“Dark Day for Everyone Who Believes in Justice”: UK Tories Defeat Labour in Landslide Election

The British Conservative Party has won a decisive majority in Thursday’s general election, winning seats in Labour Party strongholds and paving the way for Britain’s exit from the European Union by January 31. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is projected to have 364 seats in the House of Commons compared to Labour’s 203 seats. That would give the Conservatives about a 75-seat majority, the largest since Margaret Thatcher’s landslide in the 1987 election. Johnson’s message throughout the campaign was focused on “getting Brexit done,” reflecting public exhaustion with the issue that has paralyzed British politics ever since the 2016 referendum. His win comes despite his long record of racist and anti-Muslim statements, as well as accusations of sexual harassment. Following the election, Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn announced he will resign as party leader, though he will continue to sit as an MP. The Labour membership grew dramatically during Corbyn’s tenure, with the party adopting radical policies focused on ending austerity, reinvesting in the National Health Service and promoting social justice. We get response from George Monbiot, a columnist for The Guardian and author of “Out of the Wreckage: A New Politics for an Age of Crisis,” and Priya Gopal, university lecturer in the Faculty of English at the University of Cambridge and author of the new book “Insurgent Empire: Anticolonial Resistance and British Dissent.”

Exit Poll Predicts 86-seat Majority for Boris Johnson and Conservatives

THE GUARDIAN: PM set for return to Downing Street with 368 seats for the Tories and 191 for Labour

Boris Johnson appears on course to secure a crushing majority of 86, and take Britain out of the EU in January, after a shock exit poll showed his party would win 368 seats in Thursday’s general election.

That would be the biggest Conservative majority since Margaret Thatcher’s third general election in 1987; and mark a dramatic repudiation of Jeremy Corbyn’s offer of “real change” for Britain.

If the poll is vindicated as real results come in, the Conservatives will have smashed through the “red wall” of Labour-held seats across Wales and the Midlands, many of which voted leave in the 2016 EU referendum.

The exit poll, which is compiled on the basis of a large-scale survey of 20,000 voters as they leave polling stations, put the Tories on 368 seats seats, and Labour on just 191.

That would allow Johnson to pass his Brexit deal early in the new year, so that Britain would formally leave the EU in January. » | Heather Stewart, Political editor | Thursday, December 12, 2019

'Brutal, Packed with Untruths, Uninspiring': European Press on UK Election

THE GUARDIAN: Socialism or Brexit? Britain is divided in two in a ‘Hamlet-like dilemma’, write Europe’s newspapers

France

France’s media have been following the UK election campaign closely and did not take long to draw their conclusions. “Boris Johnson: the liar weakening Europe,” was the splash in Le Parisien, a popular tabloid, last month.

The paper called the prime minister “Europe’s bogeyman”, a politician for whom “pretty much everything is either an empty promise, economical with the truth or a downright lie.” » | Jon Henley, Philip Oltermann, Sam Jones, Andrew Roth and Angela Giuffrida | Thursday, December 12, 2019

"I'm Angry and Worried": Hugh Grant's Concern If Tories Win Election

Hugh Grant told James O'Brien that the prospect of the Conservatives winning the general election is "very dark and very scary". The ‘Love Actually’ star has been campaigning over the last few weeks to encourage people to vote tactically and ignore their tribal loyalties.

Speaking to James O'Brien, he said he's never really got involved in elections before, but he is extremely concerned about a Tory win. He said: "I feel like a Coke can that's been rolling around the bottom of the car for too long and someone needs to pull the ring. "I'm just angry. I'm angry and worried."

Can Boris Johnson Lie His Way Back Into Office?

THE NEW YORK TIMES: Britons face a miserable set of choices.

LONDON — This is the dejection election. Not in my lifetime has Britain faced such a miserable choice. Two vain, incompetent, mediocre charlatans are competing to become prime minister. For the Conservatives, we have the blustering, lying, oafish puffball Boris Johnson. In the Labour corner is the querulous, wooden, sanctimonious Jeremy Corbyn.

The two candidates are so alarming that, in an unprecedented intervention, former prime ministers from each of their parties have pleaded with voters to block them. Tony Blair and John Major have urged tactical votes against Mr. Corbyn and Mr. Johnson. Everywhere, exhausted, disillusioned, skeptical voters debate who is worse. British politics has never known anything like it.

