The UK exit polls show a major win for the Tories – up 51 seats, while Labour is down 71 seats. The history of the poll is that it can be wrong, but not wrong by that much.
Here’s a thread to discuss those results. Since this whole Brexit thing began, I’ve been following UK politics a bit, and it is a puzzle how Labour kept the almost universally hated Corbyn as leader. I guess that will change, if the country still exists once Johnson and the Brexiteers are done with it.
Baud
I guess the strategy of not being solidly Remain did not work out.
guachi
Remain or Leave was the only real question on the ballot and when one major party doesn’t take a stand it has little reason left to even exist.
patrick II
I watched part of the Corbyn/Johnson debate last week. I heard Corbyn promise Brexit with a plan within 30 days. I don’t know why. Why wasn’t Labour anti-Brexit? Brexit already has a champion — Johnson. What advantage is it to give a pale imitation? I didn’t think Brexit is that popular.
BlueDWarrior
@Baud: the party itself didn’t seem solidly Remain, but that’s only from me looking as an outside observer.
As it stands that result is terrible, but not surprising.
mdblanche
It’s looking like the worst result for Labour since before World War II. Corbyn may be almost universally hated, but the people who love him really love him and there are enough of them to keep his hold over the party secure (until now at least; if this holds he’s going to have to go).
R-Jud
Fuck ALL the magic grandpas.
Guess I’d better start saving up for a co-pay.
SFAW
Nice to see that morons are not confined to the USA. Although I guess I’d prefer it if they were confined to the UK, and didn’t exist here.
SiubhanDuinne
Fuck.
But unsurprised.
debbie
I know Tony Jay and others have said the lies about Corbyn are just that. It has to be clear to them by now that right or wrong, the lies are sticking and they need to go with someone else. Had that already happened, today might have a different outcome.
Boris Johnson = ?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
one Matt Yglesias joke I do like is “this political event in a foreign country proves I was right about that thing I’ve always said about American politics!”
JPL
What happens to Ireland? I presume that there is a good chance that Scotland separates, but that’s just a guess on my part.
JPL
@R-Jud: Folks are going to discover that health care is only available for those who can afford it.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Astute. As I noted below, people will argue that this helps Biden. Of course, if Labour had won, we’d have heard how we have to choose Bernie now.
Kent
Any Brits here who can explain what this actually means?
It’s not like the Tories managed to get Brexit passed last time around when they had power. Or the time before that under May. Does this simply mean a no-deal Brexit is more likely?
Or is this simply a lot bigger then Brexit?
I don’t really follow UK politics at all, but it sort of seems like Labor has gotten themselves stuck being led by someone iconoclastic like Dennis Kucinich who simply doesn’t have enough widespread appeal to expand the electorate. Will this finally cause a reckoning in Labor and possible new blood? Or are they going to keep putting forward Corbyn for the next 2 decades?
Sab
Wrote a long coment a couple of threads down in response to another commenter.
Couldn’t even post it. Not stuck in wherever. Wouldn’t even let me post or acknowledge that I had tried.
So are we now China? Why even bother to read, much less comment.
Calouste
“it is a puzzle how Labour kept the almost universally hated Corbyn as leader.”
Have you read Tony Jay’s posts here? He thinks Corbyn is a saint.
I fully expect Corbyn to hang onto the leadership as long as he can.
Mike J
The only thing that matters is Brexit. Corbynites refused to endorse a remain plank in the platform. Said they didn’t want to scare off leavers.
The leavers left. Remainers don’t trust Labour.
Baud
@Kent:
British Juicers probably drinking heavily right now.
guachi
My guess is that the Brexit deal easily passes and there will be dozens of Labour MPs that vote for it as well. UK did this to themselves. I feel bad for the young Britons who are no longer really Europeans.
MattF
@JPL:
I agree that the Ireland question is looming over the Brexit mess. We shall see.
R-Jud
@JPL: I am one of the ones who can’t: here or over there in the US.
Also assuming that the special-needs school I am hoping my daughter will attend next year is going to have its funding cut yet again.
I’m supposed to see a very sweet friend this weekend whom I know will have voted Tory. Cancelling those plans as I don’t know how I won’t scream at her about her choices.
R-Jud
@Baud: Just a rum hot toddy as I have a cold.
Kent
They might ARGUE it, but that hardly makes it true. I doubt any uncommitted voters are going to lean Biden simply because of what happened in the UK. We’ve heard a lot about how Biden’t core support is the African American vote, especially older Black women. I rather doubt they take their cues from UK parliamentary elections.
MJS
F***. There’s another country off the list of places to flee to if sh**continues to go sideways in 2020.
Mnemosyne
I have to agree that Labour deciding to NOT support Remain hurt them hugely since Johnson’s government broke over Remain vs Leave, so not supporting Remain basically meant there was no point in voting Labour.
Who the fuck made that brilliant decision anyway?
Baud
@Kent:
It would have been a lot of useless noise either way.
Mike J
@Kent: And twitter is already afire with calls of Blairite treason.
Neither Corbyn nor Bernie can ever fail, they can only be failed.
PeakVT
How is Putin celebrating his latest victory? Because he’s the real winner here. Boris Johnovich will go down in history as the man who broke up the UK.
MattF
@Sab: Send a message to WaterGirl. There’s a ‘Dear WaterGirl’ link in the ‘Contact Us’ section.
R-Jud
@Mnemosyne: The big JC!
No, not that one.
The other one.
FelonyGovt
I wonder if Labour and the Liberal Dems split the opposition, making it easier for the Tories. In any event, I’m so sorry for our British jackals. We over here can certainly relate.
Kent
My guess, when enough old Brits die off and the country comes to its senses in a decade or so, they’ll be creeping back into the EU. Especially when they discover what everyone else has told them, that their main export markets are the EU and no one else in the world really wants their stuff that badly.
