Posted in: Comics, Current News | Tagged: general election, Keir Starmer, nigel farage, politics, Rishi Sunak

Six Days To The British General Election And The Madness The Day After

Rich Johnston, founder of Bleeding Cool, is a British political cartoonist, and looking at the General Election being held on July 4th.

Rich Johnston, founder of Bleeding Cool, is a British political cartoonist. This is the first of several columns in the run-up to the General Election being held by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland on July 4th.

This is going to be the maddest General Election this country has had in a century and every day up to the day of the vote, I am going to explain why. I may overexplain a bit, as a lot of Americans have been asking me as well. But I hope you enjoy it. I will run a piece every day up until the election, but today, we are going to skip to the end and talk about what is likely to happen after the election because that's when I reckon it is going to get truly insane.

But first, a look at where we are. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has had a Conservative Party in government since 2010. And since then, things have gotten worse. Some of that will be down to the pandemic. A lot of that is down to Brexit and, no matter who you believe about sovereignty and national control, saw the pound crash, inflation rise, prices increase, services get worse, and strikes kick-off. This may also have actually helped reduce immigration, because who wants to emigrate to an economy like that, but it turns out still a lot of people do, which has its own problems.

The Conservative Government, also known as the Tories, were elected initially as a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, with David Cameron as leader. They deposed the former Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the Labour Party, who had then just taken over from Tony Blair, in retrospect, was a steady hand on the wheel, a relative oasis of calm, though it didn't feel like that at the time. Cameron enacted an "austerity" policy after the financial crash, reducing state spending as he saw it, reducing state investment in the economy as others saw it. He legalised gay marriage, got a second term in 2015 in which he didn't need those pesky Liberal Democrats anymore, but instead chose to do a deal with UKIP, the party led by Nigel Farage, against membership of the European Union and plenty of other populist, reactionary measures, often from both sides of the political spectrum, but definitely veering right. Cameron promised a referendum for EU membership under a Tory government, and UKIP basically stopped stealing votes from the Tories. And he delivered, We all know how that went.

Cameron resigned after Britain voted Leave by a 4% margin, Conservative members voted in Theresa May a Leave supporter but pushing for a "soft Brexit". When not even Labour would back her, she was deposed by her own members, further to the right than her, and Conservative MP Boris Johnson stepped in, promising to "get Brexit" done. A clown of a Prime Minister, he won the 2019 General Election with a higher proportion of the vote than anyone since Blair, and went to town. Breaking Parliamentary procedure to get his way and make Brexit happen. This was partly achieved by persuading Nigel Farage not to stand candidates against pro-Brexit Conservative MPs, which got his own troops into line with the Brexit issue. He may not have been the ideal Prime Minister to lead Britain through Covid, but at least he kept spirits up. But it was the parties in Downing Street during lockdown, coupled with his laissez-faire attitude to friends of his accused of sexual assault that doomed him. So the Conservatives voted Boris-in-a-dress Liz Truss to be their leader and defacto Prime Minister. She lasted shorter than any other Prime Minister in our history after a "mini-budget" that crashed the economy and raised interest rates massively. Her leadership rival, Rishi Sunak, was the only candidate left, so he took over as Prime Minister.

So now, everything is still pretty much as bad as it was. Inflation is down, but the effects it has are still here. His promise to tackle immigration has failed. Planned infrastructure was abandoned. Taxes are higher than they have ever been, and the National Health Service has massive waiting lists. It looks like an own goal for Labour leader, Leader Of The Opposition Keir Starmer. And basically, it is.

But what makes it worse for Rishi is that Nigel Farage has had a resurgence, with The Reform Party, basically UKIP and the Brexit Party with a new name. He is standing candidates in all seats across the country, he can't be bought off this time, and a large chunk of the Conservative vote has gone to Reform. Some Labour too, but mostly the Tories. A mixture of anti-immigration, anti-tax, anti-BBC, anti-woke policies, because of the British electoral system they may well get the 15-20% vote the polls are predicting without gaining a seat, not even for Nigel Farage in Clacton, most likely to go Reform.

Because yes, Britain has an electoral representation akin to the US electoral college, but every elected representative, 650 of them, will represent their constituency in Parliament as an MP. This means that parties that can concentrate their vote in areas to get majorities in those seats and get elected members, and those that are spread out can get no representation at all. So nationalist parties like Scotland's SNP and Wales' Plaid Cyrmu can get more seats in Parliament with a smaller overall share of the vote than parties such as the Liberal Democrats.

What this means this year is that Nigel Farage is going to smash the Conservative Party, as Conservatives fail to get majorities in their individual constituencies and split the right-wing vote, leaving Labour able to get around 70% of the seats, a massively strong government the likes of which we have not seen since extended suffrage, with only 35-40% of the vote. Americans, picture Ross Perot with a chainsaw. And why would he want to do this?

To pick up the pieces. An enraged Conservative Party, many of whose members see Nigel Farage as their spiritual leader, may demand that they merge with Reform. Or even get taken over by Reform, to unite as a Populist Right Wing Opposition in time for a 2029 General Election. While another part of the Conservative Party who see Farage as an anathema to everything they stand for, will split off as their own Lefty Wet Conservative Party.

An emboldened Labour Party with a huge majority in Parliament will feel free to copy this, secure that whatever they do, Labour will still stay in government and the Tories won't be. The left of the party, who have felt hard done by this electoral cycle, may split off with other elected but ejected Labour members such as George Galloway and former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to create a new Really Left Labour Party. And the Liberal Democrats may seem increasingly irrelevant and may seek to find a common cause with the right of Labour in government and the left of the Conservative Party. It is even suggested that a split Labour government will keep David Cameron, former Prime Minister who kicked off all this madness and current Foreign Secretary under Rishi, in his position, as part of a national unity move.

The last time British politics got this interesting was in the early eighties when four prominent members of the Labour Party split to form their own party, the SDP, because Labour had gotten too left-wing for them. Eventually, they merged with the Liberal Party, forming the Alliance, later renamed Liberal Democrats, and for a time, dominated the electoral polls before an actual General Election came along, as well as the Falklands War, and people got real.

So, while this series of articles will be counting down to July the 4th, the General Election, it will be July the 5th when things really get mental… so much more to talk about before then.

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