While the U.S. is celebrating Independence Day July 4, the U.K. is still trying to resolve the impasse over its independence from the European Union. The British public voted for Brexit about three years ago, but parliament has yet been unable to find its way out. In the meantime, the upstart, Nigel Farage-led Brexit Party, which won big in the May EU parliamentary elections and wants to and appears to be a player domestically, has unveiled its “big vision” for the country.
The U.K. parliament in Westminster, the House of Commons, three times, for different reasons, voted down outgoing Prime Minister Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement, a.k.a. Brexit in Name Only, that she and her team “negotiated” with EU officials. May promised more than 100 times that Britain would leave the EU on March 29, only to extend it through October 31.
May also insisted that no deal is better than a bad deal, but she along with the many parliamentarians in both the dominant Conservative and Labor Parties oppose a no-deal Brexit which would trigger World Trade Organization rules.
It should come as no surprise that the globalist, London-centric media such as the Brexit Bashing Corporation (BBC) has been engaging in fear mongering over a post-Brexit Britain. Moreover, it launched into a spasm of faux outrage when the 29-member Brexit Party delegation to the EU turned its back during the playing of the EU anthem at the beginning of the 28-nation organization’s legislative session at its alternative Strasbourg location this past week. The EU parliament is primarily based in Brussels.
Ex-London Mayor Boris Johnson, the charismatic politician with the Three Stooges haircut is the presumed front-runner for the Conservative Party leadership. By default, that makes him the country’s next prime minister at least in the short term, Johnson has vowed that he will take Britain out of the EU by October 31 with or without a deal.
The Conservatives (a.k.a. Tories) only control the Remain-dominated parliament by a handful of seats. If he follows through (a big if), or if he doesn’t, the ensuing turmoil could splinter the Conservative coalition, prompting a election in the fall. Absent the government collapsing, the next general election is in 2022.
As this blog has explained, grassroots Tories have abandoned the out-of-touch Conservative Party in droves over its failure to deliver Brexit. In the 2017 election, both the Conservatives and Labor promised to deliver a “proper” Brexit to keep faith with the British public, the majority of whom who voted for Brexit in the referendum. So far, that hasn’t happened.
In June, the Brexit Party fell just about 700 votes short of electing its first candidate to the House of Commons in the Peterborough constituency. The Labor candidate won with just 31 percent of the vote (and a police investigation in alleged Labor vote fraud is underway). If the Conservative candidate had stepped aside in Peterborough, the Brexit Party hopeful would have won easily.
In domestic, multi-party elections, the U.K. operates with a “first past the post” process in which the winner essentially takes all. Thus, 31 percent victories are hardly unheard of. Typically, voters in swing districts have to vote tactically, even if unenthusiastically tactically. That is, vote Labor to keep out the Tories or vice versa.
The anti-establishment Brexit Party is changing that paradigm. While most Labor MPs are pro-Remain and increasingly are calling for a second referendum, about five million disaffected grassroots Labor voters (equivalent to Reagan or Trump Democrats) cast their ballot to exit the EU.
Many of them would never consider voting for a Tory under any circumstances, but are apparently gravitating to the Brexit Party camp.
Former UKIP leader Nigel Farage, who is perhaps the world’s best orator whether you like him or not, has maintained that a Leave-supporter of any party who votes Conservative is going to wind up electing Labor, with the possibility that the far-Left Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn would become prime minister. As such, there have been calls for Farage and Johnson to get together to form a political non-aggression pact in Leave-leaning constituencies to avoid splitting the pro-Brexit vote.
“But if [Farage] siphons off enough of [Johnson’s] voters, it could cost him dozens of Conservative seats where or the Liberal Democrats came a close second two years ago,” the Guardian explained in perhaps an understatement.
Whether that happens, indeed whether an early general election will occur, remains to be seen. A contrarian member of the EU parliament — whose elections use a proportional representation system — since 1999, Farage has failed in numerous attempts to win a House of Commons election because of the first-past-the-post roadblock.
On June 29, the Brexit Party unveiled what the beginning of a populist domestic agenda. This “big vision” sounds like Big Government, although ending the EU shakedown apparently provides the funding mechanism.
From Westmonster:
“Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party unveiled the start of their domestic agenda in Birmingham yesterday, saving billions by ditching HS2 and instead pledging to ‘invest in the rest’ with a huge regional investment program. At a packed out rally that drew thousands of supporters yesterday, the party pledged to cut the £14 billion foreign aid budget in half, refuse to hand £39 billion to Brussels and shelve the incredibly costly High Speed 2 project. This would allow for a £200 billion ‘Brexit booster’ plan that would see mass investment in areas outside of London that have been forgotten about. On top of that, Chairman Richard Tice also said that the party would scrap all interest paid on tuition fees by students.”
Farage and company has already supposedly lined up about 100 candidates to run for the 650-seat British parliament, with more candidates said to be in the pipeline.
Added Unherd about Farage’s appeal to the U.K. version of flyover country:
“In this hypothetical Brexit Party world, the money would go instead on removing business rates entirely outside London to revive small retailers and regional highstreets, improving transport from east to west across the North (i.e., avoiding London) and investing in high-speed internet and mobile phone connectivity in deprived regions across the country.
“Never mind that the sums are highly dubious; the politics are significant. Farage’s offer is a hybrid of anti-corporate populism and Thatcherite appeal to small business owners. He is responding to a deeply held feeling across the country that London has benefited over recent decades as the regions have declined. And crucially it makes Boris Johnson, inextricably associated with London as its twice-elected Mayor, a highly vulnerable adversary.”
So far, the Brexit Party wisely is steering clear of divisive social issues or rigid ideologies.
[Featured image credit: Euro Realist Newsletter, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0 license]