The U.K. Conservative Party under Prime Minister Boris Johnson won a landslide in yesterday’s general election with 365 seats (with one constituency still undecided). The opposition, far-left Labor (or Labour Party) won 203. According to the Guido Fawkes blog, the Conservatives (a.k.a Tories) seat count is their highest since [Margaret] Thatcher, while Labour’s is their lowest since 1953.”
The Brexit Party won zero seats.
Judging by the body language of ordinarily high-energy leader Nigel Farage in the last couple of weeks, it seems that he knew things weren’t going that well for BXP.
Labor probably won a few seats it shouldn’t have through postal voting (equivalent to our absentee balloting) and ballot harvesting, which is riddled with fraud just like in the U.S.
The Brexit Election
Now that avuncular, charismatic Johnson with the Three Stooges haircut, has a “stonking” majority, as they say in Britain, of members of parliament (MPs), it remains to be seen what happens next. That is, whether his slogan “getting Brexit done” means Brexit in Name Only 2.0 or whether the U.K. will fully regain its status as a self-governing nation independent of the European Union with a clean-break or “proper” Brexit.
Johnson’s inept predecessor Theresa May tried and failed to get the Remain-dominated parliament, the House of Commons, to approve the original BRINO. The previous parliament also ruled out a no-deal Brexit which would trigger World Trade Organization rules, the regime under which most countries exchange goods and services.
On June 23, 2016, the British electorate voted to leave the EU, but lawmakers have failed to respect the will of people since then.
Does Brexit Mean Brexit?
Libertarian-leaning political writer Michael St. George, writing at the Conservative Woman website, is not optimistic:
“Despite the claims advanced in its favor, the extent to which Boris Johnson’s revised withdrawal agreement differs materially from Theresa May’s in areas such as the Northern Ireland backstop, the scope and duration of the continuing post-Brexit jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, and Britain’s ability to strike new trade deals with non-EU countries, remains a matter of debate….For me, the most persuasive assessment is that which acknowledges that Johnson’s revised agreement is very far from ideal, but that it is nonetheless a significant improvement on its predecessor and is probably just about good enough to make it supportable…I suspect the Johnson/Cummings/Number Ten strategy is to do something which can plausibly be labelled as Brexit, so they can claim to have ‘got it done’ as if it was just a box to be ticked. Then, having done that, to get back to business as usual with our cartelised political system largely unchanged, ignoring the implied deeper demand of the Brexit vote and silencing the Brexit Party’s ‘Change Politics for Good’ advocacy of democratic reform, thus suiting the Westminster technocratic-government elite down to the ground.”
Note that Cummings is Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s chief strategist, and No. 10 refers to the PM’s official London residence at 10 Downing Street.
In an informative piece about Boris Johnson, the former mayor of London, in New York magazine, anti-Brexit Andrew Sullivan maintains that the “permanently disheveled…lovable buffoon” is a crafty, opportunistic political operator with a history of broken promises. (If you read the entire article, disregard the silly references to the Brexit Party as far right and the pandering to the publication’s limousine liberal audience by Trump bashing).
“And, of course, Brexit will not be ‘done,’ as Boris promises. The Withdrawal Agreement is just the first step in a long and agonizing process of trade talks. Boris has promised these will be over by the end of 2020 and said so in the first televised debate between him and Corbyn. But no one can possibly believe that (and most people don’t). What Boris seems to be counting on is that he will conclude a withdrawal agreement by the end of January, make a huge fuss over it, declare the matter finished, and hope that most Brits will not want to immerse themselves in the mind-numbing details of trade talks. He’s gambling that Brexit is largely a symbolic issue — a new statement of British sovereignty and independence — and that the details of future trade don’t really matter. And he may be cynical about this but also right….One of those close to him told me that the next group he will betray is the ERG, the hard-right Tory Brexiteers.”
