The Tories use Brexit to redraw the electoral map

The UK general election was an extraordinary event. It was, for the first and almost certainly the last time at a British election, chiefly about Europe. This was the Brexit election: it reiterated, for the benefit of tin-eared politicians, the result of the 2016 referendum on leaving the EU. In tandem with this theme, a Labour Party that had been taken over by an aggressively Marxist faction, tried to gain power by fudging the issue of Brexit and attempting to bribe the electorate with promises of public spending on a totally impracticable scale.

The distinctive feature of any general election in Britain is the first-past-the-post electoral system. In each constituency the voter simply puts a cross opposite the name of the preferred candidate and whoever receives the largest number of votes is elected as Member of Parliament. It is the simplest voting method ever devised and strikingly different from the various systems of proportional representation. It favours the two largest and long-established parties and it is very difficult for smaller political groupings to break through and become serious contenders.

The Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, fought the election on one succinct slogan: “Get Brexit done!” It tapped into the deep resentment of millions of voters who had watched, appalled, for three and a half years while a parliament dominated by pro-Remain MPs stubbornly blocked every effort to implement the decision of the 2016 referendum and take Britain out of the EU. Even many people who had voted Remain were repelled by the spectacle of a democratic vote being nullified.

This alienation was aggravated when the newly elected leader of the Europhile Liberal Democrat Party, Jo Swinson, decided to fight the election on a platform of “Stop Brexit!” She proposed to do so not by holding a second referendum – which would have been controversial enough – but by simply revoking Article 50, withdrawing Britain’s application to leave the EU. That would have meant arbitrarily annulling the decision of 17.4 million voters, a clear repudiation of democracy. That feeling of democracy being at risk was reinforced by the behaviour of the leader of the opposition, Jeremy Corbyn, his shadow chancellor John McDonnell and the hard-left faction Momentum that exercised an iron control over the Labour Party.

The Labour manifesto committed the party to an unbelievable deluge of public spending. It pledged to create a £150bn “social transformation fund” to support the biggest programme of state-owned house-building since the Second World War and the upgrading of schools and hospitals. Another “green transformation fund” was to create a green economy at a cost of £250bn. Proposed renationalisation of all the main public utilities was costed by the Confederation of British Industry at a preliminary output of £196bn. And so on… This was by far the most profligate programme ever put to the British electorate. Its very extravagance was its undoing: voters refused to believe it was a credible proposition.

The Conservatives pledged to abandon austerity and spend more on public services such as recruiting more police and nurses. But the cost was only a small fraction of the gargantuan Labour programme. The two main parties also pursued contrasting Brexit policies. Boris Johnson made a straightforward appeal to voters: give me a working majority and I will deliver Brexit with no more delays and extensions. Labour, in contrast, was divided on the issue. Jeremy Corbyn was a lifelong Eurosceptic, but his party hated Brexit, so he had to trim his sails. Aware that Labour constituencies in the north of England had voted heavily to Leave, he tried to tread a path mid-way between the Remainer left in London and the blue-collar pro-Brexit Labour vote in the north.

The resulting fudge alienated both sides and deprived Labour of support all across the country. The election was rancorous and yet, in a way, strangely subdued. Boris Johnson has always been known as a showman, unpredictable, but very characterful. With the media keeping all the party leaders under a microscope, however, Johnson confined himself to interviews with unchallenging interlocutors and doing tours of businesses and factories. With this strategy the Conservatives were arguably depriving themselves of the talents of a colourful public performer; but they calculated that was preferable to the risk of the Prime Minister committing some gaffe that would give the media a field day and derail their campaign.

By the time of the election the Remain wing of the Conservative Party had imploded: some MPs had been expelled from the party; some defected to other political parties, others stood as independents, many retired from politics. They had collaborated with the opposition parties in the various parliamentary ploys to subvert Brexit and at the general election they fared badly at the hands of a vengeful electorate.

Throughout the campaign the various opinion polls predicted a safe majority for the Conservatives. In the event, their forecasts were fairly accurate, though slightly underestimating the strength of the Conservative support. The problem was that those polls recorded projected vote share, but each constituency had its own distinctive profile and some of them were tight marginals, so that a few votes redirected one way or the other could have a disproportionate effect on the national picture. Pro-Remain London was seen as Labour’s greatest strength, provided it could hold onto its seats in the north – the so-called “Red Wall” of safe constituencies – that had been held for decades.

But those seats had largely voted Leave at the referendum and many abandoned Labour at the election, regarding it as now a Remain party that had disregarded the wishes of its working-class voters. The result was a catastrophe for Labour. There was a similar disaster, on a smaller scale, in Wales, also a Labour stronghold. In Scotland – the part of the UK that supplied the majorities for three Labour governments in the 20th century – the Scottish nationalists made large gains, reducing Labour to just one seat in Scotland.

The outcome was 365 seats for the Conservatives, 203 for Labour and just 11 for the Liberal Democrats. The Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson, who had aspired to “cancel Brexit”, lost her seat. While many layers of interpretation can be put on those results, one thing is certain: Britain is about to leave the EU – the myth of “Leaver remorse” put about by Remainers after the referendum is totally discredited. The strengthening of the nationalists in Scotland, who demand a second referendum on Scottish independence, guarantees friction between Westminster and Scotland over the next few years.

How will Boris Johnson, now armed with a large overall majority in a Remainer-free party, use his victory? First, he will rush through Parliament all necessary legislation for Britain’s departure from the European Union on 31 January: this is one Brexit deadline that will not be extended. Faced with what is now the inevitability of Brexit, some EU leaders are rejoicing in the UK premier’s large majority, in the belief that it frees him from the pressure of hardline Tory Brexiteers, encouraging him to craft a softer Brexit.

Since nobody knows Johnson’s inner political thoughts, that might be the case. But, on the other hand, why would he want a softer Brexit? It would compromise the trade deals he wishes to negotiate outside the EU. It would hobble Britain with tendrils of EU regulations and laws, not to mention financial contributions, that would quickly become a focus of domestic resentment. Johnson has seen the fate of British politicians who betray the promise of Brexit: why would he needlessly incur controversy and odium? It is equally likely that he will drive a harder bargain, as the first British prime minister Brussels has dealt with who had no parliamentary drag-chains restraining him. He could threaten an exit on WTO terms in December 2020 if he does not get a reasonable agreement. The EU may have painted itself into a very uncomfortable corner.

Domestically, Boris Johnson is employing the phrase “One Nation Conservative Party” as if it were one word. Austerity is history. While tough on crime and immigration (not his previous posture), he is willing to loosen the purse strings of public spending. Post-Brexit Conservatism will look very different to the Tory party consensus during the Cameron years.