Congratulations, UK!

This has been a strange election to witness from our side of the pond. The polls were saying way in advance that Labour was going to win, but nobody quite believed it. I know I was cynical.

Right up to the wire, Labour politicians could not quite believe they were on track for a historic election victory. Despite every poll for more than a year suggesting Keir Starmer would end up in No 10, they worried something could go wrong.

For some, it was the ghost of 1992, when the polls predicted Neil Kinnock was on course to take power, but in the end John Major’s Conservatives clung on. For others, it was their fear that after 14 years in opposition, Labour had lost the ability to win.

After all, in the last 100 years only three Labour leaders have ever won elections – Clement Attlee, Harold Wilson and Tony Blair – and the last of those was almost 20 years ago. No opposition leader has ever flipped a landslide defeat into a majority in a single term.

“I can’t help it,” one shadow cabinet member said. “I know everything points to a Labour win. But I still wake up at night in a cold sweat about it.” Yet with the exit poll indicating an overwhelming Labour victory, perhaps the doubtful can finally rest easy.

I guess the prediction actually came true.

Keir Starmer has said the “sunlight of hope” is now shining in Britain again as Labour won a landslide UK election victory, bringing a crushing end to 14 years of Conservative rule.

Wait…you’re telling me a nation can actually successfully kick a political party run by scandal-ridden conservative buffoons out of office? That gives me hope, except that the polls in the USA don’t show that kind of promise at all.

To temper any optimism, though, Nigel Farage won a few seats for his hateful party. Also, I have no idea what’s going on in France, but it doesn’t look good.