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The best time to see a country’s political culture is immediately before or after an election. That’s when unspoken national assumptions about how to use power, and how to treat political opponents, are laid bare. Almost uniquely, three great western democracies are in this phase simultaneously: the UK and France just held elections, while the US is steeling itself for its own confrontation. The differences between the countries are fascinating and sometimes shocking.
Britain’s transition of power has been cheery. After the Conservatives’ landslide defeat on July 4, outgoing chancellor Jeremy Hunt described the new prime minister Keir Starmer and his own successor Rachel Reeves as “decent people and committed public servants”. Last week Starmer and his predecessor Rishi Sunak chatted and laughed in the Commons, like work pals catching up after a holiday.
That is despite the fact that Britain’s transition of power is extremely consequential. This is the most winner-take-all system of any major democracy. Starmer and Sunak were chatting straight after the King’s speech presented Labour’s packed legislative programme. Starmer has acquired unassailable control of parliament by winning just a third of the vote. Even most Conservatives and Reform voters seem to accept that: they believe he has “a mandate to radically change Britain”, according to polling by the NGO More in Common. Absurd though this is democratically, the British system is hallowed by more than three centuries without disaster — no invasions, civil wars, famines or revolutions.
The UK has many forces keeping it sane. Hardly any Briton believes that God supports their preferred party. Almost everyone gets news from the BBC, meaning there’s a shared reality. The country’s chief faultline, class, is thankfully only blurrily expressed in voting. Age does drive party choice, but that just means that the people on the other side of the political divide include your relatives.
Perhaps most helpfully, Britain has a monarch who is supposed to embody the nation. That leaves politicians to be mere functionaries tasked with providing light entertainment while making sure people can get doctors’ appointments. Accordingly, most Britons switch off politics after elections, or, as happened this year, weeks before.
Contrast this with the US, where politics has become a Manichean zero-sum game. After victory in the cold war removed the disciplining effect of an external enemy, Americans began fighting each other, starting with the Republican impeachment of Bill Clinton in 1998 for lying about oral sex. Underlying the endless culture war is the fear of race war.
The new external enemy, China, has probably arrived too late to save the American polity. The Chinese would have to threaten at least Hawaii rather than Taiwan to concentrate American minds. Partisanship in the US has become so extreme that competence for a while ceased to be a criterion for becoming president, which is how America’s leadership could enter its late-Soviet gerontocratic phase while the country was in its Weimar era.
French political culture until about 2000 looked more British than American: centre left and centre right took turns in power without much enmity. Lately, though, things have darkened. After this month’s legislative elections, parliament features three political families of broadly equal size — the left, centre and far right — who despise each other. Even fellow leftwingers despise each other, and their New Popular Front appears perennially on the verge of disintegration.
There was a glimpse of the assumptions underlying this hatred during last year’s fight about raising the retirement age. When Emmanuel Macron’s prime minister Élisabeth Borne tried to speak, far-left deputies drowned her out by singing the national anthem. Their message: only we are the true France.
If France had Germany’s political culture, the factions in parliament would now be compromising their way to coalition. But enemies cannot do that. When French MPs elected deputy parliamentary speakers last week, the ballot boxes contained 10 envelopes more than the number of eligible voters. You know a political culture is sick when there’s suspected voting fraud in parliament.
But a political culture built on coalitions can be rotten too. Last month, while Dutch parties were concluding talks to form a government, Geert Wilders, leader of the far-right PVV, called Islam “a disgusting, reprehensible, violent and hateful religion”. A week later, a new coalition took power with the PVV as the largest party. Many Dutch politicians would happily negotiate the traditional legalistic coalitieakkoord with Satan himself.
Governments come and go, but political cultures are more enduring. The UK, despite its brutal decade, may have a healthier polity than its peers.
Follow Simon @KuperSimon and email him at simon.kuper@ft.com
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