They are going to have fun when French customs workers go on strike and UK trucks start piling up in 25 mile long lines at the border with their produce sitting there rotting.
MattF
@Calouste: Corbyn has always been wishy-washy about the EU.
MJS
The spin that should be put on this in the U.S. is that Johnson became immensely more popular once the video of him laughing at Trump went viral.
WaterGirl
@SiubhanDuinne: OT, but I am wondering if you got my email earlier this week?
Omnes Omnibus
@R-Jud: Putting a bottle of rum in the microwave with a slice of lemon isn’t really a hot toddy.
Baud
@Mike J:
Tell them Corbyn should have gone to Wisconsin.
Ella in New Mexico
Comments under TL’s quoting the exit polls are doing as much cheering about Break-sit Boris as the idea that a Johnson win equates to a Trump win in 2020. And TBH I’m gettin the heebee jeebees about it myself, given how good a job R’s are doing shit-storming America with full on lies and obstruction in not only the Impeachment hearings, but in everything they’re doing now. Orwell would turn over in his grave if he had to watch tv this week.
Enough eery parallels exist between the UK and the US right now that there will be many important lessons for us to learn for our upcoming elections. I just pray we can figure out exactly which ones are the ones we need to make use of.
Kent
5…4…3…2…1 countdown until Trump claims credit for Boris’s win.
You know it’s coming. Rather than “helping Biden” I expect our punditocracy will start talking about how this bodes well for Trump.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@MattF: Why vote for Tory-Lite when you can have the real thing.
R-Jud
@Omnes Omnibus: I don’t have a microwave, smartass. I heated it in a double boiler instead.
Frankensteinbeck
@Ella in New Mexico
Conservatives always do that, because their life’s goal is to be an asshole and make other people unhappy. Sorry, guys. A foreign election doesn’t change every election in the US in the last 3 years showing a massive swing towards Democrats. If anything, the swing has only been increasing. Trump squeaked through a technicality win in 2016. He’s fucked in 2020.
:
JPL
@Ella in New Mexico: There appears to be a strong wind blowing towards the right. We’ve become a nation where children in cages is acceptable. Doctor’s are not able to vaccinate children on the border in custody and instead watch some die of the flu.
As someone said earlier though, the Louisiana election proves that not all is hopeless.
Mike J
As for the “vicious lies” spread about Corbyn, remember when the online left rushed to the defense of Clinton when people called her corrupt and dishonest?
Yeah, me neither.
WaterGirl
@Sab: Trying to understand what happened. You wrote a comment but you couldn’t post it? You hit reply, it put in @nym, let you type but then what? Was the Post Comment button not there? Was it there and grayed out so you couldn’t click it? Or you posted the comment but it never showed up?
debbie
@Kent:
“I let him laugh at me just so he could win.”
Miss Bianca
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Oh, golly – yeah, but I’ll still be feeling a reflexive shudder and hoping this isn’t an evil portent for the US.
Feeling so badly for all our UK jackals right now. : (
Barney
Corbyn isn’t universally hated – he’s still popular with the left of the party, who form the majority of the votes in a Labour party internal election. They hated where Blair took them, distrusted Brown because he worked with Blair, and saw Ed Miliband as Blair-lite (unfairly, in my opinion). They found themselves in charge of the party when the Blair tendency ran out of steam, and there’s no way they’re giving up control just for the chance to get into government. It’s ideological.
I’m British, so if anyone wants to ask questions, I’ll give answering a go (basic political position – Lib Dem, though disappointed in the last few years).
Omnes Omnibus
@R-Jud: That makes all the difference then.
MattF
@Frankensteinbeck: Right. RWers just wanna piss on liberals. Don’t fall for it.
randy khan
@Frankensteinbeck:
I won’t make any predictions about 2020, but you’re 100% correct that recent elections here say more about what will happen here than an election in another country.
mdblanche
@MattF: Corbyn wasn’t always wishy-washy about Brexit. Before the referendum he was a leading left-wing Brexiteer. He only became wishy-washy since becoming the leader of a mostly remain party. He was really the wrong man at the wrong time.
I’d say the lesson tonight for those of us on this side of the pond is that there are only three issues that matter in the primaries: electability, electability, and electability.
JMG
Every country’s politics are different. The desire to interpret them in terms of our own country’s politics is natural but a false trail.
WaterGirl
@MattF: Thank you. I’m sure that was frustrating for Sab. I definitely want to understand what happened because we can’t fix what we don’t know about.
The Dear WaterGirl link is to the “how to” posts, but Sab can definitely send email to me using the WaterGirl account at balloon-juice.com or use the Site Feedback link under Calling All Jackals.
R-Jud
@Omnes Omnibus: It better.
I have to get the child up for school in the morning, throbbing sinuses* be damned. Good night, jackaltariat.
*literally; not a euphemism for Tories
VeniceRiley
@Baud: ha!!!
Around the book of faces, even lefties I know over there have been saying for months now “The country voted Brexit. That’s done. best to crack on with it.” And they flat refused to entertain remain was even a consideration anymore, even if they were remainers before. They had given up and accepted “The will of the people.”
In any case, as the leader of Labour, Corbyn needs to step aside. Cannot find a soul outside of here that likes the man.
guachi
Lib Dems really should have demanded ranked choice voting when they were in partnership with the Conservative party for a few years. The UK seems like a place where such a voting system would be really needed. But, like I said above, the UK did this to themselves so I don’t really feel sorry for anybody but younger Britons.
patrick II
@JPL:
What happens to Ireland?
Buy stock in the IRA.
@MattF:
Seriously, if that border closes there will be more than political trouble in Northern Ireland.
