The ANC and DA alike should study closely the chain of events that led to Keir Starmer’s resignation earlier this week to look for parallels to their own futures and that of South Africa. The old Conservative-vs-Labour order seems over for at least a time to come. And as public frustration with the old order grows, insurgent parties of the right and the left now rival the joint Labour/Conservative voter share. In South Africa something similar is happening, just via different means.

In a briefing attended by this newspaper in London this week, a Labour MP got it spot-on when he remarked, “We won and won big but we had no idea what we were doing or why.”

A similar remark could be made about the Government of National Unity (GNU) of the past 18 months. The first six months of the GNU were different as the parties were still finding their feet in the new arrangement. But 18 months later a clear united reform agenda is yet to emerge and the thing is going stale.

South African party funding laws make it almost impossible to start a new rival to the DA or the ANC. Hence the country’s insurgent parties, the MKP and the EFF, tend to come from ANC splinters and given their open histories of corruption it is no surprise that there is much talk of undeclared funding sources. But legitimate mainstream parties, with sensible ideas, and which would therefore declare their funding, can in practice not be established because donor funding is capped at such a low level.

That was the intent behind party-funding laws enacted a few years ago. Sinister but shrewd actors, knowing the ANC as kaput and that Ramaphosa was no reformer, understood that once the evidence of his failure became apparent, there would be a surge of interest in putting private money behind an alternative, money that had once backed CR17. That had to be prevented at all costs. That local philanthropists conned themselves into funding some of this (in support of transparent democracy – weep) just showed how important it is that successful businesspeople take proper advice before launching into policy and political adventures.

The Common Sense’s Labour interlocutor went on to say something else about the malaise around this party, “that [Labour] reinforced the idea that the liberal elite did not want to hear the ideas of others”. Spot-on again. Immigration without assimilation and the idea that all cultures are equal has poisoned Britain. All cultures are not equal and Western liberal democratic culture, what should be the culture of Britain, is superior to all others. The reason is that it is the only culture in history that values the sovereign worth of an individual. There is a simple proof that all cultures cannot be equal, which is that cultures evolve over time, for better or worse, which would not be possible if they were all of the same moral worth. Add to the cultural retreat of Western values the madness of net zero in an economy that is the growth laggard of the advanced world, and why anyone is surprised that the old British political order is fragmenting becomes the surprise. South African culture – counterintuitively – is very closely aligned with what Western culture should have remained.

But walk the halls of power in Westminster and there is little consensus on the above and some real wariness of standing up to say it plainly, even where the points are conceded. Unless that changes there appears to be little upside for Britain. Walk the streets and a protestor is likely to shout “fascist” at anyone identifying with those two ideas.

The same arrogance of the elite is true in South Africa. Stop the madness of the country’s own net-zero policies and burn coal in the fleet of defunct power plants dotting the veld. The unemployment rate among young people is near 50%! It is a moral abomination, and the height of liberal arrogance, to pursue Western climate ideology when so many people live in such terrible circumstances. And then the madness of race-based empowerment policy. The country does not have the luxury of picking which skills and what investment it wishes to admit. Learn from Elon Musk, as this newspaper reported earlier this week, and select for merit, not for equity, but in the local halls of power you will find too many politicians, businesspeople, and journalists who believe Musk is a fascist.

Given the staleness of the GNU, and without sensible insurgent parties to tap voter frustration, South Africans are turning to something similar but different. If you read this newspaper, you will already know what that is. They build enclaves where communities take upon themselves what were once the responsibilities of the state, and so, as in the case of its former colonial master, the old order fragments – just by a different means. In South Africa’s case the outlook flowing from the different means is arguably more hopeful, as much of the capital base, entrepreneurial base, tax base, and employment base may be retained, regardless of where the national politics goes, avoiding the kind of precipice that has sunk so many other post-colonial emerging markets. In Britain, albeit off a much higher base, the outlook, for the middle classes at least, is arguably darker as the national politics will have to come right to turn things around.

And that final point is quite something for South Africa’s middle classes to reflect upon. They are likely better off, and will likely live better lives, than is the outlook for their peers in Britain.