British Conservatives win, making election Brexit referendum

This 19 June 2019 video from the British parliament says about itself:

Boris Johnson has been labelled ‘racist’ in the House of Commons by the Scottish National party’s Westminster leader, who said the Conservative leadership frontrunner was ‘unfit’ to be prime minister. Ian Blackford asked [then still Conservative Prime Minister] Theresa May if she agreed with Johnson that the Scottish people were a verminous race who should be ‘exterminated’, referring to a poem published in the Spectator when Johnson was the magazine’s editor.

From daily The Morning Star in Britain, 13 December 2019, when there were still only exit polls about the British election:

Brexit backlash hits Labour hard, exit poll suggests

EXIT polls have suggested a Tory landslide, with Leave-voting areas switching away from Labour according to predictions.

A visibly shocked [Labour party] John McDonnell told the BBC that “Brexit has dominated” the election.

Meanwhile, results have confirmed the predictions.

How did Boris Johnson’s Conservatives win more seats, giving them an absolute majority of MPs?

Not by increasing their number of votes. That was 43,6%, only 1,2% more than the 2017 election. And voter turnout was lower than in 2017. Maybe because of voters not turning up out of disgust about politicians talking for or against Brexit, Brexit, Brexit and very little else. Instead of about peace; of Conservative attacks on disabled and other poor people; about stopping racism and homophobia; etc.

The Conservatives won seats because Labour, after their biggest progress, with their new leader Jeremy Corbyn, in votes since 1945 in the 2017 election, lost. They fell back to 32.2%. Still more than their share at the 2015 election: 30,5%, under their then leader Ed Miliband, less leftist than Corbyn.

“We thought other issues could cut through and there would be a wider debate, from this evidence there clearly wasn’t,” the shadow chancellor [John McDonnell] said.

Sadly, true.

Labour’s bad result was

following its decision to campaign for a second referendum on EU membership. …

The Brexit issue is more complex than it seems. Both European Union Brexiteers and European Union Remainers really have two contradictory tendencies. Among Remainers, there are Thatcherite Conservatives, right-wing Labour Blairites and other champions of austerity, anti-refugee xenophobia and neocolonial wars all over the world. On the other hand, there is the ‘Remain and transform’ tendency. It says that, by staying inside the European Union, British socialists can transform the European Union pro-austerity capitalism to socialism (a task maybe only slightly less enormous than transforming NATO from a nuclear-armed warmongering organisation into a pacifist and socialist organisation. But that is another issue).

Then, Brexiteers. Boris Johnson won this election by saying little else than Get Brexit done. That seems to have appealed not only to hard-core Brexiteers, but also maybe to some people who are not strongly against European Union membership, but who are tired of politicians endlessly talking about up with Brexit, down with Brexit and very little else.

Johnson cleverly hid during the campaign WHAT kind of Brexit should be ‘done’ by the electorate. He and other right-wingers want a Brexit making Britain a hard-line Thatcherite country, slave to Donald Trump’s USA. When Trump visited Britain recently, Johnson, as a clever but hypocritical election campaign tactic, avoided Trump.

There are also many working-class people who helped Brexit to a majority in the 2016 referendum. Not out of love for Johnson’s Thatcherism. But because they don’t like austerity imposed by Brussels. Or don’t like European Union anti-refugee policies.

Unfortunately, the Remain and transform tendency was powerless against their ‘Remain and make the European Union even more capitalist and militarist’ ‘allies’. As unfortunately, in this election people who want to leave the European Union to make Britain more socialist, lost out to Boris Johnson’s Brexiteers who want to leave to make Britain more Trumpist capitalist.

Many working-class voters, it seems, especially in northern England, were so repelled by Blairite pro-European Union Labour MPs, millstones around Corbyn’s neck, that they stayed at home. Or, in some cases, even voted Conservative ‘to get Brexit done’. Unfortunately, not realizing that Johnson’s Brexit is not their Brexit.

Many are in the north-east of England, [traditionally Labour] constituencies which voted predominantly for Leave, such as historical mining constituency Blyth Valley.

The Labour party were not the only losers in this election. The most pro-European Union party, the Liberal Democrats, lost. Their leader Jo Swinson lost her seat.

All pro-European Union Blairite Labour and Thatcherite Conservative MPs who had left their parties lost their seats in this election.

Not all was gloom and doom for Remainers. In Scotland, there was a big victory for the Scottish National Party. An argument for Scotland becoming independent and thus remaining in the European Union.

In Northern Ireland, for the first time ever, pro-union with Britain parties like the DUP, lost their majority of MPs. Parties supporting a united Ireland, remaining in the European Union, won.

Mr McDonnell added that he had doubts “Brexit will be done as a result of this.”

“I think what will happen… people, I think, almost in despair, wanted to get Brexit over and done with because they’ve had enough of what’s been going on.”

Shadow justice secretary Richard Burgeon also suggested that Brexit dictated the vote.

He Tweeted: “If, as it seems, this was a Brexit election then the next one won’t be given Johnson’s Thatcherite agenda.”

But he vowed to continue the fight against the Tories.

Mr McDonnell warned that the result would put “the most right-wing extreme cabinet that we’ve seen in our history” in power who would have the mandate to introduce “reactionary policies.”

Meanwhile, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has announced that he won’t be the leader at the next election. One should hope that his successor won’t be some Blairite. That would make Labour even smaller than the Liberal Democrats. Corbyn’s successor should be at least as left-wing as he.