Under the Fixed Term Parliament Act, Johnson has a five-year term, unless things really go south, and two-thirds of the MPs authorized another election before 2024. Johnson had to get elected in his own London-area constituency (which he did) to remain eligible to become PM.
The Never-Satisfied Political Establishment
You’ll recall that the Tories, the Tory media, and the liberal media were collectively freaking out that Farage’s Brexit Party could split the pro-Bexit vote. On November 11, Farage announced that his party would unilaterally stand down rather than contest 317 seats across the county that the Conservatives won in the 2017 snap election. The arrogant, selfish Conservatives never reciprocated in the proposal for a Leave alliance in seats that offered the Brexit Party a better chance at success.
Farage’s difficult decision, which evidently caused a rift in the BXP inner circle, helped to short-circuited the momentum of the Liberal Democrats, who would have been Labor’s Remain coalition partner, and took big chunks of votes away from Labor, helping Conservatives win in many constituencies. As leader of UKIP in 2015, Farage’s party picked up lots of Labor votes and helped David Cameron, then the Conservative leader, get elected as prime minister.
If the Labor coalition has its way, it would have orchestrated a second referendum in which the choice would have boiled down to Remain or Remain.
After Farage’s decision, “Conservative Inc.” still was unhappy, and demanded more stand-downs while at the same time mocking and marginalizing him for standing down 300-plus candidates.
Conservatives are still complaining about the loss of several seats, but the reverse is probably true: The Tories likely prevented Brexit Party wins in certain swing districts.
Lots more voters probably wanted to vote for the Brexit Party, but instead felt that they had to vote tactically. That is to say, they held their nose and voted for the so-called Conservatives rather than risk that Labor plus the LibDems would get enough votes to install the Marist, anti-Semite, terrorist sympathizing Jeremy Corbyn as prime minister.
Farage, a member of the largely ceremonial European parliament where BXP is the largest party after a big victory in May 2019, also led UKIP to victory in the 2014 EU elections.
It was pressure from UKIP, which won about four million votes in the May 2o15 general election (but only qualified for one Common seat) that convinced a reluctant Cameron to authorize the Brexit referendum in the first place. Cameron, who backed Remain, resigned shortly after the referendum vote.
Farage’s Game-Changing Decision
Although never elected to the House of Commons himself, Farage has exerted a huge impact on British politics as the architect of Brexit, forcing two prime ministers out of office, and essentially electing a third. Even the far-left Guardian admits that:
“This election will be remembered as a resounding, crushing victory for Boris Johnson’s Conservatives. Just as has happened countless times before, Farage will be written off and ridiculed for his party not winning a single seat. But that morning of 11 November was the single most important moment of the campaign. Farage won it for Johnson… But while the shine had gone from the Brexit party, and it ended up winning no seats, its campaign has had a major impact on the election…In some places the Conservatives gained seats from Labour on modest swings, while the Brexit party got swings of more than 10%… Farage, whatever you think of him, was right. Many Labour leavers, who couldn’t bring themselves to vote Tory, did vote for the Brexit party. .. Wherever he ends up, and whatever happens to the Brexit party now, this election is the culmination of a long campaign to redraw the map of British politics, starting with Farage forcing David Cameron’s hand in calling an EU referendum in the first place. Without Farage’s decision to stand down against 317 Conservatives, the election would have been very different. Without going hard after Labour leavers, the Conservatives would not have a thumping majority. Although his party hasn’t won a seat, and even if his campaign itself faltered, the untold story of this election is how Farage once again shaped events. He remains the bête noire of British politics.”
Champagne Socialists or Luxury Communists
The above-referenced Piers Morgan, the Good Morning Britain host and Remain voter, published an editorial in the Daily Mail that nonetheless blasted the London globalist establishment for trying to block Brexit after 17.4 million citizens voted for it.
You may remember Morgan, who won the Celebrity Apprentice when Donald Trump was host, is guy who took over for Larry King on CNN but cratered the ratings with his gun-control obsession.
