The UK election is over. Those expecting a hung parliament that found out otherwise in a record 5 seconds.
The exit polls were not only astonishing, they were astonishingly accurate. The exit poll Tory estimate was 368.
With 648 of 650 seats announced, the results look like this.
My “Fearless Forecast” was Tories 345, Labour 226, and Lib Dems 17.
Apologies offered for not being optimistic enough.
What Happened?
I can sum up the blowout result in a set of Tweets from Andrew Adonis, a Labour peer, diehard Remainer. and former cabinet minister under Gordon Brown.
https://twitter.com/Andrew_Adonis/status/1205377361367228416https://twitter.com/Andrew_Adonis/status/1205382592582889474
Plain as Day
The key idea was in the polls from beginning to end.
Flashback November 18: Fear of Corbyn Outweighs Fear of Brexit
My Comment: “This election is no longer primarily about Brexit, it’s primarily about Corbyn.“
Perhaps this is easier to see from afar. Perhaps it is simple willingness to dive into the polls. Either way, Corbyn’s unpopularity was of epic proportion, poll after poll after poll.
Why is it shocking news that people, when they finally got into the voting booth, voted against someone they could not stand?
Second Reason
Adonis gets the second reason too. I will rephrase things my way: Corbyn is a Marxist who let (if not encouraged) the party to be hijacked by radical left activists the average person simply cannot believe.
Both reasons point squarely at Corbyn.
Size of the Swings
Jo Swinson is Gone
Party rules say Liberal Democrat Jo Swinson must stand down.
I offer a musical tribute.
Jeremy Corbyn Steps Down
Earlier tonight Jeremy Corbyn announced he was standing down. But he refused to say when. He wants to “reflect on the result”.
Reflect on This
Corbyn blamed Brexit. He blamed the media. He blamed disgusting politicians.
On the latter, he is of course correct. He just forgot to look in the mirror while making that statement.
Corbyn Already Sounds Like Hillary
Corbyn is whining as loudly as Hillary Clinton.
He just forgot one thing. He forgot to blame Russia.
He will have plenty of time to reflect on things, then blame Russia.
Faith Restored
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Assuming Johnson does get Brexit done (and it seems he will), this will be the first time ever that a popular vote that went against the EU is actually respected (as opposed to “repeated until the result is to the EU’s liking”). It is actually quite a monumental event for that reason alone. And I think its importance is still underestimated. The EU now loses one of its biggest net payers. The remaining net payers henceforth will have to shoulder a far bigger financial burden to continue subsidizing the have-nots (and French farmers). I cannot imagine that this will be a friction-free affair. Particularly as the UK is bound to unleash the kind of tax and regulatory competition that is anathema to the socialist high tax “harmonizers” and centralizers running the bureaucratic Moloch in Brussels.
To continue the “Boris won because of the quality of the opposition” theme
This is Labour’s Home Secretary to be:
Diane Abbott is a certified loon, shoe story true or not. The fact that people like her can earn a living – on the taxpayer dime or otherwise – is testament to how warped the world is right now. There are heaps of unemployed people who are more deserving of the largesse that has been lavished on that worthless blob.
Corbyn will resign in January – A given
Socialism and socialists can never be wrong or responsible for any failure. That is why Corbyn won’t resign.
Corbyn will resign in January – A given
Corbyn’s mates in his own party will be done with him (as often is the case in such situations).
I can’t savor this the way some do, but I do savor how the B(P)BC cheered for remain and lost (they still see those tightening polls). The last time I visited the B(P)BC was when they shut down their comment section…because of comments they didn’t like.
Boris needs to negotiate a good deal with the EU first, then let things settle down. Then if SNP still demands a referendum give it to them.
Nicola will be in a world of hurt.
Imagine the scare campaign one could mount against that. And it would be real, not made-up.
Finally, because of all those things, I do not think the EU would even go along.
So yes, let her have that damn referendum, but only after Johnson’s negotiations keep UK fishing rights.
Mish
Not for at least 15 years, i.e. a ‘generation.’
The Monarchy is the beating Heart of the nation (imperfect as it so often is). Severing Scotland and England, whose Crowns have been joined in deep, hard-won ways for centuries now, whose Royal Stone of Scone is the official seat of the Monarch in sacred ritual and so forth, is major surgery, truly major. It is not something to be done in haste.
