CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Turn and Face the Change

Photograph Source: Simon Dawson / No 10 Downing Street – OGL 3

As Keir Starmer left British politics, with the last of the summer light catching his spectacles, I found myself wondering what comes next. Perhaps a pint of his favoured IPA (India Pale Ale) while reading about his beloved Arsenal in Isaac Khan’s forthcoming “22 Years: The Inside Story of Arsenal’s Title-Winning Season”? Or a secluded family holiday in France where he has already been so feted? Politics teaches us that getting into office is everything. Win Downing Street, occupy the White House, enter the Élysée—and the story is complete. Yet history tells us something else. For a handful of leaders, the significant moment comes after they leave.

Westminster, meanwhile, has already begun speculating about Starmer’s future, with chatter that he could end up at the United Nations, although one trade union figure I spoke to dismissed this with a wave of the hand. Another rumour imagined Starmer returning as Foreign Secretary. Few politicians achieve an impressive second act. Nelson Mandela may be the greatest exception. After serving as South Africa’s president following 27 years in prison, his stature only increased. Freed from the strictures of office, he emerged as the closest thing to universal moral authority, though his pursuit of peace came at the expense of deeper economic justice. He spoke openly about HIV/AIDS when many shied away from the subject. He quietly mediated conflicts across Africa. Through the Nelson Mandela Foundation he built an institution to carry those ideals forward, whatever disagreements remained over how they should be interpreted. Above all, he became the living embodiment of reconciliation and forgiveness—those two golden words that sound almost unfathomable today but which, in Mandela’s latter years, briefly felt like the future.

Jimmy Carter left the White House under a cloud of criticism, his presidency........

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