Big Win for Boris and Brexit

Thoughts on the big win for Boris Johnson in the UK:

According to exit polls, it looks like Boris Johnson has won the UK general election and has won it massively. The early Christmas election was as much a referendum on Brexit as anything else, with Johnson promising to finally get it resolved by the end of the year. And now the UK voters have given him the green light to get it done.

This was the third such election in five years, and the 40,000 polling stations have just closed (at 10pm London time). The 55-year-old Johnson was favoured throughout the six-week campaign. And it really was a Brexit election. Bear in mind the Brexit dates: back in June 2016 a referendum was held in which the people voted 52% to 48% to leave the EU. It still has not been implemented.

The numbers look like this: There are 650 seats in the House of Commons, so 326 seats are needed for a majority. The Conservatives had held 298 seats and now may have 368 – a gain of 70 seats, giving them an 86-seat majority! Margaret Thatcher had over a 100-seat majority in her first election. But this is pretty close to it.

It is a massive victory for Johnson, giving him a clear working majority and a clear mandate to govern. Labour had held 243 seats, and may now hold 191 – a loss of over 50 seats, and their lowest number since 1935. The Liberal Democrats seem to have gone from 21 down to 13. The Greens it appears remain with just 1 seat.

The Scottish National Party seems to have increased its numbers, from 35 to 55 seats, which may lead to more pressure for an independence vote. They will want another referendum on this, but Johnson has already said it is not going to happen.

With non-compulsory voting, a large percentage of the 46 million eligible voters seem to have come out to make it clear that Brexit must be finalised and Labour was just not wanted. Jeremy Corbyn was bad news indeed and deeply unpopular. The hyper-left socialist would have spelled disaster for the UK.

His anti-Semitism was bad enough, and a minority government under his reins would have been very bad indeed for the country and the world. Traditional Labour voters just did not like or trust Corbyn. They knew he did not represent their values. Thus many long-term Labour voters in the Midlands and the north ended up voting for the Conservatives.

This is his second loss in a row, and his only choice now will be to resign. The Labour Party needs to have a real rethink of its beliefs, strategies and policies as well. It went way too far to the left with Corbyn. And with the American presidential elections due in a year, the hard left-leaning Democrats may need to pay careful attention here. Yes the UK is different from the US, but Sanders and all the other Democrat leftists ought to take notice.

If the exit polling is correct, the Conservatives won around 46 per cent of the vote, while Labour only got 33 per cent – a 5 ½ percent swing to the Tories. This is a very massive win indeed, and Labour will be licking its wounds for some time to come.

The early voting results in Newcastle and Sunderland – both parts of traditional Labour heartland – saw very significant moves away from Labour and to the Conservatives. Yes, as expected, Labour won both seats, but with massive (10 per cent) swings against them. If this trend continues, it looks like the exit polls were pretty accurate indeed.

Of interest is the issue of Muslim candidates. An earlier article had predicted that as many as 24 Muslims may win seats in this new Parliament. The piece says in part:

The Labour Party has given ticket to 33 Muslim candidates with outright or slim chance of winning. Of these, around 16 look comfortable to win their seats against the Tory opponents, unless there is a big upset on the Election Day. The number of Muslims on Conservative seats will double from just three in 2017 to around six or more on Thursday’s election. The Conservative Party has given tickets to 22 Muslim candidates but only around five are considered to be on safe seats. https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/581602-record-24-muslim-mps-likely-to-be-elected-to-uk-parliament

As I have written before, Johnson is not quite a consistent conservative. While he will be strong on Brexit, he has not been strong on various conservative cultural values, such as homosexuality. But see my earlier piece for more on this: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2019/07/24/on-boris-johnson/

But the bigger picture is worth keeping in mind here. In mid-2016 we had the surprise Brexit win, and a half year later the surprise Trump win in the US. Now we have this massive Boris and Brexit win, and next year we may have a massive Trump win for his second term.

In the US, the UK, and Australia, the major parties of the left that at one point could claim to represent the working classes have been moving further and further to the left, alienating many traditional voters, including plenty of workers. In each case the voters have spoken – they are just not keen on this lurch to the left.

Conservatism seems to be on a roll, and the left seems to be on the run. All up, this win is good news for the UK, and good news for the rest of the world.

Note: this article is mainly based on the exit polls. While such polls have been fairly accurate in the past, we await the actual counting of votes. But if this polling is even close to correct, it is a big win indeed for Johnson and the Conservatives, and a major rebuff to Corbyn and Labour. If things do change dramatically in the hours ahead, then of course I will need to make some revisions here.

