The Tories win big — but the fight lives on…
The morning after the night before is always a difficult moment. In taking stock of what just happened in Britain yesterday, a multitude of raw emotions and feelings rush around in the mind.
The old adage that the opposition never wins elections, it is the government that loses them could well apply in this instance. But it was never on the cards leading up to yesterday’s vote. Nobody truly expected that the people of Britain would want to make their decisions in the way that they did, letting in the Tories in significant numbers, and putting Labour firmly into second place, now in the position of having to comprehend its worst defeat ever. Yet, the Labour Party membership is bigger than ever, the manifesto was largely popular, even seen as revolutionary by some, and there was enough will against Boris Johnson and the Tories. However, that was supplanted by the very negative campaigning against Jeremy Corbyn in much of the media. For anyone not having met the man, forming an adverse opinion of him was the only outcome. Too many branded Jeremy Corbyn as an anti-Semite, a terrorist sympathiser or a communist. And for too many, they believed it. Too many felt the need to ‘get Brexit done’ and believed that Labour was standing in the way. A masterstroke of political campaigning which duped people in abundance.
It is true that the Tories have weaponised every electioneering technique available to them. From the famous Saatchi & Saatchi advertisement boards in the 1980s that helped Margaret Thatcher to secure thumping victories as the nation was breaking up and in some places falling apart to today’s world of micro-targeting wavering voters in marginal seats calculated to respond maximally to certain stimuli as the main strategy used to swing the electorate. And as the big tech giants continue to support most political advertising unchecked, these kinds of problems will remain. So what happens now is the $64,000 question. After a minor cabinet reshuffle, Boris Johnson will attempt to get Brexit done soon after Christmas. The very right wing of the party wants Britain to leave the EU without a deal, and the prospect of that has increased because of this election outcome. The implications of a no-deal exit have been discussed at length for months if not years, and yet a very limited few remain hell-bent on the result. With a weakened opposition, the Tories will feel galvanised, exuberant and well up for all the hardest battles to come. They will have the numbers to push through the Brexit that only they want.
But for any functioning democracy, the opposition is fundamentally important, and so it is absolutely right that Labour works out its failings and come to terms with it all quickly. A momentum that has been the backbone of the party’s resurgence is not going to go away. So many people who believe in the ideas of wealth redistribution, taxing the super-rich disproportionately higher than everyone else, equality of opportunity and outcome, social care and social protection, social trust and social cohesion, community development, diversity and multiculturalism, and strong public services that are efficient and appropriate for today’s needs in a complex interdependent economy, have to stick to their guns. One possible scenario is that the minimum period of five years for the next term could be reduced if the Tories make a complete hatchet job of Brexit and the people begin to rise up as well as the opposition parties get their acts together.
It is not all doom and gloom just yet. The election results suggest a bloody smack on the nose of the Labour Party, but it can heal and work out its direction again quickly enough. Without a doubt, change is going to be needed at the top while there needs to be greater clarity of messaging and content for the centrists and for the membership as a whole. In many ways, it seemed as if there were three Labour groups failing to work together as one. The membership is youthful and pro-left on many fronts, but MPs were unsure of their positions and some were still tempted by Blairism, while a leadership that was relatively hard left had a bigger fight on their hands from within the ranks of their own party.
There will be many challenges ahead. The new Tory MPs will feel emboldened, almost foaming at the mouth at the prospect of what awaits them. For the opposition parties, theirs is a need for re-birth. For the people of the country and for all who have a stake in wanting it to remain a beacon of light and hope, there is always the opportunity to make some kind of difference. It is not time to give up but the time to reflect and then rebound. The fight is not yet over.