Elizabelle
@R-Jud: Feel better, R-Jud.
trollhattan
Commented halfway through watching “Years and Years” that it seemed too plausible to not be an actual documentary somehow slipped back to us through a time portal. This election cements it, so I demand access to this new technology. Have a few changes to make in the timeline.
Best of luck, UK and congrats are in order to Russia for all their 2016 work. Very, very effectively done.
Elizabelle
Mean Elizabelle thought:
At least we don’t have Cokie Roberts around, extrapolating to tell us what UK results mean for the US of A.
I will toast to that.
British jackals: my condolences. May you have a softer landing than you’ve been expecting.
Lapassionara
@JPL: Ireland remains in the EU. What happens to Northern Ireland is murky.
debbie
@Barney:
Corbyn may not be universally hated, but hasn’t he become a liability?
patrick II
@Mnemosyne:
As I said in an earlier comment, not only did they not support Remain, Corbyn actually said in the debate he would have a Brexit plan in 30 days. That makes no sense, Brexit already had its champion, Corbyn was not going to out-Brexit Johnson. I figured the election was lost at that moment.
trollhattan
@VeniceRiley:
Not having the foggiest idea what they were voting on and Russian interference should have made a do-over a simple concept to sell.
“Post the actual deal, in detail, then vote on that.”
“You monster, you’d throw away nine-hundred years of democracy for that?”
Yutsano
Welp. Scotland is gone. Nicola Sturgeon must be salivating at getting a new independence referendum started. It will be ugly for the Scots for a couple of years but once they get back in the EU it will get more stable.
And Northern Ireland has a choice. It can stay in the Union and let the Troubles creep back in or they can rejoin Ireland. Full independence just isn’t a viable option for them. There is no way Boris can keep the Good Friday accords with a Brexit. None. There is no way to get an agreement that will not have some kind of stop on the border to stop free movement between NI and Ireland. Britain is going to be changing very soon, and it’s not going to be good.
sdhays
The British can stop sneering at us about Trump. They watched us with Trump for 3 years and now decided to give their own Trump a majority government. If you didn’t look at Boris Johnson and want to vomit at the thought of voting to give him more power, you now know what it’s like to be a Republican.
I hope they enjoy the Americanization of the NHS!
Major Major Major Major
Barney
@guachi: The Lib Dems did get a referendum on using the Alternative Vote system (ie ranked choice, in single-seat constituencies). The country turned it down comprehensively, sadly – 6 million for, 13 million against, with a turnout of only 42% – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Results_of_the_2011_United_Kingdom_Alternative_Vote_referendum . I’d love something more proportional, but the authoritarian streak in the English psyche (note that Scottish Parliament elections do use a PR variant) likes “a definite result”.
PJ
@Barney: Since you volunteered to be our local Briton at the local
dinerpub:Assuming the polling results are more or less accurate:
1) What effect does this have on the Brexit plan Johnson was proposing in November?
2) It looks like the SNP have picked up seats – do they have any leverage in pushing for a new independence referendum?
3) Will Labour still support Corbyn after these results? Who would take his place?
Just a warning, your prose had better be up to Tony Jay standards or we may have to find another Briton in a pub as our go-to voice of the people.
Mike J
They held a referendum where 68% voted no and then said people were too dumb to read the question correctly.
chris
Well, fuck. William Gibson’s jackpot comes to mind.
sdhays
@debbie: He’s the worst liability that the Labour Party could possibly have…until they select someone else.
The British press doesn’t like Labour leaders not named Blair. (Or maybe it’s Tony – our Tony Jay should throw his hat in and test that theory.)
Mike J
@Sab:
@WaterGirl:
I just had a similar thing. Posted a reply comment, hit the post button, it didn’t appear when the page refreshed. I refreshed the page 30 seconds later and it had appeared then. First indication was eaten post, then it came back.
Win/chrome 80.0.3983.2 (Official Build) dev (64-bit)
guachi
@Mike J: I guess I forgot that happened. An alternative would be like Louisiana has. If people REALLY wanted certainty to an election is any constituency where no one receives 50% of the vote goes to a runoff between the top two candidates.
Too late now, I guess.
Elizabelle
@chris: What does that mean?
Butter Emails
Not sure why the Brits opted for this method to destroy their country. They’ve got nuclear weapons. They could have just spread them evenly across the country and then detonated them if they wanted to commit national suicide. At least they would have gone out with a bang instead of the long slow sound of a whoopee cushion deflating.
Barney
@debbie: I’d definitely say he’s a liability now (though I’m not a natural supporter of his). He did better in 2017 than Miliband did in 2015, and that was after his luke-warm leadership during the Brexit referendum, so it wasn’t always certain. But Brexit has dominated more recently, his tolerance of Labour anti-semites (yeah, Tony Jay will have a go at me if he reads this) has been highlighted, and he’s not showed signs of being able to lead in a decent direction.
If the result is anything like as bad as the exit poll, I think he’ll resign. There’s no obvious successor (which is another reason why there hasn’t been an attempt to chuck him for some time); Keir Starmer or Emily Thornberry would be my guess.
WaterGirl
@Mike J: Thanks. That one we know about, at least, and it’s on the list to be fixed. Sab’s almost sounded like the Post Comment button wasn’t there, but I couldn’t be sure.
Ruckus
Britain seems to have a similar disease that we do.
Some/many seem to want the old power structure-where their world rotated around their flagpole. Here some/many want the world to rotate around their flagpole – the one with the stars and bars.
Neither seem to want to be part of a bigger whole, if it means they lose some of their autonomy. But the world doesn’t/won’t continue to work that old way any longer, like it or not. It’s getting smaller, it’s getting hotter, it’s getting dryer. And while some of this can be fixed/helped it will change.
