Thomas Laurent

Thomas Laurent is a Santa Dominican politician and was the 12th Prime Minister of the country from 25 September 2021 to 7 June 2022. He is a member of the Labour Party and brought Labour to a minority-government victory in 2021, bringing the party back to power after its' electoral demise in the 2017 General Election.

He was born in Henderson and is a Francophone-Santa Dominican. His popularity consistently rested on the support from Henderson and Francophone voters, while constantly struggling to maintain approval ratings among Anglophones in the country's west. Laurent is seen as the Prime Minister that brought Santa Dominica out of the Covid-19 Pandemic and re-introduced economic protectionism and anti-globalist policies. He oversaw a brief but impactful period of Henderson nationalism, which saw a failed attempt to establish Henderson as a monolingual, French-speaking province. Many on the left saw him as a unifying force after a period of division, but many on the centre and right saw him as provocative, particularly when it came to foreign policy. Many have liked him to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau or French President Emmanuel Macron.

Laurent had been unique among Western leaders in refusing to immediately condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine which began on 24 February 2022. He continued to use the term 'military operation,' a reference to the term used by Russian President Vladamir Putin, until he was eventually pressured to call it an all-out war in early April. His casual acceptance of Russia's invasion and continuing to sport anti-NATO rhetoric, along with building a friendly relationship with expansionist China and rising inflation meant that his polling numbers were not great going into the 7 June election. Despite this, Parliamentary roadblocks due to the loss of Green Party support in a 'confidence and supply' arrangement over disputes over Nuclear energy meant that Thomas Laurent needed to have an election in order to possibly get Labour a majority government, once and for all.

Despite his best efforts, Laurent went down to defeat and the Conservatives under Dennis Hagen came to power once again.