In a development that would make even the most jaded observer of Anglo-American politics raise an eyebrow, a British ex-political aide is now leading the primary vote count for Governor of California. Yes, you read that correctly. A former Labour apparatchik, a creature of Westminster's backroom machinations, is on the cusp of governing the world's fifth-largest economy. The spectacle is at once absurd and instructive, a perfect mirror of our age of intellectual decadence and historical amnesia.
Let us first acknowledge the sheer irony. California, that sprawling land of tech utopians and avocado toast enthusiasts, has turned to a British exile for salvation. It is as if the Roman provinces, weary of their own corrupt senators, summoned a Greek philosopher to restore order. But this is no philosopher. This is a political operative, a man who cut his teeth in the grimy trenches of British electioneering. His ascendancy speaks volumes about the hollowing out of American political talent, a vacuum eagerly filled by a European caste of professional ‘fixers’.
Consider the historical parallels. The late Roman Republic increasingly relied on provincial strongmen to administer its affairs, men who owed their allegiance not to Rome but to their own ambition. We see the same pattern today: the rise of the political mercenary, unmoored from local loyalties and driven by a technocratic globalist ethos. This candidate, for all his talk of ‘inclusive prosperity’, is a creature of the Davos set. His campaign is a testament to the triumph of brand over substance, of managerial competence over democratic legitimacy.
But there is a deeper rot here. The Californian electorate, dazed by a decade of wildfires, homelessness and tech feudalism, has embraced the promise of ‘expertise’ from a foreigner. This is the death rattle of local democracy. When a community can no longer produce its own leaders, it imports them. And what does it import? A British Labour functionary who once advised on housing policy. The irony is exquisite: a man from a nation grappling with its own identity crisis is now tasked with solving California’s. It is the blind leading the blind, but at a much higher salary.
One must also note the sheer intellectual bankruptcy of the modern Left. Labour’s finest export is not a philosopher or a poet, but a political consultant. This is what the once-great British intellectual tradition has been reduced to: a factory for producing policy wonks who can speak fluently about ‘stakeholder engagement’ but have never read a line of Orwell or Ruskin. The Californian campaign is a monument to this poverty. No grand vision, no stirring rhetoric. Just data-driven microtargeting and a relentless focus group-tested smile.
And what of British national identity? We have long bemoaned the brain drain of our scientists and artists. Now we export our political class as well. This candidate is but the latest in a long line of British intellectuals who have found greater success abroad than at home. From Hollywood directors to Oxbridge professors, we have become a farm team for American prestige. It is a source of national shame, not pride. We are the Greeks to their Romans, supplying the tutors and scribes while they wield the power.
Yet there is a warning in this for the United Kingdom. If our political talent is so readily poached, what does that say about the state of our own democracy? The candidate’s departure from British politics was a quiet affair, a whisper in the corridors of power. He left not because he was rejected, but because he saw greater opportunity in the American carnival. This is the ultimate insult: our system is too small, too parochial for the ambitions of our own elite.
So as the returns come in and the former aide tightens his grip on the Golden State’s governorship, spare a thought for the deeper meaning. We are witnessing not just a political upset, but a symptom of decline. The world’s most powerful subnational entity has become a laboratory for British political exiles. It is a curious fate for a nation that once boasted ‘no taxation without representation’. Now it seems representation is merely a commodity, to be bought and sold on the global market.
In the end, this story is not about California or even about the candidate. It is about us: the British, the Romans of the modern age, watching our former colonies import our best and brightest while we stumble on at home, leaderless and adrift. The Californication of British Labour is complete. But who will govern Britain?