Mike in DC
It’s the worst result for Labour since 1935, looks like. The party will face mass defections if there’s no shakeup in leadership.
David ??Booooooo?? Koch
He had the complete backing of Rose twitter and Jacobin magazine.
How could Socialist candidate lose?
I’ve been repeatedly told Socialism is cool and no longer scares the plebs.
anarchoRex
@Baud: This would make more sense if Corbyn had been polling like Clinton was, rather than like Trump which is the reality.
trollhattan
@Ruckus:
Their
CletusNigel safaris to the Midlands would turn up all sorts of Brexiteers who really didn’t like having all those layabout Poles lurking on the street. Did that ever sound familiar.Major Major Major Major
I think in general we could stand to be a bit more realistic about the effects of Brexit. The UK was hardly a rotting husk before they joined up; they shall endure, albeit with reduced capacity.
chris
@Elizabelle: From his novel, The Peripheral. The “jackpot” is a multi-causal global catastrophe resulting in the death of most of the people. We’ll leave out the temporal weirdness for now.
IMO by the time all the dick measuring (Trump, Bojo, Putin etc.) is over climate disaster will have reached a rolling boil. There is not now nor will there be a system of government that can stop it. YMMV
debbie
@Barney:
For the good of the party and the country, I hope Corbyn does resign. Rightly or wrongly, he’s become a target.
Now, what about Ireland and Scotland?
Ella in New Mexico
@Frankensteinbeck:
This is true
mdblanche
First three results in: two Labour holds and a Tory gain. Both Labour holds were closer than before, one much, much closer. All three are in northeastern England, a traditionally Labour region.
Barney
@PJ: (gulp – I’ve done it now):
2) Like Catalonia, a referendum has to be called by the national parliament, and the Tories just won’t do it, and they’ll enjoy that, and feel comfortable assuming a large Westminster majority.
3) I think Labour won’t support Corbyn, but I think he’ll decide to go before any official challenge (probably not as fast as other leaders have resigned after losses, though – he is stubborn).
PsiFighter37
@debbie: Corbyn doesn’t have any awareness whatsoever – the man wouldn’t resign if he lost even more seats. This is how the center-left dies in the U.K. – by thorough incompetence. Basically the exact same thing that happened to the Socialist Party in France.
Barney
@debbie: Scottish independence will be a lot of sound and fury, but the Tories have the power to do nothing.
Ireland is more interesting; Johnson has screwed the DUP (whose pro-Bexit stance was in the minority in NI anyway); in theory, the Tories can just refuse to hold one there too, but if there’s a clear majority in opinion polls wanting one, they look even worse if they do refuse (since Scotland had one a few years ago, which gives an excuse of “too soon since the last one”). Slugger O’Toole is an excellent NI resource – see https://sluggerotoole.com/2017/02/26/a-border-poll-can-be-held-at-any-time/
rp
Fuck Corbyn. He’s a disgrace.
Yutsano
@Barney:
Oh I don’t think Nicola will stand for that. The SNP is slated to pretty much clean up in Scotland. There is going to be a HUGE fight over Brexit and independence over the next couple of years. And Scotland might just say frak it all and break the 1707 Act of Union.
polyorchnid octopunch
@Major Major Major Major: In a few years, it will be extremely difficult to find anyone who will admit to voting Brexit outside the investment bank banker/client community.
Now that the election’s over, a couple of key papers are going to come out, such as the report on Russian interference in elections and the actual forecast for what will happen after Brexit.
It could get very ugly. Folks are going to be helping themselves to massive servings of regret.
mozzerb
Britain went insane in 2016 and coming back to sanity is hard.
I’ve been hoping that enough people would come to their senses to vote against the Tories, but bracing for a another ten year slow grind back to a position where a new generation turn against the accumulation of problems that they grew up with, as in 1997. The exit polls are predicting a large Tory majority, so even the wildly optimistic hope of there being enough Tory MPs with the courage and decency to do the right thing and insist on a second referendum doesn’t look on.
The ridiculous thing is that although Brexit SHOULD have been almost the sole topic, it’s been weirdly underplayed, basically a soundbite contest with hardly any real analysis of what it will actually involve from anyone who could get any traction in the public sphere. Instead there’s been a lot of waffle about other plans that people don’t quite believe. The whole election campaign has seemed weirdly low-key.
As for Labour, well, they routinely start with the playing field tilted against them. The TV networks have been self-consciously “balanced”, which has the same effect as it does in the US of turning the whole thing into a freestyle lying contest. For those who may be unfamiliar with the UK media landscape, the press is mostly Fox News in print form, so this favours the Tories. To counter that I’d say you need two-fisted fighters, and Corbyn is not that — he’s basically an overgrown student union politician. Aims mostly good, but woolly-headed and not good at thinking on his feet and judging how things will play. Against Johnson — to a large extent a non-senile version of Trump who says any bullshit he thinks sounds useful — wrong man at the wrong time. He’s also done little to suggest that Remain was a good idea (as opposed to something that should be put to a confirmatory vote) and has always been Brexit-curious. (Tony Jay will doubtless argue that being stridently Remain would have lost too many votes, which was a colourable argument for a while, but not once the political window of opportunity opened up over the last year or so.)
If Labour and the Lib Dems had come to a proper agreement on not splitting votes, they might still have been able to pull something off, but they were too concerned with sniping at each other. They do NOT get a pass for that from me — their share of the blame may not be anywhere close to that of the Tories, but they ain’t blameless.
So what next? That ten year slow grind of fuckery and damage to the country, its institutions, its influence, and probably its basic decency, until the political tide turns. Some of what’s lost may be rebuildable, but it’s still a huge opportunity cost. And that’s the optimistic scenario — the very possible alternative is right-wing fuckery getting baked into the system, as with Hungary, US red states etc.
