DOES BRITAIN BELIEVE IN BORIS?
Boris Johnson may be in the box seat to claim victory in this week’s UK election but the tumultuous race to Downing Street — and to lead Britain out of the Brexit mire — is far from won, as STEPHEN DRILL and RICHARD FERGUSON report from London
NEXT Thursday, Eton educated British Prime Minister Boris Johnson lines up against extreme left Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn for a general election but if it was decided on a pub test, the winner is certain.
“If you take it back to the Australian question, who would you rather have a pint with: Corbyn or Boris, it’s a nobrainer,” according to The British Foreign Policy Group managing director Sophia Gaston.
“What would Corbyn even drink? Some vegan kombucha concoction that he sourced from the allotment? It would be difficult to make small talk.”
The latest polls say that Johnson has a 10-point lead over Corbyn, with the Liberal Democrats and Brexit Party votes plunging.
But the Conservatives don’t have the champagne on ice, it’s not even in the fridge after Theresa May had a 20-point lead going into the 2017 election but only scraped through with a tiny minority that was too small to pass Brexit.
This election campaign began because of British parliament’s deadlock over Brexit, with Mr Johnson failing to have the numbers to get his deal through.
The Conservatives campaigned on getting Brexit done more than three years after the British public voted to leave the European Union.
Labour doesn’t know what it stands for on the issue but it’s likely to end up bringing on a second referendum on Brexit like a child setting the score back to zero because he didn’t like the result in a game of backyard cricket.
It has also become a battle of who can spend the most, with some plans more realistic than others.
Mr Johnson has also promised to increase funding to the UK’s universal National Health Service by $65 billion, introduce modest tax cuts of $163 a year for 31 million workers and introduce an Australian-style points system for immigration.
He will also crack down on light sentences for terrorists after London Bridge attacker Usman Khan was automatically released halfway through his jail term.
“The British people have to choose between a working majority government or yet another gridlocked hung parliament,” Mr Johnson said this week. “If there is a Conservative majority next week, we will get Brexit done by the end of January.”
Mr Corbyn has been battling an ongoing anti-Semitism scandal in his party and was condemned this week for failing to know what time of day the day the Queen’s speech screens on Christmas Day (it’s 3pm). He wants to increase taxes to 50 per cent for high income earners to raise extra money to pay for an extra $159 billion of public spending.
Corbyn also wants to increase business taxes and extend the sugar tax to milk drinks and fast food.
He plans to spend the money on more public services, including the NHS, free broadband for all, and he will nationalise the rail services and other key sectors.
“It’s just money for everything, everything is free. I’m surprised they’re not offering free trips to the moon,” former Australian High Commissioner to the UK Alexander Downer said this week.
This week he repeated his warning against a Labour win, saying it would risk our security relationships with the UK.
“It would be a catastrophe for Australia to have the second most important member
BORIS JOHNSON
of the western alliance fall into the hands of a party working on the South American formula,” he said.
“If he did win, there would be a run on the Pound and the IMF would have to be called in for a bailout ... it happened in Britain in the late 1960s.”
The Johnson campaign has been led by Australian Isaac Levido, a disciple of Londonbased Australian political player Lynton Crosby, who helped Scott Morrison defeat Bill Shorten this year.
The Conservative offering here is very different to the Australian model. They are happy to spend up and want to reduce carbon emissions to zero by 2050 to tackle climate change. The British Labour policies are more to the left of the Australian Greens and a win would be like putting Adam Bandt in as Prime Minister, Downer said. “They’re like the Greens ... they’re just out there,” he said. Some conservative commentators have expressed concern about Mr Johnson’s spending, saying he must be praying for a postBrexit economic bounce to pay for his promises.
“It’s potentially quite dangerous for the country and the national finances,” Matthew Lesh, head of research at the Adam Smith Institute in London, said.
Elizabeth Ames, Acting National Director of the BritainAustralia Society, said the Liberal Democrats vote had plummeted among students because they increased fees when in coalition with the Conservatives 10 years ago.
“The UK political memory is really long,” she said.
And she said the NHS was a sacred cow. “It’s the third rail
of UK politics, the NHS is considered as the pinnacle of post war achievement, everyone uses it,” she said.
On the streets of Birmingham, one of the key battlegrounds in the campaign, some traditional Labour voters were struggling to decide who to back.
Stall owner Neil Willetts, 60, said: “I have voted Labour in the past, I should be able to feel like I can vote for the Labour Party.
“But that Corbyn is too farleft for me, there’s a lot of things that worry me. I don’t like him. He might be all right for opposition, but you can’t see him being a prime minister.
“I don’t especially like Boris but it’s better the devil you know.” Laura Wrights, 37, decided
this week that she will vote for Labour because she likes their spending promises.
“I read this story that a man lost his mental health pension weeks before Christmas, and I just decided then that I couldn’t vote Tory,” she said.
“The Conservatives have been in government for nine years. There’s been no money for hospitals, for my son’s school. I don’t like Corbyn at all but you vote for the party, not the leader.”
Mr Johnson has deliberately played a small target campaign, perhaps taking a note from Shorten’s Australian disaster where he promised everything to everyone.
He desperately doesn’t want to be seen as part of his party’s regime that led to a biting decade of austerity, or funding cuts, that helped get the country’s books back towards balance after the Global Financial Crisis.
There is still a chance of a minority government, with the Scottish National Party potentially using its seats in tandem with the Liberal Democrats to get Labour into power. Or worse, a minority situation with no clear winner leading to more delay over Brexit.
Ms Gaston said Johnson would win because it has been a “presidential style campaign” even though many people don’t like him.
“He makes people feel good about themselves, there’s a charisma to him, a carefully crafted charisma, and I think it’s difficult to ignore.”
The British people have to choose between a working majority government or yet another gridlocked hung parliament