These very different men share remarkable, unflattering similarities. Each is ill briefed, hazy on the facts and implications of his policy proposals, uneasy under scrutiny and belligerent when challenged. » | Jenni Russell, Contributing Opinion Writer | Wednesday, December 11, 2019

’Politically We Don’t Count’: EU Citizens Fear for Future in UK

THE GUARDIAN: Most EU nationals living in the UK cannot vote – leaving many feeling like pawns in a political game

In a threadbare youth centre in Bradford, Vie Clerc, who got off a Eurostar from Paris 19 years ago with £50 in her pocket and never left, laments the irony. “It’s the first one I’ll actually be able to vote in,” she said. “Shame I’ve never felt less British.”

In a bright mezzanine office in Bristol, Denny Pencheva, who landed in 2013 from Bulgaria via Copenhagen and now teaches at the university, bemoans politicians “who use us to score their political points, but don’t actually have to consider us – because politically, we don’t count”. » | Jon Henley, Europe correspondent | Thursday, December 12, 2019

This Is a Brexit Election. But Boris Johnson Will Not Get Brexit Done

THE GUARDIAN: The Tories’ central campaign theme is unachievable: they created this mess and can deliver only division and destabilisation

There is only one reason why today’s election is happening: Brexit. Six weeks on, the 2019 election is still a Brexit election. You may want it to be about other things. You may be fed up and distressed with the whole Brexit argument. All this, though, is escapism. What is primarily at stake today is whether Britain leaves the EU on the Conservatives’ terms, or whether it doesn’t. Today, the nation’s votes will decide which it shall be.

The leitmotif of Boris Johnson’s campaign has been Brexit. For someone who loves to speechify as much as he does, Johnson’s message discipline has been awesome. “Get Brexit done” has been the “strong and stable” of the 2019 campaign. The slogan is brilliantly succinct and well chosen. But it is a fraud.

Johnson did not call the election because he lacked a parliamentary majority for Brexit. A Commons vote on 22 October showed that there was such a majority. But there was no majority for the unconditional departure from Europe that Johnson stands for, and which the rightwing of his party demands. This election is intended to create that majority and to weaponise the Conservatives as the leave party, on Johnson’s terms. All Tory MPs who are elected today will be bound to a manifesto that asserts “we will get Brexit done in January”, and “we will not extend the implementation period beyond December 2020”. » | Martin Kettle | Thursday, December 12, 2019

The Observer View on Who to Vote For in the General Election

THE OBSERVER: After a tawdry campaign of lies and racism, the choice is clear – anyone but Johnson

This is a historic election, the most important choice voters have faced in decades. The result will determine whether Britain as we know it exists in a generation or whether the union will have splintered beyond repair. It will shape the nation’s economic wellbeing: whether we make countless lives harder by cutting ourselves off from our biggest trading partner or maintain our close relationship with the EU. It will influence the type of society we are: whether the number of children who grow up in abject poverty and the number of people sleeping rough – stains on our collective conscience– will continue to rise. It will decide the sustainability of the world we bequeath to our children and grandchildren.

Yet there is no disguising that this is an election of last resort, the product of an unedifying journey through months of parliamentary gridlock. None of the options inspires enthusiasm; the campaign has been underwhelming and uninspiring. But the gloomy sense it leaves – that our politics is unequal to the tests that lie ahead – must not obscure the momentous nature of the decision voters must make on Thursday. » | Observer editorial | Sunday, December 8, 2019

The Guardian View on Boris Johnson’s Poverty Plan: Spread It Widely?

THE GUARDIAN: Mr Johnson once thought ‘destitution on a Victorian scale’ might be a good thing. With Tory policies he may yet deliver such a dystopia

Did Boris Johnson watch Channel 4’s documentary Growing Up Poor? He should have. The film is a seminal moment in television which has made people talk about the crisis of destitution that is hiding in plain sight in the UK, and how dreadful it is. In the programme, childhood dreams of being an actor or a solicitor jarred with tales of chronic poverty. There were bleak scenes of Dickensian hardship, as families living in squalor or with hungry children at a food bank explained how these situations had been precipitated by everyday catastrophes of bereavement, domestic violence and mental breakdown. The damaging trade-offs being made – of whether to eat or heat – are a shameful indictment of a country as wealthy as ours. » | Editorial | Tuesday, November 3, 2019

Dominic Raab in Danger of Losing Seat to Lib Dems, Poll Suggests

THE OBSERVER: Tactical voting could lead to big upsets at constituency level, according to study by Deltapoll

Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, is in danger of providing this election’s “Portillo moment”, after a poll in his constituency suggested that he was at risk of losing his seat.