I guess we’d all like our country to be a good example to the world. I’d just prefer it wasn’t a good example of how to fuck yourself up by mainlining xenophobia.
Butter Emails
@Major Major Major Major:
I think we also need to be more realistic about the impact. The UK isn’t just going to revert to the old status quo. In addition to the world and especially Europe moving on, integration with Europe has had major impacts on the UK economy, which will be painful to unravel.
The UK is going to be at an extreme competitive disadvantage when competing for market share for exports with countries in the EU. London is almost certain to see it’s importance as a finance center degraded. The future of NI and Scotland’s inclusion in the UK are hazy. In the event of significant economic contraction, there’s a conservative government sitting their more than willing to make things much worse with shitty policies.
PJ
@Barney: Thanks! I also get the feeling that the EU knows the UK needs them more than they need the UK, and that any trade deal will be much worse than what they had before. (If it’s not worse, other EU members will start to wonder why they’re there, too.)
Jay
One trend that is international, is that we have Politicians, Wonks and Institutions that arn’t up to the challenges and threats to our Democracies, both in the short term and the long term.
Many arn’t really aware of the full impact of the threats, from Dark Money to Climate Change. Of the few that are paying lip service, they advance a weak assed Carbon Tax or $15 while continuing the handouts to Big Carbon and Billionaires.
The very few that do get it, get dismissed.
Boris, Rasputin's Evil Twin
@PeakVT: That’s “Boris Ivanovich”, please.
Now I need a few liters of vodka to drown the pain of this victory for Vladimir Vladimirovich.
MomSense
Mother forker.
Spider-Dan
@Yutsano: No need to worry about a border between NI and the Republic. BoJo already threw NI under the bus with his renegotiated Brexit: the hard border will be between NI and GB.
If the Troubles return again, it won’t be at border crossings this time.
wvng
@MattF: I think this means that before long Great Britain is once again just England.
Jay
@PJ:
The British Side in the Brexit Negotiations demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they don’t have a single clue when it comes to trade. If and when they beg to “come back” to the EU, their negotiation team will have been stewing in 20 years of post Brexit pro Brit Propaganda.
Those who think the clock will turn back in a generation, need to think about the Red States. Those who can, will GTFO, emigration will match that of the ‘20’s and ‘80’s.
Britains done, stick a fork in her, she’s over.
Spider-Dan
@Yutsano: Indeed. It’ll be impossible for BoJo to take the UK out of the EU, then immediately turn around and insist that Scotland has no right to leave the UK. And with Scotland gone, hard to imagine Unionists in NI staving off reunification; with BoJo’s Brexit putting a backstop between NI and GB, what’s the point of NI remaining in the UK?
unknown known
I’m not Barney, but I am British, and in pre-mourning here in the general vicinity of Manchester, so I’ll take a crack at these.
Dear Christ, do we have to?
There isn’t really a “plan”, there’s just a bunch of posh boys making stuff up as they go, and getting a bit exasperated when the poor civil servants dispatched to look after them keep shaking their heads.
But to answer the question, if the Conservatives get a solid majority they no longer have any real constraints tethering them to reality. In the British parliamentary system, if you have a solid majority you are essentially a benevolent (hopefully dictator), with very few real constraints on your power. Hey, it’s deicisive and stuff, right.
So Boris and his cronies will dribble something out (probably starting with whatever they have now), and parliament will dutifully vote for it, and the EU will continue to be sane (i.e., looking after its own interests, which are to maintain alignment where possible with the UK, but to not accept deals that will dynamite their own functioning in doing so)… and the upshot is probably leaving pretty soon with either no-deal, or a really limited deal. That will do violence to the UK’s economy, of course, but the next election won’t be for 5 years, and the population will be sold on a new set of Tory lies by then, so what can you do.
Maybe. They don’t get to have a referendum unless the UK parliament lets them (unless they want to pull a Catalonia, and everyone saw that this didn’t end so well for the Catalans), and if Boris has a majority, that means he’s liable to tell them to sod off. That will do the SNP no end of electoral good, and probably makes them more likely to win when any referendum does finally happen because nobody likes being taken for granted… But taking people for granted is what Tories do, so hey.
Traditionally getting thumped in an election is a cue for a party leader to go. You would have to imagine that Corbyn will do that. Did I mention that I’m incredibly jealous of the democrats right now, with their deep bench of inspiring talent? Labour doesn’t have anyone remotely charismatic or inspiring in the wings, that I know of. Except maybe Keir Starmer, but who knows how the various factions and the blood-lettings align on that.
Corbyn really has to go if the party wants to stand a hope of winning though. Yes, he got a lot of unfair shit from the press (call it the Clinton treatment if you like), but he was also very easy to vilify. While he comes across as sincere and passionate to people like me, I’m an academic who is wired up to take the kinds of things he says seriously. To a lot of people he comes across as professorial (in the bad sense of the word), ideologically rigid, not someone who understands them, or is necessarily on their side.
He also was ineffective at campaigning. His debate performances were meh. He went on a BBC show where the host really grills you (it would come across as a ridiculously hostile interview to American eyes, but Brits just see it as getting put through your paces), and it was a car crash. He came across as dithering and out of touch, and not able to move past slogans. He was repeatedly pressed in that interview to appologise for the way Labour has handled its anti-semitism issues, and he refused to do so. That dominated all the headlines the next day (“Corbyn refuses to appologise”). It doesn’t even matter that the Torries are worse with their blatant Islamophobia, because that’s just priced in for the Tories. You aren’t going to beat them if they get to even just muddy the waters a little bit that you might not be infinitely better than them at this stuff.
