Voters in the United Kingdom (UK) are going to the poll today amid Brexit controversies and a nonstop drumbeat of political chaos.
FROM 7 a.m. local time today, Britons will go to the poll. It is a defining general election – the third in four years. The voters are facing a difficult choice, involving two unpopular leaders. But, seconds after the close of voting, the first big moment of the night – the exit poll, which predicts a usually-accurate picture of where the votes have gone – will become clearer.
But yesterday was hectic for the key leaders in the election: it was the final day of campaigning. Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn started a campaign in Scotland, offering a “vote for hope” and attacking Tory “negativity”. Conservatives leader Boris Johnson started campaigning in West Yorkshire, insisting the Tories are the only party who can “get Brexit done”. Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson also touring seats, urging voters to back her candidates to stop Brexit. The SNP’s Nicola Sturgeon also made her final pitch to voters too.
A low-tech vote
British elections are notoriously low-tech. Voters mark an “X” on a sheet of paper with a stubby pencil and drop it into a box – so results take some time to come through. From about 11.00 p.m., the country will get the first figures, and counting will continue through the night.
Brexit and UK’s traditional electoral map
Brexit has thrown the UK’s traditional electoral map up in the air; Conservatives are targeting traditional Labour areas, which voted to leave the European Union (EU). Labour and the Liberal Democrats are hoping to capitalise on support in areas further south that had a large remain vote – meaning that results can still surprise poll watchers on who is heading to Downing Street.
Nick Boles, a former Conservative MP, views the election as an “appalling choice” between a “compulsive liar” and a “totalitarian”.
To Boles, Johnson is the “compulsive liar”. The “totalitarian” is Labour Party leader Corbyn.
Amid stereotyping the leaders, voters want Brexit, the election, the nonstop drumbeat of political chaos to be over and done with.
Johnson’s trust issue
This is Johnson’s first chance to stand before the British voters as the nation’s prime minister. It’s an election he asked for, yet the campaign hasn’t been without its bumps in the road.
Critics have raised doubts about his trustworthiness – an important question, given that Johnson is trying to assure voters that he can get the UK out of the European Union by the end of January and then follow that up with successful negotiation for a new trade relationship.
They cite a string of broken promises or misleading statements, including on healthcare and his Brexit plan for Northern Ireland. He has also been criticised for refusing to discuss the number of children he has, an issue that was even picked up in the United States (U.S.) media.
“The theme running through our questions is trust,” BBC broadcaster Andrew Neil said of an interview he had hoped to conduct with Johnson. “And why, so many times in his career in politics and journalism, critics and sometimes even those close to him have deemed him to be untrustworthy,” Neil added.
Johnson refused to grant an election interview on Neil’s programme – the only candidate to do so in recent elections. He also failed to appear at a climate debate, and instead was represented by a melting block of ice.
Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage said: “I’ve known Boris on and off for 25 years, and he is a likeable, entertaining personality, he said. “Would you absolutely trust him? No.”
Perhaps most damaging to Johnson in the final days of the campaign was the publication on Monday of a photograph of an ill four-year-old boy, admitted to a Leeds hospital emergency room, lying on a pile of coats because there were no available cots.
The image, which went viral on social media, has put the Conservatives on their heels, as they apologise for the child’s ordeal and defend themselves against charges that the incident was indicative of an underfunded health system.
Johnson responded with a halting interview with an ITV reporter. He initially refused to look at a photo of the child on the reporter’s phone, taking the device away and putting it in his own pocket, saying he would “study it later”.
His behaviour could reinforce the perception that the prime minister is not always well-equipped to handle criticism and sometimes struggles to display empathy.
Corbyn pounced, saying the Conservatives have had “nine years in office, and whilst they now claim they are funding the NHS, they are not; they’re not even beginning to make up the shortfall it’s had over the past nine years.”
Corbyn’s credibility and ideology
The Labour Party leader is not free from criticisms. His mixed and contradictory messages on Brexit – refusing to make Labour an avowedly Remain party – have undermined his credibility.
Given the party’s delicate position of trying to represent constituencies that voted strongly to Leave and others that were vehemently Remain, Corbyn has tried to straddle the line between the two sides – but seems to have angered some on both sides.
However, following him in North Wales this week, he rarely brought up the subject, preferring to talk about his promise to invest in the health service. He has also been accused of inadequately addressing anti-Semitism with his party’s ranks, of pushing out moderate voices within the party and of previously harbouring sympathies for the IRA.
