Brexit Carried - Endgame

[Impenitent]

I'm going to miss Bercow. I enjoyed his performances enormously.

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[Túrin Turambar]

We’re now about a week past dissolution and a month out from the election and things are looking really good for the Conservatives. First they pulled into a clear lead into the opinion polls[/url], then Nigel Farage announced that the Brexit Party will not challenge any of the sitting 317 Tory MPs. UKIP’s polling is still at basement level, so the Conservatives are basically secure from any challengers on the right. Boris Johnson only needs to worry about fighting off the Brexit Party in seats he needs to win to win back the Government’s majority. And he’s a very good campaigner.

On the Labour side, there’s continuing doubts about Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership and a strong challenge from the Liberal Democrats under new Gen-X leader Jo Swinson. As it stands now, the Lib Dems are the largest unequivocally Remain party.

Both Labour and the Conservatives have had to deal with a divided base – there are right-wing Remainers and left-wing Brexiteers (a word which I’ve just realised my version of Microsoft Office actually recognises as legitimate and hasn’t underlined in red). Corbyn himself voted in favour of holding the referendum in 2016, and previously described the EU bureaucracy as “totally unaccountable to anybody”. The Conservatives seem to have dealt with their internal division better.

As an aside, it’s very easy to overlook left-wing Brexiteers as they’re outside the political establishment, but they’re still there. Here’s an interview with one – trade unionist Paul Embery:



Bridging the gap between people with these views and strongly pro-remain middle class urban progressives is huge challenge for Labour, and while a month is a long time in politics, at this stage it looks like it won’t be able to meet it.

[Frelga]

I understood every word in that post, but I still have no clue what it means.

[Túrin Turambar]

tl;dr Boris Johnson will probably win.

[Frelga]

Is that... good?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Only if you think Trump winning is also good.

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[Frelga]

Oh.

[RoseMorninStar]

[Túrin Turambar]

Johnson is similar to Trump in some ways but different in others – he’s a far more experienced politician, his political views are far more mainstream within both his party and his country, and (this is a personal view) he’s far more astute. So I wouldn’t necessarily see a victory for Johnson as a victory for Trumpism.

I’d also add the caveat that this is as things stand now, a month out from the election. A lot can change in the campaign.

[Túrin Turambar]

Just a brief comment, but by now most people will be aware the Conservatives have won their largest majority since the Thatcher era. Jeremy Corbyn will step down as Labour leader, and Lib Dem leader Jo Swindon has lost her seat. The other big winner are the Scottish Nationalists, who’ve swept Scotland.

This is in line with polls, although the polls perhaps understated the size of the Tory victory (a “Blue Tide” as I saw one media outlet call it). There’ll be a lot more to say over the coming days, but the big take seems to be that Labour fractured over Brexit. Their worst defeats have been in working-class constituencies in the North and Midlands, some of which they’ve held since the 50s – these constituencies favoured leave. Jeremy Corbyn was not able to hold the pro- and anti-Brexit wings of his party together in the way Boris Johnson was. And Johnson is a much better campaigner.

More in due course.

[Pearly Di]

*waves at everyone*

This is Labour's worst defeat since 1935. For the Conservatives to take Labour strongholds in the North East, where people will suffer most from Tory policies, is astonishing. But it's the Brexit factor. Many working-class Leave voters are in the North East. And even if Labour had been a better opposition party than they have been, I think the results of this election would have been the same. Brexit has skewed everything. There is no doubt in my mind that people are genuinely fed up of the political paralysis, were swayed by Boris Johnson's simplistic slogan 'Get Brexit done', and saw this election as a way to finally get the 2016 Leave vote ratified. In any other election, no way would the Conservatives have won over such staunch Labour heartlands.

The Scottish National Party has done very well in Scotland, not surprisingly, and Labour has not.

In Northern Ireland, the Democratic Unionist Party suffered several significant losses. The nationalist vote in Northern Ireland is now stronger than the unionist vote. This is significant, to say the very least.

Our newly elected Prime Minister, in his victory speech, thanked the working class Labour voters for helping to sweep his party to power (he'll forget them soon enough), banged on about 'One Nation Conservatism' (despite having previously expelled 'One Nation Conservatives' from the party) and praised our National Health Service to the skies.

I'm cynical about all of it. Tory austerity has cut our social infrastructure to the bone, the poor and disabled are suffering, and now we have 5 more years of this. Plus Scotland could conceivably leave the union, and I am worried about Northern Ireland - and the Republic of Ireland, too.

Johnson isn't Trump, exactly - he's a cleverer man than Trump - but there are similarities. I wonder about the people behind both of them. Johnson keeps on going about what a 'fantastic' Brexit deal he's got. It's not fantastic, it's pretty much Theresa May's deal. And if his EU negotiations don't go well, then we could well crash out without a deal in a year's time. It won't be pretty.

[Alatar]

"Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right. Here I am, stuck in the middle with you."



No offense to anyone here.

[Jude]

None taken.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I know that Corbyn and Bernie Sanders can't really be equated, but I still think that the Democrats should take notice at what happened.

[River]

Based on what I've been reading, it's not that people like Brexit. They just don't like Corbyn.

[Túrin Turambar]

Labour under Corbyn actually did unexpectedly well in the 2017 election, so I’m not as sold on the “Corbyn is completely unelectable” line as some others.

Brexit wasn’t Corbyn’s only problem, but it certainly put him in a very difficult (perhaps impossible) position. The Labour Party is made up of traditional working-class unionised voters, mostly in the north and west of Britain, and educated middle-class progressives, many in London. The former tend to be more ambivalent about or actively in favour of Brexit, and typically support Labour for economic reasons. The latter are fiercely anti-Brexit, to the point that stopping Brexit is their top political issue. Corbyn has only ever been lukewarm on the EU, and comes from a traditionally strongly anti-EU faction on the Labour socialist left – I mentioned them upthread, they’re a small group but not an insignificant one. He would never stopping Brexit his platform in the same way the Lib Dems did, angering his middle class progressive supporters, but he could never be pro-Brexit either, which angered the working-class voters in the north and west. So he ended up satisfying neither wing and falling between the two.

Would he have won without Brexit? He would still have come up against Boris Johnson’s campaigning skill and skittish moderate voters. I’m still pondering the anti-Semitism thing – Corbyn’s leadership spooked Britain’s (traditionally Labour-friendly) Jewish community, but I don’t know how many non-Jewish progressives would have been pushed to vote Lib Dem or stay home because of it. It probably pushed some swinging voters into the Tory camp.

[Cerin]

I know that Corbyn and Bernie Sanders can't really be equated, but I still think that the Democrats should take notice at what happened.

What do you think they should do? Desert Warren? For whom? (The media does tend to lump Sanders and Warren against the others, so much of the public will, too.)

[Alatar]

I would have thought Corbyn more equivalent to Warren than Biden. Corbyn was far left.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Who said anything about Biden?

ETA: Bernie (who is who I did mention) is far more "far left" than Warren is, and is also much more abrasive (though Warren is seen as more threatening by Wall Street).

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[Cerin]

I realize Warren has taken pains to define herself as a fervent capitalist, but the media would love to see her fail and I've seen many instances of them referring incorrectly to 'the socialists' when speaking of Warren and Sanders. So if people do as you (and others) are suggesting and take a warning from the UK election, I'm afraid they will lump the two together as similar 'radicals' and look to the establishment candidates.