Although as a lifelong insider, Boris Johnson is hardly a populist, but Morgan makes some very good points about the blue-check echo chamber on both sides of the Atlantic.
“Rather like Democrats after Hillary Clinton lost to Trump, they wouldn’t accept the result and have spent the past three-and-a-half years screaming their heads off about how unfair it all is – and demanding another vote.
“Since Johnson, one of the key architects of the Brexit win, became Prime Minister in the summer, Remoaner fury has grown ever more hysterical as they’ve branded him a lying cheating racist scumbag with a tawdry history involving women.
“And they’ve mocked all his supporters as thick, racist morons who are just stupid to know what they’re doing.
“Sound familiar?
“For Boris, read Trump.
“For Brexit, read the 2016 Election.
“And for Remainers, read Democrats.
“The similarities don’t stop there.
“Like the Democrats when Hillary ran, Remainers enlisted the very vocal support of Hollywood luvvies to fight their cause.
“Of course, the one thing uniting all these stars was their utter refusal to accept democracy. They just couldn’t deal with the simple fact that their side lost.
“So, they tried to overturn the result of the Referendum, and unsurprisingly, they’ve now lost all over again.
“If there’s one thing the British people hate, and Americans for that matter, it is snotty rich celebrities telling them they’re idiots and their vote shouldn’t count.
“There was also another massive reason why Johnson won so big, and it was that his opponent, Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, is a hard-core socialist so far left he makes Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez look like a capitalist…
“Britons firmly rejected that hard-left agenda in this election, and this should also send a very firm message to Democrats as they choose their nominee to take on President Trump in 2020.
“As I’ve been warning for months, there’s not a cat-in-hell’s chance of a socialist candidate beating Trump next November, especially not with the US economy doing so well.
“Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren both share Jeremy Corbyn’s socialist agenda and both appear to be as popular as him on Twitter.
“But Twitter’s not the real world.
“It’s become a cesspit echo chamber where many people only follow others who agree with their political opinions, thus creating a wall of partisan – and increasingly abusive – noise that bears little relation to reality.
“Liberal Twitter was thus shocked when Trump won, stunned when Brexit happened, and is frothing at the mouth again now Boris Johnson’s pulled off a huge success.
“It was so blinded to the infallibility of its own beliefs that it never saw any of this coming.
“And if Democrats don’t forget about Twitter and base their candidate choice on cold, hard reality, they’re going to get a similar drubbing to the Labour Party.
“The clear takeaway from this UK election is that a radical socialist candidate, backed by whining supercilious celebrities, against a populist opponent with a fervent base of support, will fail.
“And if the only tactic they come up with to win is to try to thwart democracy, they will fail badly.
“The sinister establishment-driven attempt to stop Brexit happening is not dissimilar to the current equally ill-advised Democrat impeachment move on Trump.
“Those who voted for Brexit and Trump don’t take kindly to their democratic vote being abused in this way.
“And their retribution comes at the ballot box.
“If people think Boris Johnson’s earthquake was big, just wait until the Senate acquits President Trump and he uses that victory to storm to re-election.”
As Morgan implies, those in the anti-Brexit cohort, which prioritizes foreign interests over their own country, is a lot like the globalist cabal that fights tooth and nail against U.S President Donald Trump’s America First agenda
As an aside, the U.K. has a quaint but somewhat unifying custom where all the candidates in each constituency appear on stage together while an official announces the results. The winner and the also-rans also have the opportunity to make a short speech immediately thereafter. And in the reverse of America, the Conservatives are blue, while the Labor Party (equivalent to U.S. Democrats) are red.
Nigel Farage has already said the he is rebranding the Brexit Party as the Reform Party and will campaign for a peaceful political revolution in accordance with its contract with the people.
[Featured image credit: U.K. government, Wikimedia Commons, Open Government Licence v3.0]