Somebody’s Happy

DUBLIN — For diplomatic purposes, the Irish government takes no public view on who it wants to win the U.K. general election.

But the undiplomatic reality, drawn from POLITICO’s recent conversations with lawmakers and senior civil servants in Dublin’s government quarter, comes across as uncompromising and unanimous: We cannot wait for Keir Starmer.

That eagerness for change is driven, in part, by the knowledge that right at the heart of Starmer’s Labour Party are senior figures with deep roots in Ireland.

It’s fair to say that, for the Irish, the last 14 years of Conservative rule on the other side of the water have been something of a drag.

“At times it’s felt like a nightmare, having this neighbor who gleefully rips up the rulebook over and over and never seems to get how destructive it all has been. We want to have sane, sensible, respectful partners across the Irish Sea again, because that good relationship is so fundamentally important to us,” said a senior government official who, given that the official position on the U.K. election is neutrality, was granted approval to remain anonymous.

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