BTW, he went on this show because he’d been told that Johnson was going to do it too, but then Johnson claimed he’d never agreed, dodged it entirely, and got away with it. Ask yourself if Liz Warren or Obama or even Bernie would ever have gotten rolled like that? Johnson would have crashed hard too at it, because he doesn’t do detail, and has never been able to hold up under a remotely close grilling.
What I WOULD like to do is address a big misperception here.
This was sort-of a Brexit election, yes. But everyone is also completely sick to death of Brexit, and the Tory machine and their lapdog media (50% of newspaper circulation is owned by 2 billionaires, and basically run as Fox UK) have projected Brexit into having this air of inevitability about it. There is a substantial plurality of the population who have been radicalized into being passionate remainers, but the Tories learned from the last election in which May was humiliated, that talking about Brexit all the time doesn’t work. So all of the parties pivoted to spending most of their time talking about all of the hospitals they were going to build (40, say the Tories, though their own spending plans don’t remotely back that up), all of the police they were going to hire, blah blah blah.
The Tories just said “we’ll get Brexit done”, and nobody was effective at standing up every time and immediately pointing out that “no, Brexit is going to take 10 years to sort out. They’re just going to get it inevitable”. And without that pushback, you got a ton of even labour supporters who would be interviewed and would say “well, at least the Tories will get Brexit done. Then we can get on witha ll the other important stuff”.
Also, the labour position on Brexit wasn’t as a crazy as it sounds. Pure remain didn’t have that big of a consituency. The Liberal Democrats started out by going all in on “bollocks to Brexit, we’ll just revoke it, job done”, and even they started backing off that messenging, because it wasn’t getting them very far.
mdblanche
In that case they can say goodbye to rejoining the EU. If Scotland declares independence without Westminster’s consent there would have to be at least half a dozen EU members that would veto setting the precedent a country that declares independence unilaterally can join. Spain for starters. And an independent Scotland outside the EU would have much less popular support. I think the path to Scottish independence is much less clear than a lot people think.
Spider-Dan
@wvng: Hard to see how England shakes Wales loose. While the prospect of Brexit has driven up polling for Welsh independence from the low teens to the high 20s, that’s still nowhere near enough to get the job done in Wales (which voted Leave by a sizable margin in 2016, IIRC). And I definitely can’t see England forcibly kicking Wales to the curb.
Greenergood
in 2016 during the first Scottish independence referendum, we were told that if we voted for independence we would not be allowed to stay in the E.U. Then we had the Brexit vote where 64 percent of Scots voted to STAY in the E.U., and England voted to leave. Tonight, so far, of 59 Scottish Parliamentary seats, 55 are projected to be Scottish Nationalist, despite vigorous and viciously biased reportage from the BBC. Bring it on – we want to stay in Europe, and let England pursue its dreams of its mythical empire
cokane
People talking about this effect on Biden, but here’s the thing, Biden doesn’t need any help. I get most people don’t prefer him as the nominee, and me neither. But it’s extremely, extremely rare to see a frontrunner like him lose the nomination after having such a sustained and large lead in the polling.
Matt
For anyone asking “why didn’t Corbyn go full-Remain?” – it’s the same reason we only ever get weaksauce policy from the Democrats; they spend all their time fretting about how to pander to the most conservative voters while frantically punching left.
I suspect it’s going to work as well for Biden as it did for Corbyn.
PeakVT
@Boris, Rasputin’s Evil Twin: I stand corrected.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Matt: what?
Baud
@Matt:
“Corbyn was a neoliberal” is the best post mortem yet.
chopper
@R-Jud:
makes sense that a brit would boil something twice.
PJ
@unknown known: Thanks, too, for this. You’d get the impression from the internet that Remain/sanity had huge support but, as we well know here, the internet is not an accurate reflection of electoral choices.
unknown known
@mdblanche: Also too, Scotland would have financial troubles if it became precipitously independent. Their main source of revenue right now is oil drilled out of the North Sea, and that doesn’t cover all of their bills even now, before it runs out.
That’s not an absolute deal breaker, I’m sure they would tighten their belts and manage… but it would HURT, and that contraction in spending would probably put their economy into a bit of a spin… and that economy NEEDS to find new ways to make money if they are going to maintain their standard of living as an Indy country.
PJ
@Matt: But Biden hasn’t moved right – if anything, Biden has moved left of where he was in 2008 (or 2016, for that matter). The reason more left-leaning policy hasn’t been implemented by Democrats (aside from voter suppression and Russian interference and Fox and Facebook) is that there are a lot of conservative thinking people in this country and the Constitution is set up that they have an inordinate amount of power.
chris
Just dumping this.
VeniceRiley
The GF says in re Scotland that it’s English opinion that they are a drain on resources, get everything free, and good riddance. Insularity, hyper-isolationism is ruling the day.
burnspbesq
@patrick II:
No shit. Unification becomes a very real possibility if that happens.
Baud
@PJ:
The whole party has moved steadily left since 2004. It’ll never be good enough.
terry chay
@PJ: Even this American can answer these questions.
With a majority, Johnson will gut the power of Parliament to block and they will vote for Brexit which will happen in January 2021. This election was a referendum on Brexit and the Brexiters won (mostly because Remain didn’t have a vote, but that’s Labour/Corbyn’s fault). IIRC, it’ll be Johnson’s plan which is just the original plan with a few concessions to help the Brits (Ireland backstop) taken out.
They can push for referendum even without gaining seats, as long as they still held a majority there. I believe the Scottish Parliament stated the referendum can be revisited if something “changed materially” politically to warrant it. Brexit certainly qualifies. I think the delay in second referendum is currently on the British-side based on the fact that Brexit wasn’t a certainty. I imagine they’ll get it green lit shortly after Jan 2021, so I we can expect a referendum in 2022-ish. Really it’s just a race to see which country leaves the UK first, Scotland or Ireland.
