Dismayed in Britain
Most Britons who brave the winter weather to vote in the general election this week will be hoping for an overdue return to stability. By Nick Cater.
It is a measure of the erosion of faith in opinion polling that Boris Johnson’s comfortable lead has increased Conservative forebodings about the outcome of Thursday’s UK election. A less primitive form of the Westminster democratic model, like ours, would ensure that an unreformed Trot with a soft spot for the IRA would be unelectable.
In a first-past-the-post system, however, where tactical and protesting voting serves as crude substitutes for the preferential ballot, predicting the result is harder than cracking the Enigma code. Will enough Conservative Remainers cross to the Liberal Democrats in Southampton Itchen to erode their 31-vote majority and hand the seat to Labour? Will Labour Brexit voters in Hartlepool see defection to the Brexit Party as an easier step than voting Tory and thus ensure Labour holds the seat? Where is Alan Turing when you need him?
Since Britons are not obliged to vote, an appeal to activist minority groups, like Remainers, can change the result, particularly on a damp winter day in Grimsby when turnout is low. Which makes a Labour-led minority government a distinct possibility.
The one thing we can confidently rule out is a surprise result since nothing comes as a surprise in British politics any more. It was once the duty of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition to call for the prime minister’s resignation five times a day at a bare minimum.
Yet when Johnson offered to quit, all but declaring he had no confidence in his own government, Jeremy Corbyn tried every trick in the book to stop him.
The ludicrous election-eve editorial in The Economist would not have surprised those who have watched the shabby decline of this once respectable journal.
In 2013 The Economist shared the distinction with The Age and The Guardian of being the only publications with a circulation of more than two dozen to back Kevin Rudd.
On that occasion they at least favoured a party that had won an election sometime in the last century. The Economist is supporting the Liberal Democrats, a party that has failed to win government since 1918 and is not about to end its losing streak this time.
A Liberal Democrat vote, The Economist says, “would be the best way to restrain whoever ends up in Downing Street”. Indeed it would. Anything other than an outright Johnson victory will impose an indefinite restraint on parliament’s ability to obey the will of the British electorate, condemn business to an even longer period of uncertainty, stifle investment and cost other people their jobs.
Britain finds itself in a looking-glass world that even Lewis Carroll would have found absurd, where Corbyn plays an even Madder Hatter and the Lib Dems’ Jo Swinson appears the Queen of Hearts running as fast as she can to stay in the same place.
Behind this extraordinary tableau is the changed landscape of Western politics to which established parties around the world are struggling to adapt.
The urgent business of the day is Brexit, an issue that divides both major parties. Johnson’s advantage over Corbyn is that he at least seems to understand what’s happening around him. He has recognised Brexit is merely the loudest rallying cry in Britain for those who feel excluded from the culture of inclusiveness that has been forced on them and object to the presumptions of a wannabe ruling class.
Johnson recognised that the Conservative Party can’t back two horses in this battle and has chosen to ride the one with the best pedigree and the best chance of winning.
He has been able to do so with conviction, since he was a public critic of the EU as Brussels correspondent of London’s Daily Telegraph long before he entered politics.
Corbyn’s position on Brexit remains ambiguous, fuelling doubts about for what he actually stands. Quibbling over terms of Brexit is a waste of time. There are no shades of grey in the minds of most voters.
Corbyn will lose the support of hardline Remainers to the Lib Dems at one end and Brexit voters to Johnson at the other. He will lose votes in the middle with his plans to raise taxes, rob private schools of their charitable status, empower trade unions and reverse many more of Margaret Thatcher’s reforms.
Corbyn may gain ground in the southeast and in university towns as he did in 2017. His activist agenda, particularly on climate change, appeals to the young, who have been enrolling to vote in large numbers. Voters under 35, with no memory of the Cold War, are inclined to take a benign view of socialism. Johnson’s attempt to win seats from Labour in the Midlands and the North will be hindered by the presence of Brexit candidates who have little chance of winning but will nonetheless take the edge off the Conservative vote.
The intricacies of the English class system may themselves play a role in the Conservative vote. Despite his upper-class accent and manner, Johnson is popular among the blue-collar working class. The complaints that he is out of touch are stronger in the Home Counties.
The British media, by and large, is an unhelpful guide to the mood of the electorate, since few journalists travel beyond the London Green Belt.
Johnson has treated them with caution, using social media and other methods to bypass the traditional media’s jaundiced gatekeepers.
Like Thatcher, he has pitched his messages to the provinces, to the people we might call the quiet Britons, those who have thrived running small businesses since the Thatcher reforms, and who want more from Westminster than wrangling over Brexit.
For many, the most persuasive reasons for voting for Johnson, whatever his faults, is that a Conservative majority government offers the only realistic option for a return to stability.
The extraordinary scenes of a dysfunctional parliament made for strangely compelling viewing, so much so that they remain popular YouTube clips.
Yet few Britons, outside the self-absorbed political class and their media mates, are hungry for a second series.