Frederick Krantz
Israzine.org, Dec. 31, 2019
Boris Johnson’s smashing defeat of Labour in the recent British Parliamentary election has not only resolved the three-year impasse over Brexit and installed
the Conservatives at the helm for at least another five years. It also augurs well for
a Donald Trump victory in 2020, should the Democrats choose an extreme-leftist Labour-like candidates as their standard-bearer.
Johnson won 365 seats to Labour’s 203, in the latter’s worst defeat since 1935 and the Conservatives best performance since the advent of Margaret Thatcher in 1979. Labour dissidents, calling for Jeremy Corbyn’s immediate resignation as Party leader, blamed him and his extreme leftist policies and refusal to distance himself from accusations of anti-Semitism, for the defeat.
Calling for the implementation of socialism, including the nationalization of banks and major corporations, and criticizing “billionaires, and the millionaires who work” for them, Corbyn also waffled confusedly on the Brexit issue. In what former Labour PM Tony Blair called “comic indecision”, he refused to commit himself one way or the other, calling instead for a second referendum if elected, without saying which way he’d vote.
Johnson, adopting the motto “Let’s Get Brexit Done”, and pledging to address social issues and improve the National Health Service by better funding, but without invoking the fantastic sums, and taxes, implied by Labour’s programs, stole Labour’s traditional working-class vote. Conservative candidates were elected in town
after town behind the usually pro-Labour “Red Wall” stretching from coast to coast across the north-east, with 27 traditionally “red” constituencies going Conservative.
Talking already of a major free-trade deal with the United States, Johnson is moving ahead quickly on leaving the EU, with the new Parliament already having voted to do so by January 31st. While the anti-Brexit Liberal Democratic Party vote shrank (even its leader lost her seat), somewhat muddying the Conservatives’ victory was the overwhelming vote for the pro-independence Scottish National Party, and in Northern Ireland, increased seats for nationalist parties fearing Brexit’s break with the EU will mean restoration of the politically-fraught border with the Irish Republic.
In both cases, holding Great Britain together against Scottish and Irish nationalist sentiment means Johnson will have his work cut out for him.
In terms of the now-looming American 2020 election, most commentators agree that basic structural parallels reinforce Donald Trump’s Republican candidacy for reelection, Johnson’s Conservatives appealed to English working people who felt increasingly marginalized by Labour’s radical socialist program and strategy of appealing to the young, urban voters, ecologists and immigrants. His strident internationalism flew in the face of nationalist-populist support for Brexit, and his softness on antisemitism (and on Sinn Fein), lost him votes at large and within the Labour Party itself.
The decisive defeat of Jeremy Corbyn and Labour’s radical socialist program in the British vote strengthens Democratic moderates’ growing conviction that “progressive socialist” policies are politically suicidal. This would seem to lie behind waning support for Elizabeth Warren (if not, yet, for Bernie Sanders) and for Joe Biden’s continuing strength in the polls. It may also help explain polls indicating increasing support for Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar, as well as millionaire Michael Bloomberg’s recent entry into the race.
