Sorry. Sorry I’m late. Sorry I’m late. I’ve not been to bed yet. Wahey! No, I haven’t been partying. I’ve been working. I’m a professional. Unlike American news organizations, here in the U.K., I think you’ll find us journalists are a little bit more balanced. Wahey! Oh, God. All right. Let’s do this. After 14 years of Conservative rule, the Labour Party have resoundingly won the U.K. election this morning, leaving the Tories with their worst defeat ever — I’m sorry. I’m just going to do that again without a smile on my face. Sorry. I’m a professional. [PHONE DINGS] Well, the results are still coming in. Hey. Dum, dum, dum, another one bites the dust. It’s a bloodbath. It’s an absolute bloodbath. For six weeks, election fever has hit the U.K. In the main, all very dull and predictable. A man without a coat getting rained on versus a man falling into the water versus a man with a bin on his head. You know, the usual. But the people have spoken. Meet our new prime minister. Yes, it’s Fifty Shades of Beige, Captain White Bread, Sir Keir Starmer. “Change begins now.” Never heard of him? Don’t worry, neither have we. If he was a vegetable, he’d be a potato. But a little bit of dull and boring is exactly what the doctor ordered. That’s if you can find a doctor left in the U.K. that isn’t on strike for a fair and decent wage. [PHONE DINGS] Oh. This is brutal. This is like the opening of “Saving Private Ryan.” I’d almost feel sorry for them — if they weren’t seriously awful people. This morning’s Labour landslide bucks an international trend, a resounding rejection of right-wing populism — kind of. Yes. Whilst countries like Italy, Hungary, France, and Germany are having passionate love affairs with right-wing populism and in America you’re seriously considering a second helping, here in the U.K., we’ve been in an abusive relationship with it for some years. It began in 2008, when the unregulated greed of investment bankers brought Western economies to their knees. The Tories took office in 2010. And Prime Minister David Cameron declared, “We’re all in this together,” before implementing brutal austerity on the country’s poorest people. Resentment and anger took hold. And populism thrives on little else. Then Brexit, which gave all the fringe voices of British politics a mainstream platform with which to promise the world without fear they’d ever have to deliver. That’s how populism works. It promises the moon, and instead it hands you a DVD copy of “Apollo 13.” Soon, the Looney Tunes who sold us the idea in the first place were running the asylum. First, we got Emperor Palpatine’s cleaner, Theresa May. She knew Brexit was crap, but she went along with it anyway. And she didn’t last long. Then Boris Johnson, populism on steroids, a man whose M.O. is barefaced lies and wild-eyed incompetence, whilst looking like he’s combed his hair with a [EXPLETIVE] kettle. Then Liz Truss, populism on smack, with £45 billion of unfunded tax cuts for the most wealthy, which swiftly crashed the economy, tanked the pound and sent everyone’s mortgages through the roof. It wasn’t so much trickle-down Reaganomics — more [EXPLETIVE] down from a great height-onomics. She lasted just six weeks in office. [PHONE DINGS] Oh, Liz Truss, former P.M., has just lost her seat. Good riddance! Then, just as you thought you’d run out of entitled, incompetent morons to run the country, it’s multimillionaire hedge fund manager Rishi Sunak, the U.K.’s richest prime minister ever. We had finally come full circle, with Britain being governed by economic terrorists and disaster capitalists, enabled by a political class of grifters and ambulance chasers, blaming immigrants and poor people for all the country’s woes, whilst sucking out every last morsel of marrow out of the bare bones of the rotting corpse of the state. Fourteen years of Tory populism and austerity, and what have we got to show for it? The British economy has flatlined. Real wages are lower than they were a decade ago. A third of British children live in relative poverty. And there are more food banks than there are McDonald’s. Our health care system is in tatters, our social care system is in tatters, and rapists are being spared jail because the prisons are full. I mean, this is an extinction-level event for the Tories. It’s a bit like a really bad “Jurassic Park” film — a bit like the last “Jurassic Park” film. So whilst Keir Starmer may be as charismatic as a lukewarm block of unseasoned tofu, going back to a centrist, socially left-of-center, fiscally right-of-center party run by a potato feels like a radical shift. Boring is the new radical. Unradical is the new radical. The truth is that Starmer can’t be radical. There’s no money left. But not promising things you know you can’t deliver is in itself a rejection of populism. Unfortunately, Labour are promising nothing. Reading Labour’s manifesto is about as inspiring as when you forget to take your phone with you and you have to take a dump whilst reading the back of a bottle of bleach. Labour’s tax and spending pledges are minuscule, less than even the Tories were promising. And therein lies the problem. When the system fails the people, the people support politicians who promise to burn the system to the ground. Enter, stage right: Nigel Farage, about as trustworthy as an unlicensed butcher. You may have seen him talking at Donald Trump’s rallies. Farage has been a uniquely bad smell in British politics for some years. His Reform party may have only won a handful of seats last night, but Farage has already anointed himself the unofficial leader of the opposition, with many pundits saying he could be our next prime minister before our new prime minister has even sat down at his desk and got his pens out. Starmer should beware, as should the likes of Joe Biden. Just not being the other guy isn’t enough. If Starmer cannot turn the tide, and quickly, saving our public services from the brink of collapse whilst putting more money into working people’s pockets, in five short years, populists will be poised to take over the country again. Keir Starmer may well be a step in the right direction, or he may merely represent a stay of execution. If that’s the case, the U.K.’s political landscape has never looked so bleak. Well, that’s depressing. I was in a good mood when I got here.