Personality matters in politics: Starmer's lack of one did for him

John Harris's Guardian article on the resignation of Keir Starmer contains a key paragraph:

So there it was: as well as a modern tendency to loathe politicians that regularly seems arbitrary, whipped-up and way over the top, a sense that Starmer's sheer blankness – his painful lack of clarity and the absence of a halfway coherent story about his own government – was making a lot of people dislike and mistrust him all the more.

Harris is obviously a good judge, because that was very much what I was saying on Bluesky at about the same time.

The fall of Starmer is a reminder that personality matters in politics. He never gave the public the impression that he had much of one. The result was that not only did he fail to inspire or enthuse anyone, but also that the public invented an unflattering personality for him. 1/3

— Jonathan Calder (@lordbonkers.bsky.social) 22 June 2026 at 10:29

World events gave him almost weekly opportunities to address the nation and sound prime-ministerial, yet he rarely took them. But then he didn't even talk to the junior ministers he sacked. 2/3

— Jonathan Calder (@lordbonkers.bsky.social) 22 June 2026 at 10:29

I'd also say that not being the Tories, which was Labour's strong selling point in the election, does not of itself generate a coherent programme for government. Perhaps Sunak's early election caught them on the hop, but you do get the impression that they came to power underprepared. 3/3

— Jonathan Calder (@lordbonkers.bsky.social) 22 June 2026 at 10:29

Ed Davey sews a blazer in Stockport and plays chess in Hull

Most Liberal Democrat MPs, and most of the limited number of target seats we have yet to win, are in the South of England, with inevitable consequences for the policy positions we adopt.

So it's good to see two reports on BBC News about Ed Davey visiting areas in the North where we hope to do well in next month's elections.

One is about a visit to Stockport, where the report says we are "eyeing full control". Ed also spoke of the party making gains "in places like Preston and Manchester and Trafford".

He is pictured sewing a blazer at a Stockport school uniform supplier he visited with Lisa Smart. This hardly counts as a stunt, and the media - local television in particular - wants pictures to go with our news stories. As I've said before, this is something Leave grasped and Remain failed to grasp during the EU referendum campaign.

It's just that I feel sorry for the kid who's going to be put into isolation for having a wonky blazer when the schools go back.

As it's in the Manchester commuter belt, parts of Stockport have a lot in common with some of the seats we hold in the South East of England. This is less true of Hull, where Ed has also been.

Here the Liberal Democrats have a one-seat majority on the council and are looking to increase that - a third of the seats are up for election next month.

Hull has long been a fight between Labour and the Lib Dems (you might call it a "two-horse race"), but Reform UK won the mayoral election here last year. So he turned his fire on them

""People have been very disappointed in the Reform mayor who's frankly missing in action. He's done nothing for the region."

and

"Nigel Farage backs Donald Trump left right and centre. He would have taken Britain into this war. He should take some responsibility for the high petrol prices people are paying and higher mortgage costs."

And the gentle stunt? I'm pleased to say that, as you can see in the video above, Ed was filmed playing chess with Mike Ross, the Lib Dem council leader of Hull City Council, on what looks to be one of Rishi Sunak's much-maligned chess tables.

For analysis of their game, see Paperback Rioter.

Chancellor announces £1.5m fund for Britain's elite chess players

Rishi Sunak established a £500,000 fund to support Britain's elite chess players when he was prime minister. The new Labour government scrapped it.

But now Rachel Reeves – a former  British under-14 girls champion herself – has announced that a larger sum is earmarked for the same purpose.

Leonard Barden, in his Guardian column, quotes her as saying:

“We are allocating £1.5m to help identify, support and elevate top tier players who have the potential to compete at a global level.”

And he explains:

The new support, announced along with a £500m grant for youth service projects, is more precisely targeted to the best talents, and will act as a spur to players like England’s youngest grandmaster, Shreyas Royal, 16, and England’s youngest Olympiad player, Bodhana Sivanandan, 10, both of whom met the chancellor a few weeks ago at 11 Downing Street. 

Currently the best prospect relative to age is Supratit Banerjee, 11, who played on top board for the Surrey team which retained the inter-counties championship this month and made a creditable draw with England’s No 2, David Howell, in a clock simultaneous match last week. The Scot, Frederick Gordon, 15, has also impressed. 

