Labour’s snap election loss will have profound implications for the United Kingdom’s future

If you fol­low inter­na­tion­al pol­i­tics, you’ve prob­a­bly noticed that the Con­ser­v­a­tive Par­ty, head­ed by Boris John­son, won a big major­i­ty in the Unit­ed King­dom’s most recent par­lia­men­tary elec­tion on Decem­ber 12th.

What might this mean for Britain?

I think the first and fore­most ques­tion mark now con­cerns the future of the Labour Par­ty in the Unit­ed King­dom and Eng­land in particular.

Peo­ple are going to go with a sim­ple idea over a com­pli­cat­ed dis­cus­sion more often than not, and Labour was too cute by half regard­ing Brexit.

They should have sim­ply said that they would fight for British jobs for British peo­ple, then gone into their details only if asked.

Say­ing that they would stop employ­ers from allow­ing only non-British Euro­pean Union cit­i­zens to apply for cer­tain jobs in Britain, which was being allowed most espe­cial­ly in the very con­stituen­cies of north­ern Eng­land that have been hurt the most by Tory aus­ter­i­ty since 2008, and many of which vot­ed Con­ser­v­a­tive in 2019, would have helped sig­nif­i­cant­ly. Instead, it was all a mud­dle ver­sus the sim­ple but deceit­ful “Get Brex­it Done” by the Con­ser­v­a­tives, which implied relief regard­ing an issue exhaust­ing to the British public.

It’s quite easy to blame Jere­my Cor­byn for their results – he had hor­ri­ble approval num­bers before and through­out the campaign.

His views on Israel and Hamas ampli­fied the exis­tence of his hand­ful of anti-Semi­t­ic can­di­dates and MPs and mut­ed the exis­tence of Con­ser­v­a­tive anti-Semi­t­ic and Islam­o­pho­bic coun­ter­parts, which were slight­ly more numerous.

No one quite trust­ed him on North­ern Ire­land or NATO giv­en com­ments he had made regard­ing each top­ic in pre­vi­ous years. Many vot­ers despised and still don’t trust Boris John­son, but vot­ed for the Con­ser­v­a­tives any­way because they were nev­er giv­en con­vinc­ing rea­sons to turn to Cor­byn as a viable alternative.

It also didn’t help that Labour ran their snap elec­tion cam­paign with incred­i­bly poor fol­low-through – they had plen­ty of time to pre­pare for a Decem­ber elec­tion, fund­ing was avail­able and infra­struc­ture in place, and time and again Labour can­di­dates com­plained about a lack of orga­ni­za­tion or sup­port from above once the cam­paign start­ed. By all accounts this was Corbyn’s cam­paign to do with as he and his core staff saw fit. And they blew it terribly.

And Momen­tum, to some extent Britain’s ver­sion of the Indi­vis­i­ble move­ment, which has sup­port­ed Cor­byn to the hilt, has to take some of the blame for this – hun­dreds of thou­sands of paid Labour Par­ty mem­bers through Momen­tum, and, repeat­ed­ly, not enough vol­un­teers in con­stituen­cies the par­ty lead­er­ship knew were going to require extra­or­di­nary effort?

Present­ly, the two most like­ly replace­ments for Cor­byn as Labour leader are Sir Keir Stam­mer, who was shad­ow Brex­it sec­re­tary under Cor­byn, and Rebec­ca Long-Bai­­ley, who has close ties to Cor­byn and his lead­er­ship, who was shad­ow Busi­ness sec­re­tary, and, as some­one from Man­ches­ter instead of Lon­don, might be seen as some­one who can reach out more effec­tive­ly to the com­mu­ni­ties in north­ern Eng­land lost to the Conservatives.

The Lib­er­al Democ­rats are pret­ty much done. They sor­­ta-kin­­da want­ed to be the new voice of the One Nation Con­ser­v­a­tives (they tend to be a bit to the left for Con­ser­v­a­tives, or “wet,” and very Europhile), they were adamant­ly anti-Brex­it, and they were slaugh­tered. Again. If Labour replaces Cor­byn or top lead­er­ship with some­one who can appeal vocal­ly and con­sis­tent­ly to what these vot­ers seem to desire most – retain­ing Britain’s eco­nom­ic focus on Europe and their strong desire for civ­il and human rights — I would try to bring them home to Labour.

John­son is also a big ques­tion mark, because he is, after all, Boris Johnson.

Even with a sol­id major­i­ty, his best bet is to take the Brex­it he has been able to get through Par­lia­ment, fin­ish it as is, and call it done.

That alone would have a lot of peo­ple ready to vote for him in the next elec­tion, sim­ply because the issue of Brex­it would be over. (For about a year at most, real­is­ti­cal­ly, once the after­ef­fects take hold, but hey, whatever….)

