UK Elections: A tale of Boris, Brexit and Corbyn (BBC)

With his resounding victory British general elections last Thursday, Prime Minister Boris Alexander de Pfeffel Johnson of the Conservative party pulled up the greatest electoral feat since Margaret Thatcher’s election victory in 1987.

It was expected, but the scale of the victory which gave the Conservatives a massive 364 seats to the opposition Labour party’s 203 seats (45 and 33 in percentage terms) in the 650 seat British parliament was truly massive. On the eve of the elections there was talk of a so-called tactical voting in which the Conservative party’s expectation of an absolute majority will be denied by some of the rebel conservative party voters voting for either the Liberal Democrats or Labour party. But in the end it was the both the Labour party and the Liberal Democrats that bit the dust. Significantly, the conservatives smashed Labour in its core traditional areas in the Northwest of England and in Scotland taking up a total of 47 Labour seats, while the leader of the Liberal Democrats Jo Swinson lost her seat in Scotland to a candidate from the Scottish National party.

With this victory, Boris Johnson has been given a mandate to pull Britain out of the European Union in what is called a hard Brexit. Hard Brexit in this case as canvassed by Prime Minister Johnson means that Britain will leave the Union latest by January 31, next year unilaterally while negotiations on trade agreements continues.

What were the factors that aided this earth shaking victory by the conservative party?

First of all there was the difference in campaign style on the issue of Brexit which dominated the elections. While Boris Johnson with his effervescent, rambunctious character, appeared ebullient and unambiguous in his pitch on Brexit, Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn was his wooden, detached self throughout the campaign. The British voters read in Boris Johnson, a man who was willing to push his case as aggressively and effectively as possible despite formidable odds both from within his party and without. Corbyn on the other hand could not connect with his party colleagues and worse, with the Labour constituents on the issues at stake. Labour under Corbyn dithered on the alternatives to Brexit appearing incoherent when it mattered to send a clear message to the voters on what the implications of Brexit meant to the British people. Corbyn could not take advantage of the momentum that saw Labour force a no confidence vote on Theresa May leading to her ouster as Prime Minister and replaced by Boris Johnson.

For an electorate that had grown weary of the anxieties surrounding the Brexit debacle, Johnson’s simple message of ‘’Get Brexit Done’’ did enough to sway the voters across the political divides of Britain. They simply want to get on with Brexit and do away with the filibustering about it in Parliament. It mattered not to the British people whether there are still potentially more ominous developments ahead for Britain with the Brexit that Johnson is about.

The potentially ominous developments which the results of the elections showed are the victories of the Scottish National Party (SNP) and the inclination of voters in Northern Ireland. Along with the Conservative party, the SNP has every reason to be exultant with its performance. The party took a handsome 49 seats out of the 56 seats on offer making gains at the expense of the conservative party, Labour and the Liberal Democrats. An ecstatic SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon reflecting on the party’s showing remarked that ‘’ It was a mandate for the Scottish people to decide their own future’’. This is to say the SNP will push for a second referendum to get Scotland out of Britain after the first one which ended with a narrow defeat in 2014.

Similarly in northern Ireland, Nigel Dodds the deputy leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) which has been in alliance with the conservative party lost his seat reflecting a preference there by voters for a union of northern Ireland with the Irish republic to the south. The voters in northern Ireland feel that the Brexit withdrawal agreement of Boris Johnson had sort of thrown the province under the bus leaving it in an uncertain situation of not with EU and not with UK neither.

All this portends that Brexit however it eventually pans out, whether the hard one of Johnson or the soft one negotiated with EU eventually may result in the breaking of Britain. The English component of Britain voted to preserve English preference for Brexit, the Scots voted to signify that they would prefer a Scotland in EU and out of Britain, and a northern Ireland in favour of opting out of Britain and uniting with the republic of Ireland and within EU.

It will certainly be interesting to see how Boris Johnson now basking in this massive victory navigates through this high wire political situation in the coming months.