Britain saved by its working class, again – plus 6 other thoughts on Boris’s triumph

A few minutes before 10pm on election night, as a group of us waited in trepidation for the exit poll, we made our predictions. I stuck with a Tory majority of 25, a number that had been my guess from the start of the campaign. For a while, a few weeks ago, the Tories seemed to be doing better than that. The first of the giant Times/YouGov/MRP polls had them coasting. The fundamentals – that is Corbyn, the unified desire of leavers to actually leave the EU, Boris Johnson’s skills as a campaigner and a clear Tory message – all favoured the Conservatives. Yet in the final weeks the edgy Tories had made mistakes and there were rumours swirling of a surge of young voters. Some polls had narrowed and the chances of anything bigger than 25-30 looked slim.

As the minutes ticked down we sipped wine and speculated about the Twitter crowd saying Boris was in trouble in his seat in Uxbridge – remember that? We were in broad agreement that, what with us not wanting the country to be eviscerated by Magic Grandpa and the Marxist Maniacs, it was sensible to be nervous.

The last person to join our group was wise. He is a Reaction subscriber. He disagreed with our assessment of a small majority. What did he think instead? “Majority of 80,” he said. Why? “I have faith in the common sense of the people of this country. Majority of 80.”

How right he was. A few minutes later it became apparent that the Tories had won their biggest majority in 32 years, the scale of the victory surprising even Boris Johnson.

It was said many times during the election campaign that Johnson is an unpopular figure, and the numbers do show he is a “Marmite” (love him or hate him) brand of politician. A majority of voters do not care for him and even some of his supporters harbour major doubts. Nonetheless, he has an extraordinary connection with those Britons who do like him. Luckily for his party  many of those voters who appreciate his style are working class Britons – sick of being lectured by the pious and politically correct – situated in the very seats the Tories needed to win last week.

The Ashcroft polling conducted on polling day found by social classification that the Tories won 44% to 31% among AB voters; and 45% to 33% among C1 voters. Among C2 voters the Tories won – get this – 50% to 30%. They even won among DE voters 43% to 37%.

All the focus group evidence suggests that in Johnson his supporters see an insurgent, a proper patriot and a character who infuriates much of the professional middle class, my class with its notions of superiority and cultural hegemony. The writer Tony Parsons captured that tension well in “The Polenta Jungle”, an essay published in Arena in 1993 and reprinted in his collection “Dispatches from the front line of popular culture.”

“Nobody,” wrote Parsons, “loves the middle class.”

The notion of a strange alliance, a deep bond, between parts of the working class and the upper class is not new – it is one of the most reliable themes of English history since at least the Middle Ages.

It is there in Shakespeare, in Henry V, in the strength of the relationship between the yeomanry and the monarch. It was there in the crisis of May 1940. The trade unions and the Labour movement chose the flawed Churchill as a patriot to be Prime Minister when parts of the Tory party were appalled by the idea and wanted to surrender.

Note this relationship doesn’t apply in modern Scotland. Politics is different there. Not only is Calvinistic virtue-signalling and a moral superiority complex the dominant ethic in the ruling class at Holyrood. The meaning of patriotism is bitterly contested and there is also a widespread suspicion, often denied, unconvincingly, of the English. To such Scots Johnson is a cartoonish archetype of the worst kind of  Englishman.

In England, and in Wales, it is working class voters who who have saved Britain, once again. Several times a century the place needs to be rescued after an orgy of middle class self-indulgence of the kind served up by the People’s Vote campaign since the 2016 referendum.

Not only did those voters in Labour’s famed “red wall” of traditional seats reject a far left potential Prime Minister who doesn’t like his country, they voted in Johnson’s words to get Brexit done and to move the country on. With clarity, they saw through those who have spent three years either not accepting the result of 2016 or endeavouring to subvert it.

This was such an interesting result, creating so much to write about next year. Reaction will be there, with our brilliant writers analysing, debating and explaining what it all means.

This newsletter will return early in the New Year , although there will be plenty more from me and the rest of the team on the site this week as MPs return to Westminster.

Until then, here are six more (quick) rough thoughts from me on an election outcome that had it all.

1) Pure vindication for Boris.

A year or so ago I ran into Boris in Portcullis House at Westminster. A bunch of MPs and journalists were standing at the top of the escalator gossiping – probably about Theresa May, Brexit gridlock, meaningful votes and all that jazz. Boris stopped to say hello, looking like a lost soul. There was embarrassment in the air. The consensus then was that Johnson’s moment had been and gone. May’s deal would probably pass early in 2019 and then, after a suitable interval, the Tories would be looking to skip a generation at some point. No use being a failed former Foreign Secretary. Poor old Boris, they said.

But Johnson and a small group of his supporters pressed on. Remember in the leadership race when it was predicted Tory MPs were going to stop him dead in the voting rounds among the parliamentary party? Turned out to be nonsense.

