The Dream is Over: How Boris Johnson Won the UK Election

Photograph Source: Matt Brown – CC BY 2.0

After the shock and the grief comes reflection. After reflection comes renewed determination. But under Britain’s sham of a democracy, the public won’t get the chance to remove the vile creature put into No. 10 by 14 million or so voters for at least five years; and even then, a government has the legal right to seek a general election prior to the five-year period if it is doing well in the public opinion polls, effectively giving itself long-term reign. The defeated Labour party’s forthcoming decision will be fateful. With Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership position now untenable, will the party members elect another Blairite (i.e., someone to the right of the party and the voting public) amid the media clamor of “we told you so,” in reference to Corbyn’s dangerous “radicalism” (read: centrism). Or will they elect a Corbynista to lead the party into the next general election and stick to the principles of democratic-socialism, at least to a degree?

Labour’s electoral performance was disastrous. It dropped around 7 percent in the vote share compared to the previous 2017 election, putting Labour back to the hopeless 2015 era when the party was led by the Blairite, Ed Miliband. But due to Britain’s sham democratic institutions, this year’s 7 percent drop in vote-share gives Labour the smallest number of relative Parliamentary seats since 1935.

So, what happened? There 66 million people living in Britain, of which 47.5 million are eligible to vote. Turnout in this election was 67.3 percent, meaning that around 32 million Brits, or under of half the entire population, voted. Of those 32 million voters, 43.6 percent or nearly 14 million voted for Boris Johnson. A mere 33.2 percent or just over 10 million people, voted for Corbyn’s Labour party. Why did voters decisively reject a progressive government dedicated to giving them power and justice and, instead, hand a blank check to an administration that will embed fiscal austerity, continue the privatization of the National Health Service, impose draconian anti-union laws, give the executive power over the judiciary, and sell the last vestiges of the UK out to giant American corporations in a “free trade” deal?

VOTE-SPLITTING

Judging by a surge in voter-registration, more young people voted this year than in 2017, but fewer seem to have voted Labour, at least according to preliminary polls. The London School of Economics notes that “youth support for progressive parties increased overall.” Turnout among all ages was lower than in 2017; lower turnout hits Labour harder than Tories. The Brexit Party vote-splitting did not ultimately help Labour, as it had in previous by-elections (i.e., Peterborough and Brecon). The con-man Nigel Farage, having radicalized the Tory party into a hard-Brexit cult, put a lot of his own Brexit Party voters off by standing candidates down in Tory-majority constituencies, even pulling out of rallies. Brexit Party voters switched to Tory. Labour voters who couldn’t bear voting Tory voted for the Brexit Party, though in lower numbers than Tory voters. Still, job done, Nigel.

The so-called tactical voting, in which about 26 percent of voters engaged, did a lot of damage to Labour. Pro-Liberal Democrat “tactical voting” websites, including Best for Britain (to which this author wrote to complain), advised the public to vote LibDem in marginal Labour seats. In Kensington, for instance, Labour lost by 100 or so votes because the LibDem candidate Sam Gyimah stood in that seat. In 2017, the LibDems got about 7.4 percent of the vote-share nationwide. In 2019, they got 11.5. Their increased vote-share took votes from Labour. Yet, a European-style proportional representational voting system would have put a rainbow coalition led by Labour into power, giving the Tories just 288 seats.

BREXIT AND THE ZIONIST BULLIES

Labour’s worst strategic error was its position of Brexit neutrality: to hold a second, confirmatory referendum on Britain’s initial decision to leave the EU and campaign neither for Leave nor Remain. Corbyn simply would not learn from the lessons of the local council and European elections, at which Labour got annihilated due to its Brexit fence-sitting. Had Corbyn adopted a full Remain stance and proposed a second referendum (e.g., Theresa May’s old Withdrawal Agreement vs Remain), and backed Remain, many voters would have been more inclined to vote Labour than LibDem. Corbyn wanted to bring people together, but no one can bring together people who want to stay entrenched. There are times to take a stand and Corbyn failed, due in part to his own Euroscepticism and always wanting to see the best in people; that somehow both Leavers and Remainers want to compromise. The party could have replaced Corbyn prior to the election, but then the UK risked losing the Corbyn social agenda, which has been lost now, anyway.

Labour’s pathetic acquiescence to Zionist bullies inside (e.g., Tom Watson, John Mann) and outside the party (e.g., the Board of Deputies of British Jews) allowed “anti-Semitism” (of which few claims were genuine, as Justin Schlosberg and others have documented) to act as a blanket to hide Labour’s actual policies. Labour internalized the problem and apologized for things its staff never did. This opened the floodgates to more Zionist abuse and the lowering of party morale, as was the Zionists’ intentions. For example, Jacob Baime, the Executive Director of the anti-boycott organization, the Israel on Campus Coalition, explained how “anti-Semitism” accusations work: “It’s psychological warfare. It drives them crazy. They either shut down, or they spend time investigating [the accusations against them] instead of attacking Israel.”

This had already been exposed by Al Jazeera. It is stupefying to think that Labour propagandists au fait with how Zionist hasbara operatives work failed to grasp what was happening.

Then there’s the media. The attacks in 2017 were bad enough, but not as severe as this year’s relentless abuse. This is probably due to the assumption in 2017 that Corbyn wouldn’t win. After Labour’s vote share increased under Corbyn from 30.4 to 40 percent (just 2.6 behind the Tories), the media panicked to the point where, this year, even the state broadcaster, the BBC, blatantly broke Electoral Commission rules, allowing its political editor Laura Kuenssberg to cite the results of postal ballots live on-air before the results had been officially called. The BBC did everything to protect Boris Johnson, such as “accidentally” editing out anti-Johnson studio audience laughter upon rebroadcast.

CONCLUSION

But despite all this, the ultimate failure lies with the British public. They had the chance of voting for a kind, decent man whose social policies included a new green industrial revolution, free education for all at any age, the public ownership of resources, and free dental check-ups. Instead, they chose to swallow the lies about Corbyn, presumably because those lies touch something wicked in their hearts. They chose to vote for a proven liar and opportunist who has spent his entire political career kicking working-class voters in the face.

They chose to take away the hopes of the poorest children who, this Christmas, won’t have nice toys, but instead will rely on the kindness of strangers to nourish them at foodbanks, which is now a business model. Instead, 14 million voters gave that hope to a man who would rather steal a journalist’s phone than take responsibility for a child lying on a hospital floor due to bed shortages; a man who would rather hide in a walk-in freezer on live television than face scrutiny. They chose to elect a government dedicated to kicking them in the face just to get their Brexit, which, as they will soon discover, is and always was an ultra-neoliberal agenda designed to make Britain the 51st state of the USA.

Their self-inflicted wounds will now scar the rest of us. Our only hope is that the impact of Johnson’s policies will make Labour more appealing in half a decade’s time, assuming the Blairite faction doesn’t win the impending leadership contest.

 

T. J. Coles is director of the Plymouth Institute for Peace Research and the author of several books, including Voices for Peace (with Noam Chomsky and others) and  Fire and Fury: How the US Isolates North Korea, Encircles China and Risks Nuclear War in Asia (both Clairview Books).