But I sus­pect he will be told that he needs to take his new major­i­ty and push for a hard­er Brex­it, and pos­si­bly as close to a no-deal Brex­it as possible.

That in turn comes down to just how much he believes he con­trols his own fate. He has ensured along with the past Con­ser­v­a­tive Prime Min­is­ter, David Cameron, that the Con­ser­v­a­tive Par­ty become, in British terms, an eco­nom­i­cal­ly rad­i­cal and increas­ing­ly author­i­tar­i­an par­ty of the right.

This vic­to­ry might make him want more.

And North­ern Ire­land is still an issue.

No mat­ter what Boris says, the present Brex­it plan harms most of North­ern Ireland’s busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty unless they focus ever so more intent­ly upon busi­ness with both Ire­land and the Euro­pean Union.

If they can prof­it more with min­i­mal fric­tion from the EU and prof­it less with a lot more fric­tion from the Unit­ed King­dom, no amount of noise-mak­ing from Boris or the strongest pro-UK par­ty in North­ern Ire­land, the DUP (which lost Par­lia­men­tary seats this cycle) will deflect the inevitable result.

Their sit­u­a­tion is bound to get worse as specifics of the Renew­able Heat Incen­tive scan­dal become pub­lic. And that in turn means a unit­ed Ire­land, as both a polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic enti­ty, with­in my lifetime.

And that like­li­hood will make Boris and oth­ers con­sid­er chang­ing the terms of Brex­it with respect to North­ern Ire­land in 2020.

How­ev­er, the Euro­pean Union will not bend for him any fur­ther, and if he’s seen as pro­vid­ing a way to trade goods through North­ern Ire­land as a lat­ter-day smug­glers’ den, the EU will sim­ply abro­gate the agree­ment, which will accel­er­ate both the return of The Trou­bles and the like­li­hood of Irish unification.

Yes, the UVF, the Protes­tant ver­sion of the Irish Repub­li­can Army, and oth­ers might vio­lent­ly oppose Irish uni­fi­ca­tion – and they will like­ly lose.

It may be after too long a while and too many more unnec­es­sary deaths, but it may also be qui­et­ly and soon­er than we think – for the moment, their lead­er­ship has made it clear that their fol­low­ers are to stay stood down.

It would be iron­ic if they were to stay stood down because what was once the major indus­tri­al firm Short Broth­ers, where Irish Catholics began their civ­il rights cam­paign in the 1960s with demands for equal access to their jobs, now owned by Spir­it Aero­space, keeps Protes­tants employed by cater­ing more so to inter­na­tion­al sales than by remain­ing in Britain.

The Unit­ed King­dom has ori­ent­ed itself around devel­op­ing stronger ties with the Euro­pean Union for over forty years. Many right wing vot­ers say there are “too many Poles” – but any trade pol­i­cy with, say, India would also require an equal­ly friend­ly immi­gra­tion pol­i­cy, all the more like­ly with the pas­sage of their Cit­i­zen­ship Amend­ment Act, which is very anti-Mus­lim and like­ly to lead to some com­bi­na­tion of expul­sions and immi­gra­tion from India and neigh­bor­ing Bangladesh, and this incom­ing British gov­ern­ment won’t let that happen.

That is why I think the Con­ser­v­a­tives will piv­ot toward a much more direct, and even­tu­al­ly sub­mis­sive, trade pol­i­cy with the Unit­ed States.

How far would it go? Would it mean the end of the BBC and the NHS? Would Orwell’s Airstrip #1 and Ocea­nia become a real­i­ty? No one knows.

And then there is Scot­land. The Scot­tish Nation­al Par­ty (SNP) wants anoth­er inde­pen­dence ref­er­en­dum so that they can stay with­in the EU.

Boris, who is cyn­i­cal­ly using “One Nation Con­ser­v­a­tive” rhetoric to pub­licly refuse this option, may end up with more than he wants to han­dle over time.

There are more ques­tion marks.

The Con­ser­v­a­tives ran on two items – set­tling Brex­it and end­ing aus­ter­i­ty spend­ing. What hap­pens if a world­wide reces­sion hits Britain as the Tories are push­ing through Brex­it? What hap­pens if they just don’t have the funds after Brexit?

What hap­pens if the pub­lic wants increased social spend­ing and not just increased infra­struc­ture spend­ing, and the Con­ser­v­a­tives refuse?

What hap­pens when the cur­rent­ly sup­pressed report on Russ­ian inter­fer­ence in the pol­i­tics of Britain is final­ly made public?

Time will reveal the answers to these ques­tions. One thing we do know: how Labour responds to its elec­toral drub­bing — the worst it has suf­fered since the 1930s — will mat­ter enor­mous­ly for the Unit­ed King­dom’s future.