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11 Replies to “Big Win for Boris and Brexit”

  1. As in Australia, the USA, The Brexit and now The British Election, the “SILENT” majority WON and will keep winning until the Pollies fall asleep at the wheel! Thank you, Jesus!???

  2. Britain’s Labour Party under Comrade Corbyn has suffered an even more humiliating defeat in the 2019 general election than did Labour under Michael Foot in the 1983 election.

    To get some idea of the magnitude of Foot’s – and Corbyn’s – failure, it is necessary to recall the precarious state of his party in the early 1980s.

    In 1979, James Callaghan’s Labour government had been defeated by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatives. The Labour Party then came under the sway of its extreme left, with long-time left-winger Michael Foot elected leader in 1980.

    In 1981, the party split. A centrist faction, led by former Cabinet ministers Roy Jenkins, David Owen, Shirley Williams and Bill Rodgers (the so-called Gang of Four), broke away to form the Social Democratic Party (SDP).

    The parliamentary Labour Party that remained was a mere left-wing rump with a toxic policy agenda.

    Its manifesto for the 1983 election was described privately by Labour MP Gerald Kaufman as “the longest suicide note in history”. The party, under Michael Foot, went down to a crashing, and well-deserved, defeat.

    Jeremy Corbyn is a very dangerous figure who has openly consorted with terrorists and turned a blind eye to the spread of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party.

    Furthermore, as English historian Giles Udy has shown, Corbyn’s inner circle of advisers have included militant leftists Andrew Murray and Seamus Milne, who have previously been prominent figures of a Soviet-aligned faction within the Communist Party of Great Britain. See Giles Udy, ,“Corbyn’s road map to a communist Britain”, Standpoint magazine, January 28, 2019. URL: https://standpointmag.co.uk/issues/february-2019/february-2019-features-giles-udy-jeremy-corbyn-britain-road-to-socialism/

    Like British commentator Peter Hitchens, I am not a great enthusiast for Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is scarcely a conservative by my understanding of the term.

    However, I am greatly relieved that Jeremy Corbyn’s toxic Labour Party has suffered the political humiliation it has richly deserved.

  3. A lady from the England was telling me that many voted as they don’t want the illegal immigrants in the country. England especially wants to remove itself from Europe to cut and stop the ‘others’ from their illegal entry.

  4. At last the UK will be able to crawl out of the Gutter and stop being the laughing stock of the rest of the world and hold its head up high

  5. It may be that rather than the Conservatives winning, the Labour party lost. I expect many of us “held our noses” while voting for the least of evils. I doubt if this result can be called a mandate.

  6. Thanks John. But with 12 per cent more of the total vote (4 million more votes), that sure sounds like a mandate to me. Even if some were really just voting against Corbyn, that is still a vote for Boris. While he is not a real conservative in so many ways, I will take him any day of the week over the socialist Corbyn.

  7. The Scottish National Party …. will want another referendum on this, but Johnson has already said it is not going to happen.
    Let’s put this into perspective. At the first referendum they discovered that a vote for separation would mean they could no longer use the pound, nor rely on British finances to keep their government afloat. Also, they would have to apply to join the EU, without the exemptions Britain had already gained, such as control of its own currency. These issues still remain, except that now there would be a hard border between Scotland and England, with which it has the strongest economic an social ties.
    There is also a second factor: patriotism. A lot of Scots revere the 300-year-old union. They think of themselves as Britain as well as Scottish. But nobody, except a handful of the elites, have any patriotic feelings towards the EU.
    So forget about a second referendum and a separation. It ain’t a-gonna happen.

  8. The full total is now in, and the results are:
    Conservatives 365, Labour 203, SNP 48, LibDem 10, Green 1, Others 22.
    The Conservatives have a majority of 39. Ironically, their vote share increased by only 1.2%. I don’t know how plays out in absolute numbers of votes, considering that voting is not compulsory, but it appears their victory was largely due to others losing.
    See https://www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-interactive/2019/dec/12/uk-general-election-2019-full-results-live-labour-conservatives-tories
    There is weeping an gnashing of teeth in certain circles. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/13/corbynism-labour-left-party

  9. Before I emigrated in 1968 the constituency I belonged to was called the Don Valley. It had been a Labour held seat since 1947 because there were many coal mines in the area and traditionally coal miners have seen Labour as more sympathetic to their way of life and in those days it was. However, importantly, they remained socially conservative as many were from a Methodist, Bible based background.

    This seat was one of those lost to the conservatives in the recent UK election which was unheard of so all I can say is it is because Jeremy Corbyn and most of the Labour Party were too absorbed with trendy far left issues which has alienated their traditional voting base so it serves them right.

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