After an election campaign during which the central question became the relationship between the United Kingdom and rest of Europe, and most specifically the future of Brexit, Boris Johnson and the Conservative Party have scored a win that rivals those of the elections that occurred during the Thatcher Era:
LONDON — Prime Minister Boris Johnson won a sweeping, decisive and powerful majority of parliamentary seats — and a mandate to deliver Brexit — in Thursday’s general election.
Ballots tallied through the night affirmed that Johnson and his Conservative Party had achieved a smashing success, the largest win for the Tories since the days of Margaret Thatcher — while the opposition Labour Party and its hard-left leader, Jeremy Corbyn, suffered their worst defeat in four decades.
Friday morning, with one constituency still to declare, the Conservatives had won 364 spots in the 650-seat Parliament.
“Getting Brexit done is now the irrefutable, irresistible, unarguable decision of the British people,” Johnson said, standing in front of a backdrop that proclaimed “the People’s Government.”
“With this election, I think we’ve now put an end to all those miserable threats of a second referendum,” Johnson said.
Corbyn, after winning in his own Islington constituency, announced he would not lead his party in any future general-election campaign but that he intended to stay on as leader during a period of reflection
“This is obviously a very disappointing night for the Labour Party,” he said.
He defended the popularity’s of the party’s platform, which sought to “right the wrongs and the injustices and inequalities that exist in this country.” And he attributed the party’s losses to the notion that “Brexit has so polarized and divided debate within this country, it has overridden so much of a normal political debate.”
Johnson — the bombastic showman who led the campaign to leave the European Union in the June 2016 referendum — is now positioned to be the prime minister to see Britain set sail from Europe next month.
And dreams of a second referendum — of remaining in the E.U. — have been dashed.
The pound sterling surged in after-hours trading when voting ended and the national exit poll showed the Conservatives forecast to win 368 out of 650 seats.
President Trump, who made little effort to hide his partiality toward Johnson during the election, tweeted his congratulations: “Britain and the United States will now be free to strike a massive new Trade Deal after BREXIT. This deal has the potential to be far bigger and more lucrative than any deal that could be made with the E.U. Celebrate Boris!”
John Bercow, the former speaker of the House of Commons known for shouting “order,” assessed, “It was a Brexit-focused, Brexit-oriented, Brexit-dominated campaign.”
Bercow told Sky News that with such a large parliamentary majority, Johnson could count on making the first stage of Brexit happen. “But that’s the withdrawal agreement,” said Bercow, a former Conservative lawmaker. “That is about the divorce bill; it’s about the rights of European citizens. It’s about the Irish border. I don’t think, if I may say so, that means getting Brexit done in the sense that it’s gift-wrapped or oven-ready for Christmas.”
Britain would enter into a year-long transition period and immediately begin to engage in talks over a free-trade agreement and a host of other vexing issues with its former partners in the continental bloc — such as trade, intelligence-sharing and the movement of capital.
Bercow predicted Britain would be debating Brexit for the next five, 10, possibly 15 years.
This was Britain’s third general election in a little more than four years, and the second since the June 2016 Brexit referendum. According to the surplus of opinion surveys and interviews, people are as hopelessly divided over the E.U. as they were when they voted 52 percent to 48 percent to leave.
Sara Hobolt, a political scientist at the London School of Economics, said the “genius of Boris Johnson” was that he united those who wanted Brexit behind him, while “the ‘Remain’ vote is much more split.”
Johnson and the Conservatives ran as populists, offering not only Brexit, but also a spending surge for cops, nurses, schools and elder care. One of their strategies was to try to break through Labour’s “red wall” of traditional support among the working classes in faded industrial towns in England’s north and Midlands.
Britain would enter into a year-long transition period and immediately begin to engage in talks over a free-trade agreement and a host of other vexing issues with its former partners in the continental bloc — such as trade, intelligence-sharing and the movement of capital.
Bercow predicted Britain would be debating Brexit for the next five, 10, possibly 15 years.