Nicola Sturgeon is far too light weight a person to lead such a charge. She will not prevail.
Maybe Boris should appoint JRM as Minister of the Union and Commonwealth and give him that rock to chew on for a while. The Commonwealth could become something again as part of a Maritime Powers geostrategic realignment – already underway with the unpopular Trump.
Difficult, but a worthy challenge. (Though I hope he stays in the Commons and rumours that his Leader of the HC Head is on the chopping block prove unfounded.)
One main reason to leave EU as far as the establishment is concerned is rejection of subsidiarity to EU courts and law. We hear of rights cases and UK falling short, but on the other hand look at Cataluña, where it is likely CJEU will soon declare Junqueras (unauthorised indy ref vpm of the region now in Spanish jail) immune to prosecution due to eurodeputy status, so charging Spain for his release and opening the way for Puigdemont to return. Realities like this not only undermine Spanish sovereignty, but open the way for serious conflict. I know there is not always any sympathy for the Spanish nationalist approach, but Cataluña feasibly means as much to Spanish identity as Scotland to UK. Sponsored proposals for a new EU constitution even include territorial secession as standard at 3/5 vote.
The sturgeon is one of the ugliest fish in existence. Just a thought.
“Those expecting a hung parliament that found out otherwise in a record 5 seconds.”
Who was pushing that propaganda?
I was flipping through channels a few days ago, stopping a moment at Bloomberg TV, where i got the impression that the race had tightened and there could indecisive outcome. Was it honest reporting, or was it meant to influence the outcome of the election?
A recent Reuters poll on sentiment for impeachment, way over sampled democrats. If i remember correctly, 529 democrats, 385 republicans and 111 independents were surveyed. Hardly, a fair poll.
It was meant to influence the result of the election. I recall when Grey Davis was recalled in California, the stories kept saying how ‘close’ it was.
He lost by a big margin.
On a later story it was confirmed that he knew he was going to lose. That’s the day I lost trust in polls.
All the defectors lost their seats.
So this wasn’t just about Corbyn.
Personally, he seemed to me completely out of touch, a ‘yesterday’s man’ marching a la 1970’s when he was young. I think he regarded Brexit as a big wave crashing on the beach which was bigger and taking longer than he liked, but which would soon be gone and then things would return to normal. But it isn’t that, it’s a once-in-a-generational shift, and he didn’t have the vision or guts to see that.
“All the defectors lost their seats” … sad really (he smiled). My disappointment was that Yvette Cooper and Hilary Benn retained theirs. I was also completely wrong footed by my own constituency which showed an increased swing from Con to LibDem. Westmorland used to be a safe Tory seat but is and has been for about ten years single blot of yellow in a blue landscape. I have no explanation as to why.
Well, the whole thing is muddled now because Brexit looms large over the usual (and often murky) battle between left and right. Here’s an ex-Marxist’s take on the current Tories:
He makes some good points.
But then in the same Sunday Mail, you have a far more optimistic take glossing over most of the substantive problems raised by Hitchens, but capturing the momentum of spirit which, along with actual Brexit processes, might (untypically) amount to some sort of real paradigm change. Remains to be seen, but the chance is there.
I heard a clip of Bojo’s speech in Birmingham (or Manchester?) yesterday (today?) where he laid out four main areas where change and development is needed:
There is something fundamentally conservative about this vision even though it involves change, and moving forward change, i.e. progressive change. However, it’s not overly top-heavy on the climate-and-gender-bending change so popular in the identity politics left agendas. Because conservative fundamentally offers some sort of dependable base, some sort of tradition expressing a bedrock culture or people, something they all share and can depend upon and understand, something that ends up making the word ‘we’ experientially meaningful on the national level.
The traditional role of the ‘left’ is to break down overly stultified systems of command and control which are preventing opportunity or change in favor of retaining power and privilege, usually on the part of those whose ancestors did the heavy lifting, not themselves. It is a needed impetus.
However, the self-existing dichotomy, or paradox, in the mix is that those same people good at overthrowing a corrupt, half-baked or incompetent establishment are often no good at then formulating, let alone stewarding, any resultant new order. Their role is to tear bad things down. The conservative role is to manage whatever the current order is, which means that the ways conservative intellectuals might have articulated and viewed things one or two generations ago are no longer meaningful today, which many will regard as some sort of betrayal.
