THE SYMBOLISM was unmissable. When Britain’s new prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, arrived in Downing Street on July 5th, he was greeted by activists waving the Union flag, the Scottish saltire and the Welsh Red Dragon. The union has had a tumultuous decade, beginning with the divisive referendum on Scottish independence in 2014 and peaking, post-Brexit, with the Conservative and Unionist Party putting a border in the Irish Sea. Now Sir Keir’s Labour Party is in power for the first time in 14 years. And once again it holds a majority of seats in each of the three countries of Great Britain.

Labour’s recovery in Scotland was even more stunning than its gains south of the border. At the previous election in 2019, in Scotland Labour won just one seat against the Scottish National Party’s (SNP) 48. Now the SNP has a mere nine to Labour’s 37 (though in Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire, a recount will take place on July 6th). So disastrous a night was it for the nationalists that in Glasgow, once saturated in SNP yellow, all six seats switched back to red.