Barden goes on to cite similar schemes that proved successful in England, the US and the old Soviet Union.

One feature of Rishi Sunak's package for chess isn't being revived: the money he gave for chess tables in parks.

It was always hard to see why this was a matter for central government, but the plan – like the teaching of Latin in state schools – was attacked out of both snobbery and inverse snobbery.

Lib Dems go ahead of Tories in latest YouGov poll

The Liberal Democrats have overtaken the Conservatives have slipped to fourth place in a new YouGov opinion poll published today.

We are in third place in the poll on 17 per cent, with the Tories in fourth place on 16 per cent. 

Reform tops the poll on 29 per cent, with Labour in second place on 22 per cent.

All the usual caveats about making too much of one poll apply, but this still feels like a moment worth remarking. And it is a development that has been expected for some time, given recent trends in such polls.

The Tories are usually ruthless at getting rid of failing leaders, but the problem Tory MPs face is that their next leader will be chosen by the party's membership. 

There is no guarantee that this electorate will come up with someone better than Kemi Badenoch.

In the past Tory MPs have got around this problem by agreeing to put only one candidate to the membership (that's how Michael Howard and Rishi Sunak became leader), but Robert Jenrick and his followers would refuse to be party to such an arrangement unless Jenrick himself were that one candidate.

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The media must start holding Reform and Nigel Farage to account, says Hardeep Matharu. The normalisation of racism and dog-whistles will only get worse if the press continues to treat Farage as an entertaining figure representing the 'real views' of the British people.

Imran Mulla and Peter Oborne examine Rishi Sunak's worrying links with India's far right.

"Compared to similar size towns in the UK, Clacton has a limited heritage and cultural offer. It has a wonderful but very small museum space run by active volunteers in the public library. There’s room for about five visitors at a time, and it’s open just twice a week. Sadly, other venues where Clacton’s hidden heritage was celebrated have shut, such as museum dedicated to Pirate Radio which closed in 2016." Tony D. Sampson and Andrew Branch argue that Nigel Farage’s populism distracts from what people in Clacton are really proud about.

"Across the world there must have been so many of us who experienced a similarly uncanny sense of déjà vu upon reading Nineteen Eighty-Four for the first time. That is because for those of us who come from “wounded democracies” or autocracies-in-the-making or downright dictatorships, Oceania was never some far-fetched dystopian land set in an unforeseeable future, but something closer, much more visceral. And frightening too. It was not even a prescient warning about where things might lead if politics went unexpectedly wrong. For us, Nineteen Eighty-Four was already here. It was already happening." Elif Shafak on the undiminished power of George Orwell's novel remains as powerful as when it w

Richard Williams pays a visit to Robert Wyatt in Louth.

The King's Cross district of London got its name from a memorial to George IV that everybody hated and which lasted only 15 years, explains Matt Brown: "The octagonal base survived two further years after the statue was removed. It served variously as a police station, beer shop and advertising space. When it was pulled down in 1845, few people mourned. Newspaper accounts of the removal were scarce and short."

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"The ABC shared its findings with disinformation experts, who said the network's activity had the hallmarks of a Russian influence operation." Michael Workman and Kevin Nguyen reveal the Australian broadcaster's research into Russian interference in the general election and how - suddenly - the Tories are concerned about it.

"Starmer has picked his battles well and, for the most part, won them. For instance, the Labour leader has pledged to restore the UK’s net zero targets to their more ambitious former selves - prior to Sunak’s tinkering. Meanwhile, he continues to rubbish the government’s Rwanda deportation plan as an expensive, overly elaborate gimmick." Josh Self argues that Keir Starmer's part in the collapse of the Conservative Party should be not be overlooked.

Gary Hutchison discusses his research into violence in Victorian elections.

Hazel Marsh, Esbjörn Wettermark and Tiffany Hore on the way Romani Gypsy and Traveller people have shaped Britain’s musical heritage: "In 1907, after hearing Romani Gypsy Betsy Holland sing in Devon, Cecil Sharp (a key figure in the first English folk revival) wrote: 'Talk of folk-singing! It was the finest and most characteristic bit of singing I had ever heard.'"