With the leadership won, Boris set out to do always the opposite of what Theresa May would have done. This turned out to be a good rule. He employed charm with European leaders. At times there was recklessness, and constitutional chicanery. The end result is a majority government, a degree of closure, and the chance for the country, excitingly, to move on.

What comes next will not be easy, of course. It rarely is. But even Johnson’s critics will surely see that he has ascended to the British political pantheon and won one of the greatest of  victories in the modern era.

2) Bye bye People’s Vote. Hello better Britain?

Imagine, for a moment, if all that campaigning energy and indignation had been put to better use, perhaps to campaigning for the softest form of Brexit and a close relationship with the EU, rather than squandered on the madness of trying to set aside a democratic vote before it had been implemented.

Instead, millions of pounds were wasted on the People’s Vote effort. Now, it is gone and Britain is leaving the EU.

Mercifully, the man with the megaphone shouting “Stop Brexit” on College Green at Westminster will have to seek gainful employment.

The hope must be that now the decision is made, and we are leaving, all those who wanted to stay in the EU can find new outlets for their patriotism. There is so much to do, even putting to one side the question of future trading relationships with the EU and elsewhere, on regenerating left-behind parts of England and Wales, on improving our economy, on reforming our criminal justice system, on ending rough sleeping and homelessness, on making the country a technological powerhouse, and on education and social mobility.

3) “Bad day at Black Rock” for the BBC and the broadcasters

It became obvious about half way through the campaign that some of the broadcasters thought they were the election. They got carried away with their role and too many reporters went beyond explaining what went on into aggressively pontificating. Want to pontificate? Get a newspaper column or go to the pub. The Tories will now be pretty tough with the BBC on the licence fee and much else. There are obvious dangers there and journalists will need to continue to be robust while working out what mistakes were made this time.

At the top of the Beeb, there needs to be an urgent rethink. Some of the output – have you heard BBC Radio 4″s Women’s Hour lately? – is so “woke” as to be beyond parody. After this result, the country is clearly not on the march to compulsory non-binary gender “self-ID” after all. Time to try more diversity of thought.

4) Non-Tory? Take back control of the Labour party.

Britain will not have a Tory government for ever, although considering Labour needs to win 119 seats to get a majority of just one it seems unlikely the party will be back in power any time soon.

At some point, the pendulum swings back. There was chatter in the late 1990s from more hubristic New Labour types who wondered if the Tories would ever form a majority administration again. In contrast, Brian Wilson, then a Labour MP and minister, used to tell me it was nonsense. In essence, he said: “This is Britain. The Tories will be back eventually.”

This is Britain, and it will have a non-Tory government at some point. When it does it is vital that it is run by patriots who are sound on defence and reluctant to destroy entirely the market system which underpins prosperity. That means moderates and sensible people who love their country taking back Labour and defeating and expelling the Marxist cult, or sect, which has invaded it. Are you a non-Tory moderate? Do not delay; join Labour today.

5) The Union is in serious peril but the Nats are overplaying their hand, again.

The SNP had a terrific election in the end. For all that Nicola Sturgeon’s campaign was incoherent – confused on the question of whether a Brexit referendum or an independence referendum would come first and mattered more – she motivated their vote superbly, making the party the clear choice of enough Scots who want to reject Johnson and the Westminster system.

But she won 48 seats on 45% of the vote, that’s 45% – the same as the losing score in the referendum of 2014. Parliamentary votes are different and the Unionist vote is split across multiple parties.

The result the Nationalist leadership really wanted was a hung parliament and a coalition deal of some sort with Labour, ensuring an independence referendum next year with the added lure that Scots could then vote to get away from Corbynism. That did not happen.

Now, Johnson will reject calls for an immediate referendum north of the border. Sadly, it will be difficult for him to say “no” if the Nationalists win an outright majority in the next Scottish Parliament election in 2021.

The Tories, and Unionists more broadly, have a lot of work to do (to put it mildly) in remaking the case for the United Kingdom. They may consider a programme of further constitutional reform.

One obvious missing ingredient is a viable Scottish Labour party that can take seats back from the SNP at Holyrood and Westminster, and even do deals with other parties at Holyrood to shut out the Nats. All the more reason for the Labour Party to be reclaimed for moderates and rebuilt. If Labour is saved in Britain, in Scotland it can help save the Union too.

6) Feeling optimistic about the future of the country

This new government should be able to get a lot done on infrastructure, housing, education, regeneration and building a coherent foreign policy (we could do with the last of those, urgently).

Will they deliver? British politics has been operating at such a tiring level of tension, instability and chicanery these last couple of years that it is difficult to recognise that faint feeling that I’m getting post-election as we head for Christmas with the threat of Corbynism lifted. I’m not doubting that this new government with a large majority will need watching like a hawk, and that much can and will go wrong. But that faint feeling is hope. Hope, for the first time in ages, about the country’s future.