When I first arrived in London, the country stood on the threshold of a historic shift. The public mood was electric, buoyed by the anticipation of ending decades of Conservative rule—from Margaret Thatcher’s iron certainty to John Major’s exhausted pragmatism. I remember asking my university professor at the time—a veteran journalist who understood the shadows behind the doors of 10 Downing Street—why the British public seemed almost euphoric. His answer was sharp and unambiguous: “It’s the joy of emancipation. Conservative rule has wrecked the country.”

I was not entirely convinced then. But I recall that moment vividly today as Britain relitigates its past, with Prime Minister Andy Burnham openly blaming Thatcher-era deregulation for the economic paralysis gripping the country.

The irony, however, is that everything my professor said about the Conservatives, I later lived—almost word for word—with Labour. From Tony Blair’s glittering “New Labour” years to the moral collapse of the Iraq War, Labour did not rescue Britain from Conservative excess; it merely inherited the same machinery and drove it deeper into the ground.

Both parties, in alternating turns and with equal elegance, suffocated Britain’s capacity for renewal and exhausted the people of this island.

Both parties, in alternating turns and with........

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