London is radiant this summer. You could call it a case of Brexit without tears, at least for visitors who are mobbing the city with special enthusiasm, buoyed by the fallen pound.
But an air of unease hangs heavy over this center of fashion and finance. There are more homeless people on the streets than I have ever seen, some sprawled asleep on the sidewalk with a dog nearby, another with a paperback that had slipped to the side as he dozed off.
At a theater I met a woman from Scotland who predicted during intermission that her state will hold another referendum to leave Britain now that Britain has voted to leave the European Union. Her husband, she said, had lost his job in steel, a dead industry, and has had to take a job paying far less.
Some, however, see no future for Scotland on its own. "Scotland is bust," due to the decimated price of oil, declared a businessman at a weekend gathering, and "Labor is finished." The National Scottish Party is in opposition now, he concluded. But more will be needed, according to a money manager who wants to see a new left-of-center party led by Liberal Democrat Nick Clegg, at one point deputy primer minister to David Cameron. This would mean a split in Labor with moderates latching onto Clegg and the hapless Jeremy Corbyn, deserted by much of his shadow cabinet, taking the remains of the day, as a novelist wrote, into a new New Labor, destined to drown its sorrows in Socialism.
Of course the British are about to see a new New Tory Party lashed to the mainsails of Brexit by accidental, now inevitable Prime Minister Theresa May. A cultural representative from the EU in London exclaimed that only a few weeks before people had barely heard of her. But suddenly it was "THERESA MAY! THERESA MAY!" Only Theresa, he seemed to be saying, can save us now.
Despite her reputation for blingy shoes _ red, animal-print, always a welcome counterpoint to her conservatism _ no politician since Bobby Kennedy has been called ruthless as often as May. Part of it is due to the startling enactment of "Bring Up the Bodies" that accompanied her own ascent. There was the rapid resignation of Cameron, insouciant enough to call the referendum and steer right into catastrophe; the rise and fall of Trump look-alike Boris Johnson, who rose again as May's foreign minister, sentenced now to Brussels much of the time, where he can atone for his flamboyant ride at the helm of the Brexit campaign; the slaughter of Johnson at the hands of Michael Gove, maneuvered possibly into taking out Big Boris and making way for May; the stumble of Gove's Lady Macbeth-like wife, Sarah Vine, a journalist who emailed her husband to get going on the project; the unlikely entrance and exit of Andrea Leadsom of the motherhood platform (aimed at childless May), whose departure was graceful enough to make up for that gaffe and earn her a spot in the cabinet.
For all the drama surrounding 10 Downing Street, it was bracing while in London to see someone as capable as May taking charge so quickly, firmly and with such intelligence. Britain has its own angry voters just like the U.S., and they too have true grievances, but I felt wistful watching one impossible character after another disappear, finally, in favor of a sensible choice to lead the nation through dangerous days ahead.
If only we can be so lucky, somehow, in America.
ABOUT THE WRITER
Lee Cullum is a Dallas journalist. She wrote this for the Dallas Morning News. Readers may email her at lcjournalist@gmail.com.