This was Britain’s third general election in a little more than four years, and the second since the June 2016 Brexit referendum. According to the surplus of opinion surveys and interviews, people are as hopelessly divided over the E.U. as they were when they voted 52 percent to 48 percent to leave.
Sara Hobolt, a political scientist at the London School of Economics, said the “genius of Boris Johnson” was that he united those who wanted Brexit behind him, while “the ‘Remain’ vote is much more split.”
Johnson and the Conservatives ran as populists, offering not only Brexit, but also a spending surge for cops, nurses, schools and elder care. One of their strategies was to try to break through Labour’s “red wall” of traditional support among the working classes in faded industrial towns in England’s north and Midlands.The strategy was a success. The Tories won the town of Workington, for example, which Labour held almost without a slip since 1918. Voters there told reporters they wanted Brexit — and didn’t trust Corbyn
Johnson on Friday morning specifically addressed voters who went Conservative for the first time in this election.
“You may have only lent us your vote,” he said. “I am humbled that you have put your trust in me, and you have put your trust in us, and I, and we, will never take your support for granted.”
The New York Times has additional reporting and analysis, while The Guardian notes that Boris Johnson’s gamble has paid off even better than the polling was forecasting:
Boris Johnson has clinched a historic Conservative general election victory, winning a string of seats from Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party in its traditional heartlands.
Johnson’s gamble of triggering a snap poll in the hope of uniting the Brexit vote in leave-supporting seats across Wales, the Midlands and the north of England paid off spectacularly, setting him on course for the Tories’ strongest performance for decades.
The prime minister addressed the nation just after 7am, saying Brexit was now the “irrefutable, irresistible, unarguable decision of the British people” and promising those who lent their vote to the Tories in traditional Labour areas: “I will not let you down.”
Corbyn is yet to give a speech conceding defeat but he was unapologetic in the early hours of the morning as he used his acceptance speech in Islington North to attack the media’s portrayal of him and his party, and insist the party’s policies had been “extremely popular”.
Corbyn conceded it had been “a very disappointing night for the Labour party with the result that we have got”, and suggested Brexit had overshadowed other issues. He said he would not lead his party into another general election, but that Labour needed a “period of reflection”, during which he would remain in place to oversee.
Immediately after the polls closed at 10pm, the exit poll, which pointed to a much larger than expected Conservative majority of 86, sent shock waves through both major parties.
The shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, appeared pale and shocked when confronted with the figures on the BBC. Asked whether he and Corbyn would stand down if it proved accurate, he said: “We will see the results in the morning and decisions will be made then.”
The former mining constituency of Blyth Valley in Northumberland was an early Conservative gain, bearing out the exit poll’s prediction. It had been held by Labour since its creation and was No 116 on the Tory target list.
Scores of other long-held Labour seats, including Workington, Wrexham and Bishop Auckland, turned blue as the night went on, and by shortly after 5am the Conservatives had secured a majority.
The exit poll was updated as the night went on, and by 5am was projecting a slightly smaller Conservative majority of 74 with a 45% share of the vote, which would be the Tories’ highest since 1970.
Johnson gave his victory speech in central London in front of a slogan claiming that he would lead “the people’s government”.
He took a triumphalist tone on Brexit, saying the “miserable threats of a second referendum” were over and it was time for pro-EU campaigners to “put a sock in it”.
But the prime minister took a more humble tone towards those in Labour heartlands who voted for him and helped turn swaths of the north and Midlands blue.
“You may only have lent us your vote, you may not think of yourself as a natural Tory and you may intend to return to Labour next time round. If that is the case I am humbled that you have put your trust in me. I will never take your support for granted,” he said.
According to the most recent report by BBC News, here’s how the election turned out:
- The Conservatives will emerge in the next Parliament with 364 seats, a gain of 47 seats, which constitutes their biggest majority since the 1987 election and biggest net pickup since the 2010 election that ushered in what could be at least 14 years of Conservative Party rule if Johnson manages to hold onto power until the next mandated election in 2024. and a number that rivals the massive majorities that Margaret Thatcher won in her first two elections.
