Everyone can see that Kamala Harris is over her skis in this campaign. Some of it is understandable; her 2020 presidential run was laughably short, and Joe Biden’s exit from the race meant that she had to hit the ground running this time around. Still, she’s scrambling to get help wherever she can.
One of the places Harris is reportedly seeking advice from is the UK’s Labour Party. In July’s election, Labour won an impressive number of seats in Parliament, so it’s easy to see the appeal of a party that won a landslide — at least on paper.
“Vice President Kamala Harris is reportedly seeking advice from the political strategists behind the Labour Party’s landslide victory in the July U.K. election, but any advice they can offer her is unlikely to improve her electoral prospects,” reports the Washington Examiner.
“In 2024, the Labour Party won an enormous majority in the House of Commons,” the report continues. “In a climate in which liberal parties are losing ground to populist, right-wing parties, the result has been viewed as a road map for left-of-center parties to return to electoral success.”
I’ve written before about how Labour’s big numbers are a bit of a mirage. The “landslide” only happened because of the UK’s electoral system, in which a candidate needs only achieve a plurality to win. In a system where half a dozen candidates may be in a race, many Labour candidates won with bare pluralities. This fact has led Britons to express low confidence in this government, which also makes it curious that Team Harris would look to Labour for advice.
Related: An Outsider's Perspective on Kamala Harris
For an example of the types of policies that Labour is proposing, the government is mulling a proposal to get rid of the tax exemption for religious schools. This would decimate small Christian, Jewish, and Muslim schools that operate on shoestring budgets to give parents an affordable education with values that align with their beliefs — including Jewish parents who don’t want to put their kids in state schools with antisemitism on the rise.
Labour's attack on small independent schools could have a devastating effect on Jewish children at a time when they're facing antisemitism in the state sector. New Holy Smoke episode with Dan Hitchens and Raisel Freedman of @Pajesthinktank. https://t.co/X50KyQ0Hnj
— Damian Thompson (@holysmoke) September 6, 2024
The Spectator’s Damian Thompson discussed this in the latest episode of his “Holy Smoke” podcast. He spoke with a journalist who has uncovered this proposal as well as a fellow at a Jewish think tank.
“This is, as I see it, the most secular government in British history,” Thompson said. “It's a government that is deeply influenced by progressive ideology by general ideology, and the strictly traditional” values of conservative Jews, Christians, and Muslims “are really incompatible with their worldview.”
This is the party Harris might be looking to for advice: a party holding onto a mandate so fragile that one journalist called the election a “Potemkin landslide.” It’s a party that is beholden to left-wing interests at the expense of the hardworking families it claims to champion. This is one of many reasons why we need to make sure Harris loses the election in November.
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