"Knife is a clear and unsurprising departure. We have a defiant Rushdie, still, but also a vulnerable one. It’s a vulnerability he didn’t allow in his 2012 autobiography Joseph Anton, a highly readable book but whose third-person narration sounds as affected on the page as he would in person." Shehryar Fazli reviews Salman Rushdie new memoir.

Amy Lim says that, for all the nostalgic prettiness of her watercolors, Helen Allingham was a highly professional, pioneering woman artist: "In her lifetime, through a combination of talent, hard work and shrewd marketing, Allingham enjoyed immense critical and commercial success. She was also, for many years, a single mother, supporting her children through her art."

Sunak should not resign as Tory leader after he loses the election

He has not, God knows, been much of a leader, and it's not even certain that he will be returned for Richmond and Northallerton next week, but Rishi Sunak should not resign the Conservative leadership if he loses the election.

Martin Kettle makes the point in the Guardian today:

He should wait until at least after the autumn party conference before making any announcement, to allow the Tories some time for reflection and, if possible, to change the leadership election process. 

And Kettle links to a whole article on the subject that he wrote back in March:

Many Tory MPs seem to take it as read that Sunak, if he loses office, will do the same thing.

He should not do so. Instead Sunak should stay on as Conservative leader if he loses the election. He should prepare the ground for staying on with trusted colleagues. He should then stand at the Downing Street lectern and say responsible leaders do not just jump ship. He should say it is his duty to see the party through a period of necessary reflection. He could even say what Callaghan told Labour MPs in 1979: “There is no vacancy for my job.”

But he needs to have a plan for what he can bring to opposition as well as a plan to then leave later. Here, Michael Howard could be the model. Howard stayed five months after losing the 2005 election before resigning. This had important consequences. The leadership election process was rethought, though not as radically as Howard wanted, and the shadow cabinet was reshaped. This allowed younger faces to catch the spotlight. The result was the election of David Cameron.

The first weeks of a new government can set the tone of a whole parliament. In 2010, because Gordon Brown resigned his party's leadership immediately after leaving Downing Street, Labour had no one to challenge the growing narrative that it had "maxed out the nation's credit card". It was still having this claim hung around its neck at the 2015 general election.

So the Tories need to remain in the debate following their coming defeat and not spend all their energies on a leadership election.

But all this sounds far too sensible for the modern Conservative Party, so expect an immediate resignation with civil war to follow.

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"There is no disguising the fact Sunak well knows when Williams, his ex-PPS, first learnt of the election date. The same, unsurprisingly, can be said of his director of campaigns, Tony Lee (Laura Saunders’ husband). But still the PM refuses to act, nobly cognisant of independent inquiries - but entirely ignorant of the episode’s raw politics." Josh Self says that if Tory England is dead, then Rishi Sunak killed it.

Peter Jukes sets out five questions that Nigel Farage needs to be asked about Brexit, Trump and Russia.

"Former Soviet states have not been expanded ‘into’ by NATO, but joined at their own request. The Kremlin attempts to present NATO as a Western plot to encroach upon its territory, but in reality the growth in Alliance membership is the natural response of those states to its own malign activities and threats." Ben Wallace on NATO, Ukraine and Russia.

Harriet Grant takes us to a Brighton primary school that is fighting to provide children with enough play: "We played football recently against a private school. Their children play football for an hour four times a week. How do they have time for that? It’s simple. Because they don’t have to do Sats."

June Thoburn argues that social workers need to understand their power: "One prospective adoptive parent told her, 'If the social worker says jump, I jump'. The fear of the social worker's power to remove children was present in all families she spoke with."

"The absolute avatar of this new generation of eccentric, hip, clever, spoilt, sexy, sometimes pretentious young actors was Donald Sutherland, a Canadian (and thus already an outsider) who had a career in the non-new, non-transgressive, sludgy cinema of the previous era (and in the theatre) but who really thrived once things got freaky in the 1970s." Steve Bowbrick pays tribute to Donald Sutherland.

The Lib Dems have learnt one of the lessons of the EU referendum

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One thing that struck me during the EU referendum was how much better the Leave campaign was at staging events and stunts that appealed to the media. All we had to offer was George Osborne threatening to put your taxes up.

I wrote that two years ago, defending the Show Boris the Door stunt with which we celebrated Richard Foord's victory in the Tiverton and Honiton by-election.

Since then, cheesy Liberal Democrat stunts to mark by-election victories have become a thing - and a thing the media expect and are happy to photograph.

