I'm John Baster. I'm joined by my colleague and friend Joseph Sternberg, member of the

Editor of the editorial board of the

Wall Street Journal. He's in London. He writes the political economics column for the Wall Street

Journal editorial page. And within our days, Joseph has written of the struggles in parliament by the

Prime Minister, Kirst Starrmer, who has challenged in his own overwhelming majority by not one, not two, possibly three

names of well-known names in Great Britain. Why? Joseph, a very good evening to you. You have a

wonderful metaphor that makes me smile every time I think of it. You say that Mr. Starrmer's personality,

charisma, is somewhat

somewhat between a boulder and a potato. What do you mean to be conveyed by that? I know

it's funny, but what does it say about his conduct in office? Good evening to you, Joe.

Hey, John. Well, I mean, what's really interesting in British politics right now, to the extent

anything is, is sort of the sense that things are just falling apart.

And I think that a lot of it goes back to the economy in the sense that neither of the traditional major parties, either Kirstormer's ruling Labor Party or the opposition conservatives have much of an economic

plan.

And this is exacerbated on Starrmer's side by the fact that he also is not very charismatic

as a retail politician.

And so I think that you find yourself in the situation where really the overarching theme that I see unfolding in Britain right now is the politics of economic stagnation.

You know, what happens to a political system when most of the major parties and politicians and also, frankly, a lot of the voters seem to have given up on any hope that the economy might start growing again or that people

might become more prosperous.

And apparently what you end up with is this crop of politicians who are very uncharismatic,

who are afraid to talk about the economy at all, who are prone to be distracted by relatively minor matters, who are deeply unpopular

with the public, and yet somehow the fact of that unpopularity doesn't create room for other

...