Forget Brexit: Britain’s Real ‘Trump Moment’ Is Coming
Photo by Matt Cardy
The polls have it like this: unless something goes drastically wrong for Theresa May and co. between now and next month’s general election, a Conservative government will rule Britain until at least 2022. Not only are the Tories set to win on June 8th, but May’s party is currently on course to defeat all rivals in a landslide. Having positioned themselves as ‘the Brexit party,’ the Conservatives are profiting from instability within the Labour party, the official opposition; are absorbing the UK Independence Party vote (with Nigel Farage’s former outfit having lost its raison d’etre); and are naturally benefiting from the way the British press operates—just five men, including Rupert Murdoch, own the majority of the UK’s newspapers, all of which are firmly in the Conservative camp—as unofficial Tory propaganda. Britain’s press, free though it is, sides decisively with the state and that’s bad news for the opposition.
The Conservatives’ opponents have options, but the supposedly reformed Labour party—staggering towards the finish line after almost two years of blunders—seem more interested in engaging in a manhood-measuring competition with other similarly progressive-left parties than in beating their right-wing rivals. The progressive alliance—a proposed collaboration between Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the Scottish National Party and the Greens—has been shot down by Labour’s messianic man at the top. Currently the progressive vote stands to be split three ways or more, but pragmatism be damned: for Jeremy Corbyn, it’s either his party to beat the Tories or no one’s. As with the Democrats and the 2016 US election, wherein the Democrats were happier to push a widely disliked presidential candidate over the most popular politician in the country, Labour would apparently rather lose their own way than stand a chance of winning through negotiated terms in 2017. So another Conservative government it shall be—and a dominant one at that.
This overwhelming power will be their downfall. As the Republicans are now finding out, winning power sweepingly comes with its own problems. In the US, Republicans blamed Democrats for every problem big and small that the country faced between 2008 and the end of Obama’s term this year. Meanwhile, in the UK, the Conservatives have spent the past seven years shifting the blame first onto the Lib Dems—with whom they ruled in a coalition from 2010 to 2015—and then Labour for any criticisms that came their way. (Thanks to an orchestrated disinformation campaign by the Conservatives and the British press, the people of Britain still believe it was the then-ruling Labour party who crashed the global economy in 2008.) With the Republicans now holding power at every level in Washington, they are finding out that responsibility falls squarely on them. The Conservatives, following their all-but-inevitable rousing victory next month, will similarly discover just how heavy the crown lies.