Honeymoons and Marriages

Before Starmer was even elected, the narrative was all about how short his honeymoon would be. So what? It's the marriage that counts

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Much like about 42 per cent of the UK, I’m divorced.

I had a fabulous wedding, and a brilliant honeymoon and then settled into a not-great and increasingly deteriorating marriage which ended badly. Over ten years on, I hold no ill will against my ex-husband (you’ll be SHOCKED to hear this wasn’t true in the immediate aftermath). We were simply not people who were supposed to be in each other’s lives. Neither of us was a good spouse for the other one and while I know little of (and have no interest in) my ex’s life these days I am fairly confident he’s happier without me, just as I am without him.

For the most part, I don’t think about my marriage all that often anymore. As my life gets longer, the percentage of it taken up with that relationship recedes. And I am not really thinking about my own individual failures and failures within that relationship now either except as part of a much broader therapeutic journey.

But you know what I think about even less? My honeymoon. Unless I am specifically asked if I’ve been to Mexico (we spent the first part of our honeymoon in Cancun) or where I was when Obama was first elected (We spent the second part in Las Vegas - including going out knocking up on election day 2008) it just doesn’t come up. It never really mattered.

Weddings are good fun and an important way for many to say “This is my person” but they aren’t anywhere like as important as the actual marriage itself. This goes 100 times for honeymoons.

So I can’t stop thinking how utterly ridiculous the constant references to ‘political honeymoons’ are. How pointless this is as a journalistic or political framing device. Ask any divorceé about their honeymoon and I would bet you that the vast majority of the time, they’ll tell you how great it was. Anyone who has been married successfully or unsuccessfully knows that however great your honeymoon was, it tells you bugger all about the state of your marriage.

Much like the nonsensical but rhetorically successful device of comparing the UK budget to that of a household or a credit card, the honeymoon is a metaphor that doesn’t bear the slightest scrutiny. But unlike those other two, it is also a metaphor that doesn’t have a long shelf life and little political and rhetorical power. And yet I can’t listen to a political podcast (and I listen to a lot) or read a piece of political analysis of Starmer’s Labour government without endless questions about whether his honeymoon is over.

What I am trying to wrap my head around is why so many political commentators think this framing matters and what difference they think it will make to the overall success or failure of Starmer’s Labour government.