Those who cherish democracy should be celebrating the fact that Narendra Modi did not get a “triumphant majority” in the general election, one of Britain’s most distinguished historians, Sir Simon Schama, said on Sunday.
Modi’s name cropped up on BBC TV during a discussion about Britain’s general election on its flagship Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme.
Kuenssberg asked Schama which of Labour’s previous Prime Ministers — Clement Attlee, Harold Wilson, Jim Callaghan and Tony Blair — Sir Keir Starmer will most resemble.
Schama, turning the question into one about the challenges faced by democracy around the world, replied: “I think he will be most like himself, actually. I mean there are bits of Harold Wilson’s refusal to be up in the sky, except for ‘the white heat of technology’. There are some things about Clement Attlee, but that’s less important than saying this, which is, I suppose, self-evident, but is worth saying on your programme on a Sunday morning.”
Schama, 79, a prolific author who was knighted in 2018 for “services to history”, went on: “For someone who lives most of the time in the United States, where the putative nominee for the Republican Party has already said that it’s not necessarily going to be the case that he will accept the result of the election, the transfer of power so peacefully (in the UK), so generously stated in Rishi Sunak’s rather wonderful speech, is a majestic thing that we can’t take for granted.
“We have right now, historically, merciless problems of climate change, of the next pandemic, which I fear is probably around the corner, wars we didn’t think would happen again in Europe and elsewhere, and the Middle East.
“And so how democracy endures in facing these things is the ultimate problem. Democracy is certainly on the back foot, but is not down and out.
“Narendra Modi did not get a triumphant majority. In all likelihood, Marine Le Pen will not get an absolute majority today (in France). We should be grateful and celebrating that and have a glass of something stiff at lunch.”