That lesson has been carried over into the general election in the shape of Ed Davey's daily death-defying feats.

Not only do these provide good images for the media, they give Ed a chance to talk about the Lib Dem policies that have inspired them.

And those images are all of Ed surrounded by happy people, which is surely more appealing than the ring of mourners that now surrounds Rishi Sunak wherever he goes.

As to Keir Starmer, it seems that Lord Bonkers' description of the Labour leader - "like Ed Davey without the pizzazz" - was spot on.

Talking of Lord Bonkers, he suggested to me over dinner last night that we should end our campaign by firing Ed Davey from a canon "to demonstrate that the other parties have no one of his calibre".

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Liz Gerard says that newspapers coverage of Sunak's retreat from the beaches of Normandy has been desperately inadequate: "The Mirror aside, every one of them missed or misinterpreted the biggest gaffe of the election campaign so far. And at the same time rendered meaningless all the reams of newsprint dedicated to saying how much we respect and owe to those D-Day heroes."

"I have lost count of the number of examples from previous cases where a house parent has received complaints of abuse by another house parent, but done nothing to take the complaint further. The point is that the offence of failing to report by someone in a position of care of children should be on the basis of 'reasonable suspicion that an offence has been committed', rather than 'observed recognised indicators of child sexual abuse'." Peter Garsden is not impressed by the government's response to the recommendations on the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse.

"It is moments of sudden change, for example, the case of Cirencester Park, that provide us with the opportunity to look beyond the status quo towards alternative models of access and ownership of the natural world." Henry Snowball looks at the wider questions raised by the Bathurst Estate's act of shutting public access behind a ticket booth.

Alex Massie debunks the mythology that has built up around George Orwell's stay on Jura, the Hebridean island where he wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four.

"With the exception of Potter’s 1986 masterpiece The Singing Detective - which is now generally available on BBC iPlayer - the writer’s output is scattered to the winds of out-of-print and costly DVD editions or lo-fi stints on YouTube." Fergal Kinney on what remains of Dennis Potter.

Hadley Mears discovers the fascinating and varied life of Maria Rasputin, the daughter of Russia's greatest love machine.

Sunak trolled by a boatload of Liberal Democrats at Henley

Don't think Rishi Sunak was aware that a boat filled with Lib Dems popped up behind him on the campaign trail today...

And I'm pretty sure that's the Lib Dem Deputy Leader, Daisy Cooper on it too... pic.twitter.com/BJhEox9XlQ

— Shehab Khan ITV (@ShehabKhan) June 3, 2024

This is brilliant. We really have grasped that providing the media with striking images will get you reported.

Word has it that Lib Dem deputy leader Daisy Cooper was at the helm.

The soft man of Brexit? Steve Baker goes on holiday during the election campaign

Steve Baker, who had a majority of 4214 over Labour in his Wycombe constituency in 2019, has flown off to Crete for a holiday, despite the general election.

The Mirror reports:

Northern Ireland Minister Steve Baker defiantly told The Mirror that he had continued with his holiday plans despite Rishi Sunak calling a snap election. He said that before he booked his break, he and fellow MPs were assured by the PM that it would be ok to head off to the beach this week.

Baker has also complained that Sunak's National Service policy was sprung on ministers and MPs by special advisers without being properly discussed.

But let's stay with his holiday because it gives me an excuse to quote one of my favourite passages from one of my favourite political memoirs.

Here's Julian Critchley in his A Bag of Boiled Sweets:

David James, who retired from Parliament as Member for Dorset North in 1979, was dotty. His reputation for eccentricity dated from 1964 when as Tory MP for Brighton, Kemptown, he lost his seat to Labour by seven votes. 

When, a few days after Alec Douglas-Home's defeat (and my own at Rochester), I went to Conservative Central Office to interview the then chairman of the party John Hare, I murmured some words of sympathy. We had, after all, just lost a general election after thirteen years in office.

"It's all that silly bugger David James's fault," cried Hare. "The fool spent most of the three-week campaign in Scotland looking for the Loch Ness Monster." Indeed, he had, and the tabloid press had been full of it. 

The papers claimed that every so often a cable would arrive from some godforsaken Scottish village addressed to the Kemptown Tory agent "Have almost found the Monster. Hope all goes well with the campaign."