Yes they will. The nature of a party when it devolves is that it becomes more entrenched in the extreme that got it there. Locally, the California GOP is an example of this. So too, will Labour.
If there is anything I was hoping that Balloon Juicers would learn from this election, it is that Tony Jay is just a British version of a Bernie-or-buster. Don’t confuse length of post with intelligence.
Barney
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I can see Matt’s point, if we’re only talking about Brexit. Corbyn tried to straddle the fence – he said he’d ask to negotiate a new Brexit deal with the EU, and then hold a referendum, in which he wouldn’t personally take a position, but allow Labour MPs to do as they wanted. And hardly anyone thought that was ‘good leadership’ – more like washing his own hands of the problem.
Ksmiami
@Kent: my husband thinks it’s akin to if Hawaii seceded from the USA – The Brits done fucked themselves and there’s no real remedy
cokane
@Matt: Can’t agree here. This seems to be a case of what John Sides dubbed the Green Lantern Theory of American Politics, where lefty democrats can just will policy in to place by the sheer force of their voice.
The American system is set up in such a way that big, expansive policies can’t really happen unless you win *multiple* elections in a row. Big policy items won’t happen unless you can deliver decently large legislative majorities. And even then, you’re subject to the whims of the most moderate members of that coalition.
Instead of buying the illusion that one day there might be this one singular electoral victory that then ushers in all the changes we want to see, it’s better to accept that this is a lifelong battle. And yeah, some of us don’t make it to promise land.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@PJ:
those people just haven’t heard Bernie shout yet, cause Obama and Hillary wouldn’t let them listen
unknown known
@chris: Well congratulations. I didn’t think it was possible, but you have, in fact, actually made me feel WORSE this evening. And by “worse” I mean actually physically nauseous.
terry chay
@Barney: Yeah, I forgot that the UK Parliament has to approve of a Scottish referendum which they won’t until Labour takes power again (which is never going to happen).
However, the power for Northern Ireland to hold a referendum exists within the Secretary of State of Northern Ireland, so they can vote to leave. Parliament would have to pass an act overriding the one of 1998 to override it. I somehow doubt the Conservatives give a flying-fk about the DUP at this point. It’d certainly make leaving easier if there was a hard border across the Irish Sea.
Ksmiami
@Jay: that’s my assessment too- just look at the sclerotic university system. The antiquated elitism and the smallness (and getting smaller)of Britain as nation state. Banking and on international business will headquarter in places like Amsterdam and Brussels
Another Scott
Haven’t read the comments here yet, but the BBC TV coverage seems gleeful that Labour has lost. One of the segments showed that Labour areas that voted 55+% for Brexit flipped. But somehow that’s Corbyn’s fault. :-/
I guess we’ll see how gleeful the country is after a few years of Boris cutting everything in sight.
(sigh)
Cheers,
Scott.
unknown known
@VeniceRiley: The English have a slightly complicated relationship with the Scottish. There’s a bit of a love-hate frenemy edge to it.
They are seen as genuinely virtuous on one hand, but a bit holier-than-thou on another. Scotland is seen as beautiful and a great place to go (because it is), but also as the resentful sibling who keeps whining and banging out about how wonderful rainbows and sunshine everything will be when they move out on their own, but is still fundamentally part of the family, and still kinda wants to be part of it!
Barney
@Ksmiami: Maybe it’s a bit more like Texas seceding – it has more of a size to be a notable state, and has always had an inflated opinion of itself. Both the UK and Texas have had significant influence in their union, but just aren’t going to be global players on their own, and need a good relationship with their neighbours to thrive.
Noskilz
Something tells me the Conservative delight may be short-lived. They get to be in the driver’s seat, but they’re still heading toward a brick wall as fast as they can, and the aftermath will be ugly for all involved. But if that’s what most of the voting public wanted, I guess that’s what’s going to happen.
Bizarre that Labour didn’t feel like taking a stab at being the remain option, since it’s the whole Brexit thing that seems to be one of the bigger immediate problems facing Britain, but that’s life.
dr. bloor
@Barney:
Does a margin of victory this large leave DUP pretty much fucked in terms of border policy in a Brexit deal?
chris
@unknown known: Sorry about that but better you know than not. Also thanks for your clear and cogent explainer.
unknown known
@cokane: That’s America. In the UK if you have a majority in parliament (especially if it’s not a tiny one – which it tends not to be, because FPTP – it’s like the US House) then you can pretty much do whatever the fuck you want. Big change would absolutely be possible after one election.
That was one reason that Corbyn did so badly – a lot of voters perceived him as proposing a pretty radical set of policies… because he was… but saw this as SCARY because he could actually do it. Now, if you are a lefty like me you look at those radical policies and say “good, a lot of this SHOULD happen”, but the media was never going to make that an easy sell to the population, and Corbyn was a terrible salesman. His base was fully onside with him, but he couldn’t even win over liberal-ish wonky types who are all swooning over Warren.
Honestly, even I worried that he just didn’t come across as all that COMPETENT. And big sweeping changes carried out badly, can often be really really bad things, even if they are generally the right types of big sweeping changes.
Don’t get me wrong, I voted Labour, and I’m genuinely hopeful that the labour MP wins here – she’s a good one… but she only just edged a Tory last time to win, so it’s no sure thing – TONS of labour signs in my neighbourhood though. I’ve never seen so many before. But this is just one small neighbourhood in a much bigger riding, in one teeny bit of the big ole country.
Anyway, I’m rambling now. What else can you do on a night like this. Far less messy than Hari Kiri.
