I wasted time, and now doth time waste me

UK News report #6 June 2026

There was a Shakespearean feel to British politics this week, with an unpopular monarch throwing down the crown as a rival lord marched down towards Westminster and gathered supporters: Andy Burnham as Bolingbroke arriving from Ravenspur, Starmer as the broken Richard II lamenting that his following had melted away. The BBC even tracked Burnham’s (late) train like he was marching on Moscow.

Starmer was a failure, but as I wrote this week, just the latest in a line of leaders who could not solve the Riddle of Britain. He was the personification of a consensus that is already dead, and as Patrick Maguire wrote in portrait for the Times, he was unwilling or unable to impose his will. No one really knew what he believed, and if he had any sort of lodestar, it was a sort of pure legalism, often taken to its absurd conclusion; he struggled to even say what a woman was until the courts ruled on it.