Snapshot · The Rest Is Politics
Starmer commanded a parliamentary majority of approximately 170 seats when he resigned — a historically large buffer that failed to protect him once his MPs had collectively decided he could not win the next election.
Where this was said
At 8:13 · chapter starts 5:49
Rory opens by cataloguing the now-familiar tableau of a British Prime Minister descending the Downing Street steps to resign — Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak — and reflects that Britain is beginning to resemble Italy's revolving-door politics of the Berlusconi era. Alastair, who knows Starmer personally, is more conflicted: he pushes back on social media claims that Starmer was the worst PM ever, pointing to the list of genuine achievements, while acknowledging the fatal problem — that Labour MPs concluded the public would never warm to him. Both agree that Starmer deserves credit for reading the writing on the wall and not attempting to 'Joe Biden it'. Campbell then makes a striking historical point: Starmer is one of only a tiny handful of Labour leaders who ever won a general election — Attlee, Wilson, Blair — and his majority was the third largest in Labour history.
Keir Starmer won Labour's third-biggest ever parliamentary majority and resigned within two years — a brutality that says more about the state of British politics than about Starmer himself. He is one of only four Labour leaders in history to win a general election.
Starmer's 2024 election majority was the third largest in Labour history, after Tony Blair's wins in 1997 and 2001 — making his swift departure within two years all the more remarkable.
Giorgia Meloni has been in power longer than any single British Prime Minister since David Cameron. Andy Burnham will be the seventh PM in the decade since Brexit — a rate of turnover that makes Italy look like a model of stability.
A total of 8 states have filed lawsuits against social media platforms, including an ongoing case in Tennessee, using product liability and public nuisance theories to seek accountability.
France built 56 nuclear plants in the 1970s and now has the cheapest energy in Europe, making it independent of Russian or Middle Eastern energy geopolitics.
Estonia has a single tax form, a law preventing the government from asking citizens for the same information twice, and a flat rate of tax — enabling competitive taxation.
Portugal's Lisbon, once a city with a major heroin problem, legalised drugs and redirected enforcement spending into rehabilitation and housing, dramatically reducing crime.
The first Boland Amendment banning CIA and Defense Department funds for the Contras passed the House unanimously — yet the Reagan administration ignored it.
Over just two years, Saudi Arabia alone donated $32 million to the Contra rebels, giving loosely affiliated factions millions they had no way to spend on arms.
The National Endowment for the Preservation of Liberty raised $6.3 million for the Contras but only $3.3 million reached them — a shockingly low 52% program expense rate.
Richard Secord and Albert Hakim marked up their arms shipments to the Contras by as much as 300%, making enormous personal profits from the covert operation.
Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, tapped to run the entire covert Contra support operation, had no prior experience in covert operations whatsoever — he was learning as he went.
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