Keir Starmer couldn’t beat the curse of Brexit – a politics poisoned by nationalism | Rafael Behr

B ritain is not ungovernable, but the chalice of high office has been spiked with unusually fast-acting poison. Six prime ministers down in a decade. The spectacle of the lectern planted outside No 10 for a resignation speech has acquired the familiarity of ritual. Since the Brexit referendum, the average tenure in Downing Street has been less than two years. That ballot isn’t directly responsible for ending Keir Starmer’s reign . He brought deficiencies to the job that have nothing to do with the EU. He took power without a clear sense of what he wanted it for and resented the expectation that he explain himself better. But those weaknesses were more cruelly exposed in our parched post-Brexit climate, a decade into the goodwill drought. Governing is harder when resources are squandered on an exercise in self-harming statecraft. Disentangling the UK from the single market and building new systems to impede trade were processes that burned through reserves of diplomatic capital and economic credibility. The cost in foregone growth – the measure of how much richer Britain would have been on the pre-referendum trajectory – is estimated to be in the range of 4% to 8% of GDP . That number doesn’t include the emotional toll: the coarsening of debate; radicalisation and polarisation; the toxification of political culture by a movement that sold immiseration as liberation and, when it all went wrong, blamed the losing side for refusing to indulge the delusions of the winners. …