Boris Johnson's Conservatives have been returned to government with a big majority (80 seats), and the Labour Party has achieved its worst general election results since before the Second World War. This is a very disappointing outcome, but we now have to move forward and see what this new government will bring. It may be that Boris Johnson will actually keep to his word and be a "One Nation" Conservative, bring the country back together again and do what is best for all of the people in the United Kingdom - not forgetting those people who did not vote for the Conservatives (which was actually the majority of people). I am not very optimistic about this, but still hold out a little hope that I am wrong and may yet be pleasantly surprised. It seems more likely to me that the consequences of this terrible result will be as follows:
- Boris Johnson will now proceed to take the UK out of the EU with little governance over how he does that. We are now dependent on there being enough reasonable people amongst the Conservative MPs so that the back-benchers can stop any outrageous behaviours by the Government, e.g. prevent them crashing the UK out of the EU without a deal (I still would not be surprised to see this attempted). The opposition will be unable to stop them on their own. Even if the Government sticks to the Withdrawal Agreement and has an Implementation/Migration period to 31st December 2020, it is unlikely that we would have trade deals in place by then, so could well still end up with chaos in January 2021, unless that migration period is extended - something Boris Johnson says he is not prepared to do.
- Once he has "got Brexit done" - and let's take that to mean the exit from the EU by the 31st January 2020, rather than the negotiation of all the trade agreements in the years following - and before the opposition has had time to reorganise and recover from the mauling received in the General Election, Boris Johnson will proceed to carry out a number of policies that will make it easier for the Conservatives to win the next election. This is what was titled "Protect Our Democracy" in the Conservative Party Manifesto, and includes the following: getting rid of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act so Boris Johnson can call an election whenever he feels it is advantageous to the Conservatives; rearranging the constituency boundaries in the Conservative Party's favour; removing some controls over the Press (who are mostly Conservative supporters); making more use of people's data in governing (sounds sinister); reviewing the relationship between Government, Parliament and the Judiciary (I take this to mean giving more power to Government and taking power away from Parliament and the Judiciary, but let's see what is proposed); updating the Human Rights Act (again, could be sinister, but let's see what is proposed - could also conflict with the Good Friday Agreement). The Conservative Manifesto also stated they would not change the First Past the Post system of elections (it is too favourable to them) or reduce the voting age (younger voters have less tendency to vote Conservative). Again, let's hope some reasonable Conservative MPs will stand against the Government if it goes too far.
- Labour will elect a new leader, but will the party stick with its more extreme socialism, or drift back towards the "centre" in order to try and attract more voters? It does seem that the more extreme socialism is unelectable in the UK at the moment, and I will look further at this in a future blog entry.
- The Scottish Nationalists will push heavily for another Scottish Independence vote. If Boris Johnson can claim he has a mandate for Brexit, and all his other policies, when he received significantly less than 50% of the vote, Nicola Sturgeon can certainly claim she has a mandate for Scottish Independence. The reason I would support another vote for independence is that one of the key arguments last time for Scotland to stay in the UK was that it would keep it in the EU - leaving the UK would have meant Scotland would have left the EU. This is no longer a valid argument, so they should be allowed to rerun the Independence Referendum.
- Northern Ireland will realise what the latest Withdrawal Agreement does to its trade with the rest of the UK, and this will push it further towards reunification with the Republic of Ireland. The Good Friday Agreement says that when there is a majority in Northern Ireland supporting the reunification there ought to be a Referendum to decide if it happens, so this is not something that Boris Johnson can just refuse (like he says he will do for the Scottish Independence Referendum).
This is not a very happy picture for the United Kingdom, so I hope I am wrong. Only time will tell, though I think it will not need a long time - we should see what this Government is about in the next few months.
Gerontios
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