Britain's Populist Moment

Is Great Britain on the brink of a Trump revolution?

The president's visit to the U.K. coincides with indications Prime Minister Keir Starmer's Labour government is tottering.

Starmer's own party increasingly thinks he has to go -- and if Labour fares as poorly as polls suggest it will in local elections next May, Starmer will be out.

His downfall could arrive sooner: Scandals have taken out three of his key aides and allies already this month.

The British right, meanwhile, is showing signs of renewed vigor.

More than 110,000 people flocked to London last weekend for the hard-right activist Tommy Robinson's "Unite the Kingdom" rally.

Yet, perversely, Robinson might be the best friend Labour has -- the one man who can divide the right enough to keep Britain's anti-populist left in power.

Egging Robinson on is an American billionaire who has thought about splitting the right in this country, too: Elon Musk.

Britain is a battlefield -- between left and right, populists and insiders, and between bitterly opposed factions within each side.

The makings of a Trump-style political revolution were plain to see in Brexit nine years ago.

Unfortunately for Britain, its Conservative Party wasn't prepared to remake itself the way the Republican Party did under Trump.

The result was that even as the Conservatives remained in power, they failed to choose a leader who could wield it effectively: Conservative prime ministers came and went like tryouts for "The Apprentice."

Voters got sick of it and finally, in last year's elections, gave Labour a commanding majority in Parliament: 411 seats to the Conservatives' pathetic 121.

Out of power and now led by Kemi Badenoch, the Conservatives are in disarray, with Nigel Farage's new populist party, Reform UK, overtaking them in polls.

Charles III might object to calling Farage a king without a crown, but he's on an express track to becoming prime minister -- if Robinson and Musk don't derail him.

Starmer's party won last year not because voters wanted Labour so much as they wanted anyone but the Tories.

Even with his lopsided majority in Parliament, Starmer's failed to catch on with voters, and now he's vexed by personnel problems.

His deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, resigned Sept. 5 after it came out she'd underpaid taxes on her seaside home.

On Monday, Starmer's director of strategy, Paul Ovenden, resigned over degrading remarks he'd made years ago on WhatsApp about Diane Abbott, a then-sexagenarian MP Ovenden graded in a game of "shag, marry, kill."

Worst of all for Starmer, the PM has had to fire his ambassador to the United States, Lord Mandelson, a Labour grandee who was surprisingly well liked in Trump's Washington.

Mandelson sent supportive messages to his friend Jeffrey Epstein after the notorious businessman's sex-crime convictions.

With Labour flagging in the polls, Starmer is staring down the fate that befell so many of his recent Tory predecessors -- being deposed by his own party.

But Britain doesn't have to hold its next general election until August 2029.

Until then, the country is stuck with Labour, and Labour is just plain stuck, occupying office while popular discontent swells.

Farage, Brexit's mastermind, stands to inherit as Labour and the Tories disintegrate.

Only two things can prevent him from becoming Britain's Trump.

The Conservatives might yet, after playing so many rounds of musical chairs with their leadership, find someone to take charge after Badenoch's all-but-inevitable fall who can compete with Farage for populist votes.

Or Robinson, who is more akin to a soccer hooligan than a true political insurgent, might build his pet party, Advance UK, into a force sufficient to drain Reform's momentum.

Musk, who has daydreamed about creating a new party to compete with the GOP on this side of the Atlantic, can't directly bankroll Robinson, but he's giving him plenty of moral support.

The Tesla CEO, who's been outspoken on his X app about his enthusiasm for Advance UK and disappointment in Farage, appeared by video at Robinson's "Unite the Kingdom" event.

Robinson's incendiary rhetoric and criminal record -- which includes assaulting an off-duty police officer who intervened in a fight Robinson was having with his girlfriend, as well as convictions for fraud and other misdeeds -- make him obnoxious to British voters otherwise eager to hear a populist alternative to Labour and the Tories.

Yet as the startling numbers he drew to London demonstrate, he has a significant following of his own.

With the right already facing a choice between Tories and Reform, Robinson threatens to tip the scales back to the establishment, giving Labour a reprieve it doesn't deserve.

Despite falling out with Trump and Farage, Elon Musk should reconsider his strategy: America needs Trump's GOP, and the U.K. needs Reform.

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