Johnson was quick to bring this last point up in the final leader debate on Friday, as a means of deflecting Corbyn’s criticisms of Johnson’s proposed solution to the seemingly intractable problem of withdrawing the UK from the EU while keeping the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic seamless.
The Labour manifesto reflects Corbyn’s socialist sympathies – and has opened him up to attack from moderates, as well. He has called for higher taxes, nationalisation of industries like mail, water and energy and a four-day workweek, among other proposals.
A Brexit election
Back from dissecting the two top leaders in the election, history books will probably remember this as the Brexit election.
Johnson himself took over the top job earlier this year only after his predecessor, Theresa May, repeatedly failed in her efforts to pass a withdrawal deal. Because of this, the Conservatives are campaigning on a “Get Brexit Done” slogan – an effort to pry away dozens of longtime Labour constituencies that voted Leave.
More than that, however, Johnson’s campaign is centred on his desire to win a working Conservative majority in Parliament for the first time since 2017. Everything, he says, hinges on that – Brexit, new trade deals with the EU and U.S., a tax cut and increased spending on the National Health Service and education. The election is coming as the UK economy suffered its worst three months for more than a decade after official figures revealed output failed to grow once again in October.
Office for National Statistics (ONS) data showed the economy flatlined month-on-month in October, after two months of declines. It was the weakest three months since early 2009. The figures come ahead of a general election, with the main parties all promising to boost growth.
Although the service sector expanded 0.2 per cent in the August-to-October period, that was offset by a 0.7 per cent contraction in manufacturing and 0.3 per cent fall in construction. The ONS said there had been “a notable drop in house building and infrastructure in October”.
John Hawksworth, the chief economist at consultancy PwC, blamed Brexit-related uncertainty for the economy’s “loss of momentum”.
Exploiting UK-U.S. relations
U.S. President Donald Trump is largely unpopular in the UK. His feud with London Mayor Sadiq Khan, intemperate tweets about UK politics and vitriolic treatment of a British ambassador to the U.S. have helped make him persona non grata for many Britons. Corbyn and his Labour Party have sought to exploit Johnson’s perceived closeness to the U.S. president, suggesting that U.S. access to the British health system was “on the table” in trade talks.
At the very least, this suggests that a U.S.-UK relationship with Corbyn in London and Trump still in Washington will be strained, at best.
The other parties to watch
There was some thought that the struggles of the two major parties and their leaders might leave room for some of the smaller parties – such as the Liberal Democrats, the Brexit Party, and the nationalist parties SNP in Scotland and Plaid Cymru in Wales, to gain traction.
While the SNP appears poised to do well again in the seats they are contesting, the others are struggling, despite co-operative agreements and efforts to encourage tactical voting in marginal constituencies.
Instead, in the majority of the nation, it will boil down to a fight between two parties, Labour and the Conservatives, and the two distinct personalities and political proclivities of their leaders.
Johnson, often unkempt and unscripted, has pushed his side towards a conservative populism embodied in his full-throated support for Brexit. While direct comparisons with Trump in the U.S. often fall apart on closer inspection, Johnson – like his American counterpart – is a disrupter, who has shown himself willing to set aside norms and traditions in pursuit of his policy objectives.
Corbyn, chosen to be his party’s leader in 2015, represents a decisive shift to the left for the Labour Party of recent decades. If there is an American parallel here, his rise is the equivalent of a Bernie Sanders-style figure taking control of the Democratic Party. Labour is a very different party now than the last time it held No 10 Downing Street, during the Tony Blair and Gordon Brown years of the early 2000s.
Many UK voters, regardless of political affiliation, may also look at the events of the past decade and wonder if this is a very different United Kingdom, as well.
On the precipice of yet another hung parliament
Johnson went into the final full day of campaigning looking to win ‘every vote’ after a fresh poll suggested a hung parliament could still be on the cards. YouGov’s constituency-by-constituency poll predicts the Conservatives are on course for a 28 seat majority – but the margin of error and the unknown impact of tactical voting means a hung parliament is still a possibility. The pollsters, who have analysed more than 100,000 voter interviews over the past week, predicted the Tories will win 339 seats and Labour 231. A 28-seat majority would be the best Tory result since Margaret Thatcher’s showing in 1987 – but it is down from the sizeable 68-seat victory that the same YouGov-style poll had been predicting only two weeks ago. Chris Curtis, YouGov’s political research manager, said: ‘The margins are extremely tight and small swings in a small number of seats, perhaps from tactical voting and a continuation of Labour’s recent upward trend, means we can’t currently rule out a hung parliament.’
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