What a week — in U.S. and U.K.
Thursday was a momentous day in both London and Washington, D.C. In the United States, former FBI Director James Comey electrified the nation by telling the Senate Intelligence Committee that President Donald Trump and his team told “lies, plain and simple,” and in the United Kingdom, voters defied all expectations and turned British politics upside down.
It has been clear for sometime that the electorates in both countries are fed up with the political status quo, hence the election of Trump, an outsider, as president, and the “hung parliament” returned by British voters Thursday. A “hung parliament” is one in which no party has a majority, and therefore cannot form a government without forming a coalition with another party or parties, something British political parties historically have been loath to do. Nevertheless, this is exactly what Prime Minister Theresa May has done despite her historic defeat at the polls Thursday.
May’s Conservative Party had held a slim 17-vote majority in Parliament, enough to form a government, but not enough to govern convincingly. Moreover, by the middle of June she was scheduled to begin negotiations with Europe for Britain’s withdrawal, or “Brexit”, from the European Union. She was trying to strengthen her hand in these negotiations by increasing her majority in Parliament. The polls had indicated she could win with a 100-seat majority. Emboldened, she took a gamble earlier this year and called for a snap election. Alas, the gamble failed and, in a stunning defeat, she lost her already slim majority,
How could this happen? Suddenly, May looked like Hillary Clinton in tweeds. In the first place, she turned out to be a terrible campaigner and her party even worse. Secondly, her principal rival, Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, a left-winger who almost everybody had written off as a dead loss, along with his party, turned out to be a terrific campaigner.
Interestingly, Labour won the youth vote, especially with its pledge to make university education free. Labour gained about 27 seats, to reach 265 seats in the House of Commons, far short of the 326 seats it takes to form a majority. Still, it was clear that the political momentum was with Labour. The party might have lost, but it felt like a win. The Conservatives won about 318 seats, making them the biggest party in Parliament but just a few votes short of a majority.
Normally, such a catastrophic defeat would force the resignation of the prime minister. But May is still heading the biggest party in the House. All she needed was a coalition partner, and chances were she could keep her job, especially as the country was heading into negotiations with the European Union. May found that partner in Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party. With the coalition ready, she went to see Queen Elizabeth on Friday morning to seek permission to form a new government.
That wasn’t all the craziness in the Thursday election. Look at what happened in Scotland. The governing Scottish Nationalist Party had won all but one of Scotland’s seats in the British Parliament in the 2015 national elections. That was a stunning victory, coming just one year after Scotland voted against independence, the most important issue for the Scottish Nationalists. Now, it appeared as though the Scottish Nationalists would push again for a second independence referendum, or Indy2, as it had become known.
In a stunning reversal of fortunes, the Nationalists lost almost 30 seats in this week’s elections, with the winners being the unionist parties (those in favor of remaining in the British union), meaning the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats. The Tories won 12 seats. It was the best result for Scottish conservatives in 30 years. However, the real importance for Scotland and the U.K. is that independence, at least for the next few years, is almost a dead issue, even though the Nationalists remain in control of the Scottish government in Edinburgh.
This election turned British politics upside down. Labour came roaring back, even though many analysts had written it off as a spent force, despite its more than 100 years as one of Britain’s two major parties. In the past few years, British politics had splintered, with minor parties gaining power. Now, British politics is returning to the old two-party system, with Labour and the Conservatives squaring off. The nationalist and racist UKIP party is disappearing and the Liberal Democrats continue to decline.
Whether that is a good thing remains to be seen.
Bill Stewart writes about current affairs from Santa Fe. He is a former U.S. Foreign Service officer and worked as a correspondent for Time magazine.