under its name (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jun/12/palestine-action-activists-sentenced-terrorists-damage-elbit-systems-uk-israel), left me somewhat disenchanted. I nonetheless stuck with him, for his other qualities; perhaps because of my vocation. After all, we academics also aim to be quite lawyerly – careful, rational and objective. And I don’t feel I need to agree 100% with the politicians I vote for.

I’m not yet clear where Andy Burnham (assuming he’s Starmer’s replacement) stands on this, or on most of the other great political issues of the day. He seems to have been a wise, effective and popular mayor of Greater Manchester; a big job, certainly, but not necessarily the best training for running a country. (Look at Boris.) As I understand it, one of his mayoral achievements was the municipalisation of the bus network there, which may signal a wider transfer of utilities into public ownership under him, thus beginning the unravelling of Margaret Thatcher’s mad privatisation enterprise, from which many of our present ailments spring. Rumour has it that he will make Ed Milliband – a keen environmentalist – his new Chancellor, which I’d obviously welcome. (See https://bernardjporter.com/2026/04/22/keirs-mandy-problem/.) We’ll just have to wait and see.

He’ll have a lot more than this on his hands. The present doesn’t seem to me to be a ‘normal’ moment in Britain’s political history, or a crisis that’s confined to this country; but rather a hugely significant one world-wide. It may turn out to be an existential threat to ‘democracy’ as we understand it; with the USA, for example, fast falling into authoritarianism, and even a kind of capitalist fascism, under Trump. The historical precedent everyone is currently citing is Germany in the 1930s. That’s not a comparison I’m willing to make; but we should remember that Nazism didn’t start with gas chambers.

On the other hand Orban’s recent defeat in Hungary, and Trump’s declining popularity in the USA, may be more cheerful auguries. And we’ve still got the World Cup to distract us. Who cares about existential problems while that’s going on?

Incidentally: here on our Swedish island we’re having to cope just now with an invasion of wild boars, no less, digging up lawns and gardens – for what? roots? – and looking pretty ugly, with those nasty little tusks. (I think. I’ve not seen one yet.) How did they get here? Can pigs swim? And are they fascists too? (They were in Orwell’s Animal Farm.)