These things are never easy to resolve either way, because society keeps changing, which change being the only constant. And so the stability yearned for by most conservative types depends upon ever-evolving foundations built on the shifting dunes of perpetually changing times. And so it goes.
Opinium gets the last laugh!
Well done, Mish, and you deserve to enjoy your victory lap.
I got bored with the election because Boris (and JRM) were playing it super-safe and super-simple, so they avoided complex discussions or controversial comments, which obviously, worked very well. But it was a surprisingly boring campaign.
That said, I think you are a little over the top with the Corbyn argument. Clearly, his unpopularity was a major factor. But I think this is in no small part due to the cleverness of the positions Boris (and Cummings) deliberately took. They deliberately offered a clear path forward, both in the short and long term, and also clearly contrasted their path with the opposition’s, which was unclear. Put simply, they said (again and again and again): vote for us and our oven-ready package will be popped in the oven in December and this whole thing will be done and dusted in January, end of story. Vote for our opponents and you have at least 6 months of wrangling with no end in sight and also Scotland will have a referendum to break up the Union with all the chaos and ill-will that will entail.
So it’s not just that Corbyn was bad: the Tories offered a far more clarifying, hopeful and comprehensive vision of the future.
They have a big challenge in terms of not only getting a good Brexit arrangement with the EU, but also saving the Union. Ireland is perhaps doomed for natural cultural and geographic reasons, but that remains to be seen (who knows, in 20 years Eire might join the UK again instead of being exploited by the EU banksters). But Scotland is relatively easy: the last referendum was once in a generation, promised by all involved. So Boris can simply refuse to grant permission for a referendum and argue that they should wait at least until Brexit is finished and the UK has a chance to function independently for 10 years or so. He might lose that argument in the Courts, but it won’t be easy: all sides agreed to the once-in-a-generation thing only a few years ago, so what’s the problem with waiting another 15 years? None.
Meanwhile, Boris has a shot at reviving the modern equivalent of the Commonwealth, playing a leading role in the Great Game Maritime Team which includes India, Japan, Australia, NZ, USA for starters, and perhaps many more coming through in Africa, Hong Kong and so forth with the English contributions. Culturally, we might see a boom in UK media productions, both movies, TV’s and intellectual input. It could be a very dynamic time if they prevent the EU stodge-masters from bogging them down in red tape. Boris is a decent manager, but not a red tape slogger, so expect some sort of rapid, over-arching solution, not years of stultifying negotiations.
Anyway, my point is: the Tories offered a very clear and very uplifted choice. That bright light put Corbyn in rather wretched-looking shade. Their role in framing Corbyn should not be overlooked. It was a masterfully run campaign from the day he took over the Premiership demonstrating the ability to form and hold a vision, and then execute with both daring and patience. Very impressive.
I didn’t pay much attention to the campaigning, Baron, but so far as I know there was no discussion (apart from a single rumour that BoJo wanted a Canada style agreement) as to the type of arrangement with the EU now being sought. Indeed during last evenings broadcasts there was speculation about all shades of Brexit from super hard to super soft. I come back to Mish’s old chestnut. STILL nobody knows what BoJo’s agenda is here but as you well know I worry and suspect it will be on the softer side. I also think that the Scottish scenario may well play into this situation.
Not sure that simply reiterating to the SNP that the last referendum was a once in a lifetime event will cut it. The mandarins need to come up with some magic charm that neuters the threat of the SNP for a while – like five years – and in the meantime, hopefully, the EU will continue with its program of self-destruction to a point of no return. Either way, having the EU right on Englands doorstep is a wholly undesirable situation and because it poses longer term an existential threat, one that simply will not be allowed to develop imho. Otherwise, 1550 here we come, all over again!
Well, if there is any common sense in the mix – which there well might not be – clearly what is called for here is to let Brexit play out and then see how it goes for 5-10 years thereafter. The UK has some major challenges to deal with and if it fails viz. Scotland, there might well be a reckoning.
I was never into EU once it became clear that it was going to be much more than a Common Market. But one thing which impressed me deeply was how they divided Europe up into regions smaller than the nations such that areas like Wales were identified as being in need of help, and helped they were. Maybe not without some nasty strings attached (esp. in Eire for example), but still: it highlighted how stultified the Westminster-based models had become.