The Deltapoll survey of Raab’s Esher and Walton constituency indicates he now only holds a five-point lead over the Liberal Democrats with less than two weeks before voting. Yet Raab had a massive 23,298 majority at the last election. The fact the foreign secretary faces a close race shows there could be big swings in some seats, and means Raab is vulnerable to a so-called “Portillo moment” – a reference to the shock defeat suffered by Michael Portillo in the Labour landslide of 1997. » | Michael Savage, Political editor | Saturday, November 30, 2019

Brexit: Johnson ‘Will Have to Call Second Referendum If He Fails to Win Majority’

THE OBSERVER: With Opinium poll showing his lead narrowing, academics warn PM could need support of minority parties for Brexit deal

Boris Johnson could be forced into holding a second referendum on Brexit next summer if he fails to win a majority in the House of Commons but remains as prime minister, according to a new report by academics at University College London.

The detailed analysis of how a referendum could be triggered, how long it would take, and how it would work concludes that a second public vote – in which the options would most likely be Johnson’s deal versus remaining in the EU – would be very much on the cards if the Conservatives are denied a majority, or are returned with only a very slender one, on 12 December. » | Toby Helm and Michael Savage | Sunday, December 1, 2019

Opinion: Britain’s Dirty Election

THE NEW YORK TIMES: A serial liar. A campaign of online disinformation. The risk of foreign meddling. Sound familiar?

LONDON — Pity British voters. Not because they face a choice between two historically unpopular candidates for prime minister — Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn — on Dec. 12. Nor that they are being forced to trudge to polling stations for the third general election in five years, this time in the depths of the miserable British winter.

Pity British voters because they are being subjected to a barrage of distortion, dissembling and disinformation without precedent in the country’s history. Long sentimentalized as the home of “fair play,” Britain is now host to the virus of lies, deception and digital skulduggery that afflicts many other countries across the world.

In this as in other respects, Prime Minister Boris Johnson — a serial liar who lost his first job as a journalist for inventing quotes — resembles President Trump. And Britain, whose election is breaking down under the pressure of manipulation, increasingly looks like the United States. Truth and falsehood have become malleable concepts. Anything goes. » | Peter Geoghegan and Mary Fitzgerald | Friday, November 29, 2019

Michael Heseltine Appears with Lib Dems to Urge Tactical Voting

THE GUARDIAN: Tory joins Chuka Umunna and Sam Gyimah in plea to back Lib Dems to stop Brexit

The Conservative grandee Michael Heseltine has made an impassioned appeal to people to choose “the national interest” and ignore traditional party loyalties to help elect Liberal Democrats through tactical voting.

At a press conference alongside Chuka Umunna and Sam Gyimah, who sat as Lib Dem MPs in the last parliament having begun their careers with Labour and the Conservatives respectively, Lord Heseltine said he was still a Tory party member but planned to “lend my vote to the Lib Dems on this one issue” of stopping Brexit.

Heseltine, whose 25-year ministerial career included a stint as deputy prime minister under John Major, saluted Umunna, Gyimah and those who were planning to vote tactically.

“There are men and women whose commitment to our country, their sense of what matters to Britain, where the future of Britain lies, where the future of the younger generation lies, means that they have torn up their traditional loyalties,” he told the event in London. » | Peter Walker, Political correspondent | Wednesday, November 27, 2019

Tony Blair Says Tories and Labour Engaged in ‘Populism Running Riot'

THE GUARDIAN: Former PM lambasts parties and says upcoming election is ‘weirdest of my lifetime’

Tony Blair has said neither Labour nor the Conservatives are seen as fit to win the general election, accusing both parties of peddling “fantasies”.

The former prime minister, one of the architects of New Labour who was speaking at a Reuters Newsmaker event in London, said Britain’s biggest parties were engaged in “populism running riot” and it would end in tears.

Blair has repeatedly called for Brexit to be reversed and said the right thing would have been to hold a second referendum followed by a general election.

He described the poll on 12 December as “the weirdest of my lifetime”, adding: “The truth is: the public aren’t convinced either main party deserve to win this election outright. They’re peddling two sets of fantasies and both, as majority governments, pose a risk it would be unwise for the country to take.”

Blair, who guided Labour to three election victories, said people “rightly” did not trust Boris Johnson with a “blank cheque”. He said though Labour were promising a revolution, “the problem with revolutions is never how they begin but how they end”. » | Haroon Siddique | Monday, November 25, 2019

Boris Johnson Was Supposed to Be an Ace Campaigner. So Why Is He Stumbling?

THE NEW YORK TIMES: Exposed to hostile voices on the campaign trail, he has seemed at times unsure, tone deaf and gaffe prone. It could leave an opening for the underdog Labour Party.

LONDON — For months, Prime Minister Boris Johnson planned on calling a general election in Britain, figuring he could break the logjam in Parliament by taking his case for Brexit directly to the people. Instead, as he has floundered in the early stages of the campaign, Mr. Johnson has discovered that the people are taking their case to him.