There will be a full Lib Dem Conference in September after all

Good news for lovers of the Liberal Democrat Conference and for party democracy: there will be a full-length event in Brighton this September.

This was to have been the fourth year in five without a proper Lib Dem Conference. When everyone expected an autumn election, and shortly before Rishi Sunak scuppered those expectations, the party's federal board proposed that a greatly curtailed event should be held this year.

Now comes news that the board wants to return to the original plan: a conference at the Brighton Centre between 14 and 17 September. This decision is subject to review by the federal council, but I can't see why it should object.

Let's hope that something doesn't crop up at the last minute - civil war between East and West Sussex, plague in Peacehaven, an outbreak of violence in Brighton led by a teenage Catholic gangster - to spoil things.

Tory election campaign hits an iceberg in Belfast's Titanic Quarter

Rishi Sunak's shambolic election campaign rolled into Belfast today and James McCarthy of Belfast Live was not impressed:

Having been informed by the Conservative Party that the visit would be taking place at a fourth-floor office block in the Titanic Quarter, reporters arrived to find no PM and no press conference.

After a flurry of frantic phone calls we were directed to a car park half a mile away from where we had been originally sent to and once again, there was no sign of the Prime Minister or his officials.

Several more phone calls and a WhatsApp location pin later, we were met by the Secretary of State's SPAD who walked us through an industrial complex to the waterfront. There, to our surprise, the Prime Minister was having the time of his life, zipping up and down the water on an electric speedboat, under the watchful eyes of the national media.

Having found the correct location, you would have been forgiven for thinking that all would go to plan from here on in, but in true Thick Of It style, it was like a clown running through a minefield.

While the national media captured the Prime Minister's aquatic adventure, local reporters were prevented from filming the Prime Minister disembarking the boat and eventually frogmarched to the other side of the road by the Conservative Party's press team to a location where we could merely watch on through a fence.

But McCarthy got his revenge when he was finally allowed to meet Sunak:

When I asked the Prime Minster if given that we were in the Titanic Quarter, if he was captaining a sinking ship, it may have elicited a smirk from the Secretary of State, but in reality, the Prime Minister's answers were full of the usual bluff and bluster.

Sunak takes questions from two "members of the public" who turn out to be Conservative councillors

Rishi Sunak is very bad at politics. So bad, it seems, that his handlers are afraid to let him meet any voters.

Here's Adam Bienkov for Byline Times:

Rishi Sunak has been accused of faking support for the Conservative party, after taking two questions from supposedly ordinary members of the public, who turned out to have been Conservative Councillors.

Broadcasters on Thursday morning carried footage of an individual wearing a hi-vis jacket, asking the Prime Minister a question about his Rwanda scheme, during an event at a warehouse in Derbyshire. 

The man told Sunak that “the biggest issue is going to be immigration over this election campaign” before asking him whether “your Rwanda plan is going to see results and stop the small boats coming.”

The Prime Minister thanked the man for his “important question.”

However, neither Sunak, nor broadcasters informed viewers that the man asking the question was actually Conservative Leicestershire County Councillor Ross Hills. 

Ross Hills represents the Mallory ward on the county council.  As Bienkov says, he is a dentist, but he wasn't anxious to talk when asked what he was doing at a biscuit warehouse.

Byline Times later identified a second hi-vis jacket-wearing man asking Sunak a question at the event as the Erewash Conservative councillor Ben Hall-Evans.

Tories bundle Sky News journalist out of PM's campaign launch

Darren McCaffrey(SkyNews) is forcibly removed from a Rishi Sunak campaign event.#GeneralElection pic.twitter.com/ZnMmhwbd8B

— Haggis_UK 🇬🇧 🇪🇺 (@Haggis_UK) May 22, 2024

What with Sunak's announcement in the rain and this, the Tories have played a blinder today.

Rishi Sunak's speech today: "Do you think that's wise, sir?"

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In his speech today, Rishi Sunak said the next five years will be some of the most difficult and dangerous in the UK's history.

If Sergeant Wilson were here to advise him, I feel sure he would have said: "Do you think that's wise, sir?"

Because the British people seem to have decided that, not only do they not much like Sunak, but that he's not much good at his job either.