So it remains to be seen if Boris can make good on the promise to level the playing fields of opportunity throughout the country. It’s a good and worthy vision. And if implemented properly, Scotland should do better. However, if the main leadership in Holyrood is determined to sabotage any progress made in partnership with the UK – which they think of as being really only England – that will be hard. So Boris is going to have to go over the heads of the SNP and appeal to deep-rooted cultural ties that do indeed exist and have been forged on many British Empire battle (and soccer) fields. Scotland has to feel more proud and autonomous as a small nation and people in her own right, but also no less proud and inspired to be part of the United Kingdom, it’s natural larger ‘we.’
It’s doable, but will take time.
In any case, there is no way Scotland can apply for EU membership until it is separate from the UK. If such a thing is to happen, it will probably take longer than Sturgeon has to keep swimming around in her protected, resent-laden tank.
#Itwastherussians
#Secondelection
#Ididntvoteforthem
#Theresasaleatpennys
Ironically, after rejecting the generous supposed offering of alms from ‘labour’, the peasantry woke to find that what little currency they had in their pockets increased in value too.
Nothing ironic about that. It’s economics 101, you tard
Well the peasants have voted to get rid of the EU and the muslims.
Is this Lily Allen?
Anyone heard from Avidremainer? Is he on suicide watch?
Thank you for asking the question on everyone’s minds!
he’s probably logging in using other usernames
He’s rocking back and forth, chin resting between his knees, in a dark room somewhere. There’ll be plenty of his ilk about – they believed to the bitter end that some white knight would ride to rescue Brexit from itself. The EU is pure poison – a giant bureaucracy whose only beneficiaries are the recipients of taxpayer dollars and the vast army workers who get paid by transfers from all EU citizens.
Drat. This absurd business of democracy and voting has really gone too far.
It should have been done away with a long time ago.
Well, it’s civil war one way or the other. At least with voting, the shooting is kept to a minimum.
Ominous omen for the Dem’s in 2020.
Wow, makes Toxic Hillary look good lol. Of course, Hillary will have a hard time staying away from the prom queen contest as greedy as she is.
I can disagree with Mish now and again, and I disagree that Corbyn has been keeping British voters awake and more than climate change or impeachments or LGBXYZ.
People want a resolution for Brexit (regardless of how they voted in 2016). They want to be able to get on with their lives with reasonable certainty of what tomorrow will bring: good, bad, or indifferent can be coped with if it can be met head on. Labour (all of the leadership) have come across as a bunch of whiny school kids, unfit to drive go kart without trying to wrest the wheel from one another.
In politics being a “considerate sort of person” without a plan doesn’t cut it, because voters know that as soon as anyone goes into office they tend to find their Mr. Hyde. Libdems well they’re exploring definitions, and Farage made a good and loyal sheepdog. So it’s all aboard with the Tories, funny how not long ago some were predicting the end of the party even. SNP, well another indyref should be well after the Brexit ink has dried so that the Scots are faced with a truer choice. EU is feigning relief at the result, because “Brexit is wasting their time and has held up everything else they so needed to give their attention to” , I think they would spin blame to the neighbour’s cat if they thought anyone would believe them, “fiscal union delayed by argument over content labelling of pet food, Germany demands carbon footprint stamp for non-compliance to energy protocol” .
Boris Johnson does not have a mandate” to take Scotland out of the EU https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/18099428.nicola-sturgeon-boris-johnson-not-mandate-take-scotland-eu/
And Nicola does not have the authority to keep Scotland IN the EU. This is why confederacy does not work. If Scotland wants to go sniveling back to the EU for it’s welfare handouts it can, but it has to leave the UK first and reapply to the EU. I somehow doubt over the long haul that they would be missed by the UK if they leave, they are after all absorbing more government funding than they contribute in the UK. I don’t know what will eventually happen here, but if they leave it will be because their loyalty is for sale. And that being the case England would be better off with them gone.
But, along these lines I can see Northern Ireland leaving the UK for reunification with the republic in the next 5 or 6 years, possibly sooner. And you can make that even sooner if the new Brexit deal ends up with enforced borders between RoI and UK.
The hardline protestants up there will never agree to leave the UK of course, but the hardliners are no longer anywhere near the majority in NI, and the Good Friday Agreement gives NI the right to call a reunification vote with the republic at any time for any reason, if this is not reason enough then there never will be.