“Where have you been?” asked a man angry at the government’s response to floods that have ravaged his Yorkshire town.

“You’ve got the cheek to come here,” a young woman chided him, saying that his promise of prosperity after Brexit was a “fairy tale.”

“I’m not very happy about talking to you, so if you don’t mind, I’ll just motor on with what I’m doing,” said another woman, filling sandbags.

In the voting this summer for Conservative Party leader — and, hence, prime minister — Mr. Johnson’s prime selling points were his personal popularity and skills as a campaigner. But in the early stages of the general election, exposed to hostile voices, he has seemed at times unsure, tone deaf and gaffe prone. » | Mark Landler and Stephen Castle | Thursday, November 14, 2019

A Not-Do-Special Relationship: Facing Voters, Johnson Backs Away From Trump

THE NEW YORK TIMES: Unpopular and unpredictable, President Trump is emerging as a problem for the British prime minister, Boris Johnson, in his election campaign.

LONDON — Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain spoke with President Trump by phone on Tuesday, and to judge by the dueling summaries of the call provided by the White House and 10 Downing Street, Mr. Johnson and Mr. Trump were involved in two completely different conversations.

The White House said the two leaders pledged to negotiate “a robust bilateral free trade agreement once the United Kingdom leaves the European Union.” Downing Street said nothing about a deal, noting instead that Mr. Johnson urged Mr. Trump to lift American tariffs on Scotch whisky.

Such divergent accounts of a leader-to-leader call are not unheard-of, but the timing of this one, on the eve of Britain’s general election campaign, was telling. It shows just how much of a liability Mr. Trump has become for Mr. Johnson. Once, the prime minister talked up the benefits of having a close friend in the White House; now he is distancing himself from a figure who is radioactive to many Britons. » | Mark Landler | Wednesday, November 6, 2019

Lib Dems, Plaid Cymru and Greens Launch Pro-remain Electoral Pact

THE GUARDIAN: Exclusive: parties will step aside for each other in 60 seats to give single pro-remain candidate a free run

The Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru and the Greens have finalised a plan to step aside for each other in 60 seats across England and Wales in the general election. The alliance is intended to give a free run to one pro-remain party in each constituency.

The agreement, which does not include Labour, covers 49 seats in England and 11 in Wales. It was made under the banner of a cross-party group called Unite to Remain, which has spent several months trying to broker the plan.

A so-called progressive alliance plan, also including Labour, was attempted before the 2017 election but arrangements were only made for a handful of seats, in part because of the difficulty of getting local parties to agree. » | Peter Walker and Heather Stewart | Wednesday, November 6, 2019

Boris Johnson Officially Calls General Election: Watch in Full

What a load of tosh this man speaks! Do you recognize this country from BoJo’s description of it? Because I don’t! Listening to him, anyone would be forgiven for concluding that he’s describing El Dorado, not the UK!

Oh God! These dudes think the people are stupid. If anyone believes this man’s claptrap, I’ve got a bridge to sell him in the desert. – Mark

Tactical Voting Could Deliver Remain Victory in Election – Study

THE GUARDIAN: Conservatives could be denied majority if one in three remain supporters switch votes

Tactical voting could swing a victory for pro-remain parties in the December election, new research suggests.

Boris Johnson would fail to get a majority if one in three pro-remain voters in England and Wales switched their vote, the campaign group Best for Britain said.

In this scenario, the Conservatives would win 309 seats, Labour 233, the Liberal Democrats 34, Plaid Cymru four and the Greens one. When the Scottish National party, Democratic Unionist party and the Commons Speaker are factored in, this would give pro-remain parties a majority of four.

Best for Britain has launched GetVoting.org to give tactical voting advice based on postcode. Naomi Smith, the organisation’s chief executive, said: “If we vote tactically we can stop a Boris Johnson majority and return a parliament that much more accurately reflects the state of the country’s views on the issue of Europe, which is now a majority pro-European country and we need a majority pro-European parliament. » | Kate Proctor | Wednesday, October 30, 2019

Tactical voting: GetVoting.org »

Boris Johnson Fails in Third Attempt to Call Early General Election

THE GUARDIAN: Prime minister falls short of two-thirds parliamentary majority required to call snap poll

Boris Johnson has lost his third bid for a general election, after Labour abstained and he failed to reach the two-thirds majority of MPs he needed for a poll. The result was 299 votes for and 70 against.

The prime minister is now expected to back a Liberal Democrat plan to change the law in order to secure an early election, although the parties do not yet agree on a date.

The Lib Dems want a date of 9 December, while students are still at university, but the Tories favour 12 December, after some have broken up for Christmas. » | Rowena Mason, Deputy political editor | Monday, October 28, 2019