- Labour, meanwhile, will end up with at least 203 seats for a loss of 59 seats, which represents one of their biggest losses in since the same elections noted above, although it is slightly better than the under-200 seats that the exit poll projected.
- Next in line behind Labour is the Scottish National Party which gained 13 seats, mostly at the expense of Labour, to give it 48 seats in the next Parliament.
- After that, the Liberal Democrats, the only anti-Brexit national party on the ballot, won 11 seats, a loss of one, seat which just happened to be the seat held by Lib Dem leader Jill Swinson. This is obviously a disappointment for the Lib Dems, who had hoped to consolidate the anti-Brexit vote in their favor.
- After the Lib Dems, there are 23 seats held by Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party, Sein Fein, which never sends members to London, the Greens, and one seat held by an independent. Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party, as well as the equally pro-Brexit UKIP, failed to win a single seat and don’t appear to have had a major impact on any races in individual constituencies.
The most immediate impact of the outcome of the election is the fact that it will lead to leadership changes in two of Great Britain’s political parties. Most prominently, Jeremy Corbyn, who first responded to the outcome last night by saying that he would not lead the party in a future General Election but left open the question of whether or not he would step down as Labour leader After the results of the election, and the extent of Labour losses became clear, became clear, though, Corbyn announced that he would step down as Labour Party leader after nine years in office. Similarly, Jill Swinson, who lost her seat in Scotland to a member of the Scottish National Party, announced that she would step down as party leader:
The extent of the Conservative win here likely means that Boris Johnson will have a relatively free hand in getting his Brexit deal through Parliament before the January 31st deadline. There are likely still a handful of Conservative Members of Parliament who might oppose the deal, but many of them will likely go along with the deal such that we’ll see at least the first stage of the Brexit process before the end of January. Beyond that, Johnson will still have to negotiate a trade deal with the European Union. He’ll also have to find a way to deal with the issue of the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, which has been open for some 20 years now. An effort to reimpose barriers could end up increasing tensions that had largely been quelled by the Dayton Accords of 199X and could even lead the Northern Irish to move closer to the idea of becoming part of Ireland, although that possibility seems far off. Johnson will also have to get to work on negotiating trade deals with major world economic powers like the United States, Japan, and China since the United Kingdom will no longer be covered by the trade deals those nations have with the European Union.
Labour, on the other hand, finds itself in the worst position it has been in at least a generation, and arguably as bad as it was before Clement Atlee led the party to a win in the 1935 General Election. The reasons for that are probably as numerous as the number of constituencies in the United Kingdom, but the main ones appear to be three-fold.
First of all, this election was largely a Brexit-based one in which the future of that deal was the main issue. Johnson and the Conservatives were clearly and emphatically pro-Brexit and, in addition to other issues, campaigned on a platform of getting Brexit done. Labour, on the other hand, was schizophrenic on the Brexit issue. The official party position supported enforcing the results of the 2016 referendum with vague promises about the possibility of a second referendum before Brexit became final. Second, the party failed to deliver a coherent message during the campaign while the Tories held on to the “get Brexit done” message. Finally, there’s Jeremy Corbyn, who has been a controversial figure virtually from the time he succeeded Ed Milliband as Labor leader. Even leaving aside the issue of Corbyn’s antisemitism, which became an issue during the campaign, even many long-time Labour supporters could not stomach the idea of him being Prime Minister. Additionally, under Corbyn Labour had moved well to the left of the mainstream of British politics to such an extent that even long-time Labour constituencies turned against the party. Now that he’s stepping aside, the prediction I made last night on Twitter could come true if Labour is able to get its act back together and return, as I said, to the days when it was a center-left party that voters could credibly accept:
In any case, there will no doubt be more to say about what happened across the pond yesterday. As it stands, though, this is clearly a historic win for the Tories. What they do with it is what the future will be about.
