Britain appointed its first center-left prime minister in 14 years on Friday after the Labour Party’s landslide general election victory, making the UK something of an outlier in Europe.
Labour’s win comes days after Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally made sweeping gains in the first round of France’s parliamentary elections and a far-right government was appointed in the Netherlands, and less than two years after Giorgia Meloni became the premier of Italy’s most right-wing government since World War II.
But the unprecedented rise in Britain of staunch Brexiteer Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, which secured about 14% of the vote share, suggests the country is far from immune to the right-wing wave sweeping Europe.