Quite a few of the protestants feel like the Scots, and the Catholic Republicans overwhelmingly want to unite with the EU Irish republic, they did not have the votes to leave the UK up till now, but once the Brexit changes start to take effect in Ulster they will get enough of the protestant vote to pull it off, and many of the protestants see themselves as Irish and EU citizens first, British second. There has been a lot of angst and dissatisfaction with the way the UK has handled NI in the last few years, especially by appointing a Whitehall governor in her 30’s that admitted she knew little about NI and was scared when she was first appointed to govern there. Many loyalists felt betrayed and that it was a last straw.
As one BBC report put it:
In Parliament, the Democratic Unionist Party’s (DUP) influence on Brexit is gone.
That got short shrift from Theresa May’s former Brexit advisor Raoul Ruparel.
He tweeted: “We should all take a moment to appreciate just how badly the DUP have played the last year… they now have a deal they hate and are powerless in Parliament.”
If this is how BoJo’s government is going to handle internal stresses then one can easily see that there might be little future for the wider UK and perhaps that is for the best, maybe it is also the Tory plan, to shed the country of it’s unruly, demanding, and poorer provinces that have questionable loyalty.
48% vote share for the SNP in Scotland doesn’t sound to me like a mandate to do diddly-squat. If fact, it’s only as big as the UK’s remain vote in 2016. Look how that worked out.
Jimmy Krankie should keep her head down and get on with events at Holyrood. International politics isn’t for them when the performance at home is so lack-lustre.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIdGHOVii9c
That would be true if Scotland had voted for independence in the referendum. It didn’t.
Boris Johnson’s sweeping victory is a disaster for the country, but he cannot deliver on his false promises. Here’s how to survive and resist because his nemesis will come. https://bylinetimes.com/2019/12/13/general-election-2019-byline-times-four-pillars-of-dont-panic/
Boris Johnson is probably not the biggest prize ever to appear on the political scene, but the only potential disaster in this election would have been a victory by the crypto-Marxist Corbyn and his deluded fellow-travelers. The suicidal economic program they had cooked up required a gargantuan helping of historical ignorance and economic illiteracy. Easily the greatest threat to civilization Britain has faced since being brought to the very brink of the abyss by the post-WW 2 socialist experiment. In short, disaster was actually averted, and thankfully by a big enough margin to restore one’s faith in the sheeple a little.
I’m trying so hard to not relish in the utter defeat of the remainers and the lunatic left. I’m trying, but failing miserably 🙂
do you feel the same about the lunatic right and lunatic middle?
I would, if there were such things. Right now, the media, politics, the educational system are NOT overrun by ‘the far right’, whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean. That term was just used by the far left to discredit simply any swinging dick who opposed their crazy ideologies. There’s no denying in the fact that it’s the left that has gone so far left, the good things that used to be a redeeming factor of leftwing ideology are unrecognizable these days. It’s like an insane university campus these days. And the only response to that is utter mockery.
Boris and Cummings played the shambolic fools for the last 6 months on purpose. Making Parliament the enemy was a masterstroke
Congrats to you, Mish, for an insightful prediction, and congrats to Boris for his strategic decision –which was not without risk– to go to the voters when his Brexit plan was stymied.
Regarding the Scotland results: it appears that anti-Tory sentiment has hardened; I’m fairly certain the SNP will have a near-permanent lock on Scotland. IMHO, Boris should give Nicola Sturgeon her wish: hold #indyref2 & stay out of that campaign. Until that time, the SNP will be a thorn in Boris’s side, with a caucus of about 10% of Westminster MPs, due to Irish abstentionism. If #indyref2 fails, the SNP are silenced. If it succeeds, then around 50 opposition MPs will be gone. Either is a win-win for her Majesty’s Government, in my book.
No. They should get the EU trade agreement first. Scots will vote to stay in the Union after that’s been done. My opinion anyway. 🙂
The reason is that Labour did not hold the Conservatives to account over their failure on Brexit – but were even more anti-the popular view. Had Labour been pro-Brexit and pointed out all the betrayals in Johnson’s deal, it would be very different. As it is, the dream of a sovereign Britain has now died.
Please explain.
Yeah, please explain. It looks like Britain regained its sovereignty, or will regain it after Brexit is done.
You are taken in by the warmed-up version of May’s deal.
Boris now needs to tell the EUSSR
give Us a FTA
or F**K OFF
The EU has lost any leverage in dealing with Brexit.
It seems so.
Unless they flip BoJo or several MPs.