Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May at the Cenotaph memorial in Whitehall, central London, November 2016. Dominic Lipinski/Press Association. All rights reserved.June is bringing the British isles moderate temperatures and heavy rain. The contrast befits Britain's mood, for the country is facing four wrenching dilemmas.
The first concerns who should form the coming government after the 8 June parliamentary election. The choice is hardly about a conservative party with centre-right positions versus a leftist opponent. It is also not, as often depicted in British media, a contest between affluent, confident, and quite content South-East England versus the (economically just-getting-by) rest. This election is by far more important than that, for it comes at the end of an era.
The two political experiments that have shaped the country in the last thirty five years – Thatcherite Conservatism (under prime minister Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s) and Blairite liberalism (the almost 15-years of "New Labour" rule that began with Tony Blair's coming to power in 1997) – have been discarded by the two largest parties in the country.
