It’s a reliable rule—and an occasional source of tepid comfort—that however bad things seem in America, there is always something much worse going on somewhere else.
This applies not only to places where real genocides are happening, as opposed to the ones American police officers are accused of committing, or where deprivations of liberty are more serious than being denied food delivery when you’ve illegally occupied a university building. It obtains also in countries that some of us like to believe have achieved a high level of democratic civilization.
So as you watch while students, faculty and staff repurpose centers of American learning into Hamas propaganda factories, spare a thought for what just happened in the home of our most reliable ally, Britain.
You might have seen some of the recent manifestations of the reach of Islamist extremism on the streets of London—an antisemitic slogan projected onto Parliament, Jew-hatred paraded in protests across the capital, a police officer warning a man in the vicinity of an anti-Israel protest that by being “openly Jewish,” he posed a threat to public safety.
But when voters across England voted last Thursday in the last round of local elections before a national poll that must be held by January at the latest, the political force of such sentiment was on display.
You can’t take local elections in Britain too seriously. Most Brits don’t. England is a unitary political entity, unlike the U.S., with most major policies decided at the national level. The functions devolved to town and even city councils and mayors are as drearily mundane as their names are colorful. In places like Lower Slaughter and Grimsby, the biggest matters for locally elected officials are trash collection, the local parks and broken sidewalks.
But they play some role in important things like law enforcement. And local politics are highly partisan, the elections seen as tests for national political trends.
Last week’s results showed the opposition Labour Party is likely to take national office from the clown-car government led by revolving Conservative prime ministers for the past four years.
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Author: Ruth King
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