I base this, not just on his individual poll ratings, but on the fact that you never here anyone expressing enthusiasm for him. His own party members chose Liz Truss when allowed a choice between them.

So why should the voters turn to Sunak if they agree we are approaching dangerous times? That belief is more likely to make them turn so someone else to govern them.

And a final point on today's speech: a party that is serious about the nation's defence does not put Grant Shapps in charge of it.

Sunak's chess tables in the park are a victim of the Twitter approach to politics

'Levelling up' chess tables costing £50k installed https://t.co/z6t9A7Nhi7

— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) May 7, 2024

This BBC News story has been generating outrage and ridicule all day, not least because it has been written to make it sound as though each table has cost £50,000. In fact that's the total cost of all 20 tables.

And let me extend a particular hello to the gentleman from Buckinghamshire who asked if people in the North can play chess.

I will admit these tables are another of the strange ragbag of policies that Rishi Sunak has come up with as prime minister. But they seem to me a benign and inexpensive idea compared when set against most things the Conservatives have offered recently.

Somewhere in the opposition to them are currents of both snobbery and inverse snobbery. Would anyone have made a fuss if the government has put 20 sets of goalposts in these parks?

Mostly, though, the chess tables are a victim of the accepted approach to politics on Twitter. Everything your party does is right, and everything the other parties do is not just wrong, but wicked and ridiculous too.

I realise I can be as guilty of this as anyone, but it's not an approach that has done British politics any favours.

Jacob Rees-Mogg was hidden from voters during the 2019 general election campaign

The prime minister's critics in the Conservative Party, reports the Telegraph, know what he needs to do:

Tory critics are urging Rishi Sunak to promote Right-wingers to an “election war Cabinet” after the local elections, which are predicted to deliver sizeable Tory defeats.

Two Tory MPs have endorsed the idea to The Telegraph, with Priti Patel, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Robert Jenrick put forward as possible names to be in contention.

One name jumps out here: that of Jacob Rees-Mogg. That's because he had to be hidden from the public during the last general election campaign.

On 11 December 2019, the eve of polling day, a Guardian article looked at the politicians who had been prominent during the campaign and those who had been absent from the fray.

This is what it said about Rees-Mogg:

From being a near-perennial fixture of political coverage in 2019, Rees-Mogg vanished from the airwaves following uproar over his comments about the Grenfell tragedy.

His presence among the top 20 most prominent campaigners in the press and TV in the campaign’s first week was largely a result of coverage of the Grenfell issue – and by the second week he had disappeared.

Instead, a series of pictures on the politician’s Twitter account suggests that he has been instructed to largely restrict himself to his safe seat of North East Somerset.

And it wasn't just the Guardian that notices. When Rees-Mogg took his mini-me son with him to the polling station the next day, the Express reported:

Mr Rees-Mogg has rarely been seen during the last few weeks of campaigning.

This may have been due to controversial comments about the people who died in the Grenfell Tower tragedy. 

The Tory MP told LBC host Nick Ferrari that the victims would have survived if they’d have just ignored what they were told by London Fire Brigade. 

He added that he would have left the building as “it just seems the common sense thing to do”.

Mr Rees-Mogg then did not attend the Tory manifesto launch at the Telford International Centre, despite other Cabinet ministers attending. 

If bringing back Rees-Mogg is the best card the Tories can play now, they're in even more trouble than we thought.

Overmedicalisation is a problem, but not for the reasons Rishi Sunak thinks

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The Guardian published a number of letters in response to the prime minster's claim that Britain is suffering from a "sicknote culture".

One of them, from the associate professor of psychology and medical anthropology, Dr James Davies, got it exactly right:

Rising distress may not be a medical problem, as Sunak claims, but it is certainly a social one, as Sunak ignores.

We need to stop overmedicalising mental distress. As a psychological therapist, I know first-hand that most people seeking help aren’t suffering from “mental illnesses” in any biologically verifiable sense, but from understandable reactions to life and work conditions that are harming and holding them back; conditions that medicine was never designed to treat. 

By misrepresenting socially caused distress as a medical issue, we run the risk of wrongly individualising, pathologising and ultimately depoliticising that distress, and so exonerating social conditions from responsibility.

Overmedicalisation is indeed a problem, but not for the reasons Sunak thinks.

I've not read the book, but Dr Davies is the author of the book Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created Our Mental Health Crisis.