Greenergood
@unknown known: oil is not scotland’s Main source of revenue – it’s the uk’s. if it had been scotland’s Main source of revenue we would now be as rich as Norway. Instead Scottish North Sea Oil funded Tory tax cuts for 40 years. Scotland still has lots of oil, but even better has huge wind and tidal energy assets – that could fund Scotland rather than London after independence. Lots of similar-sized countries in the E.U. or affiliated: all Scandinavian countries for example. It’s not a pipe dream, once you get past the terrible main stream press and the BBC.
terry chay
@Ksmiami: Great Britain:Europe (much more than) Hawaii:U.S. It’d be closer to something like New York City seceding (not the state, just the city) with lower Manhattan being the equivalent of London.
Martin
So, my 3 year ago prediction that Scotland would declare independence and Ireland unify is looking stronger than ever.
We’ll just move that hard border east a bit.
Another Scott
@Baud: I KNOW!!
Cheers,
Scott.
unknown known
@Another Scott:
See, that’s the fucked up part. We’ve already had TEN YEARS of the Tories cutting everything in sight. They even cut tens of thousands of police officers. Sure, they go into the election promising to spend money on everything and its mother, but I don’t think anyone even really believes that any more.
And to be fair, the British people DO NOT LIKE BORIS JOHNSON. They just didn’t like Corbyn either, and one of them had to win, and being a Tory in this country means you get to play politics in easy mode, because 50% of the print media is Fox News, and the teevee are all in full “we have to be balanced” mode, with all the inability to shut down lying in real time that you all know and love in the USA.
rp
@terry chay:
unknown known
@Barney: In terms of size of the economy, UK is to the EU as California is to the US.
(and yes, California is extremely inward looking like the UK, but you have to imagine that instead of California school kids being brought up on stories of Washington crossing the Delaware and taking the pledge of allegiance, instead they were taught very little about the rest of the states, and the history was mostly about the time that they saved everyone’s bacon back in old wars, and all the tussles that they had with Washington, or Texas, or whatever (there’s no real California equivalent to thousands of years of wars with neighbouring states, that can be carefully picked through to remember the few bits that went absolutely best for Cali)
unknown known
@terry chay: In a way, New York is a better comparison to the UK than California… because the UK is structurally just ridiculously dominated by London. It’s like if Washington DC, LA, and New York were all combined into the same city.
London eats up just the vast majority of UK spending. The transport infrastructure is better there. You can get to see a doctor much much faster there. Something like 95% of the money spent on museums goes there… Even the conservatives have realized it’s a problem, and tried to invest a bit in building up a Manchester/Liverpol/Sheffield axis… which is a good thing, but it has a LOOOOONG way to go.
Hey, who knows, maybe Brexit will give london’s financial sector such a shit kicking that it’ll even things out a little. Though I think the Tory vision for Brexit (inasmuch as they have one) is to turn us into Singapore – gut the regulations on everything, and try to steal investment from the nearby countries by promising not to tax it too much, or look too closely at whatever shady stuff you are doing.
It’s a beggar thy neighbour strategy, but the one thing that might mitigate against it is that the EU has actually shown quite a bit of backbone in trying to block these kinds of things, and might rather just lock the UK out of their market rather than let us undercut them.
PJ
I guess the next big shoe to drop will be the report on Russian interference in the Brexit referendum, if Boris ever lets it out.
Jay
@Noskilz
Almost none of our Politicians or Institutions “grok” the current Modern Age, political climate, and threats, or are able to deal with it.
Eg. The US IC and the Western IC watched in real time over the years as Russia honed cyber warfare against our societies, political parties and elections.
Yes, they deployed counter hackers in real time, at time, to try to block the hacks but the Troll Farms, the recruitment, the enrollment and trapping of Useful Idiots and Assets?
And when they did try to “strike back” through President Obama, the institutions were already compromised and useless. 8 years + and we, the Public, found out after it was a done deal.
So, of course Labour runs a 2019 Election, not on Brexit, ( boring), Russian ratfucking, ( unproven) but instead, Austerity, Thatcher and New Council Flats. What they know, what they are comfortable with, what their shady advisors advised them on.
Bobby Thomson
Simple really. Labour is run by Britain’s own version of BernieBros, he can’t be removed by the party, and the party can’t win with him no matter how much people hate the Tories and/or Brexit. So the United Kingdom is soon to be England and Wales, with Scotland and Northern Ireland rejoining the E.U.
And that country will be repugnant AF, as Scotland has been pretty much the only thing holding back the Tories’ fascist impulses.
VeniceRiley
I can’t help but think that the next election must have a popular and clear speaking candidate for labour delivering one clear simple message to get through the noise. That message is: Austerity is a LIE. You’re resenting people on benefits and immigrants because you have little security and Tories lied to you that you are sharing such a small pie with the undeservng. The truth is they’ve been hiding gobs of pies in the back room, and eating them with all their global elite megarich friends and shady bankers. There’s plenty of pie. We’re going to put Brittain to workgive raises and secure pensions, and take care of everybody! Heathcare, housing, pensions, the trains, the whole lot.
J R in WV
@terry chay:
Quite right!! But Tony is really funny, also, too! So length becomes important if it all makes you laugh, more is better while you’re laughing!
;-)
rp
Corbyn as neoliberal actually makes a lot of sense. Just as in the US a real republican will almost always beat a republican-lite, in the UK it seems that real brexit will beat brexit-lite.
schrodingers_cat
I knew Labor was doomed when I saw Indian version of BS bros writing posts and tweets hailing Corbyn. In India these geniuses who are vocal on Twitter backed a party which failed to win a single seat in the assembly elections held in October in Maharashtra.
This what I wrote in the morning thread
Corbyn was electoral poison. This will happen to the Ds if BS is nominated.
Jay