UK Snap Elections: May’s Pyrrhic victory

David Cameron had called the UK referendum on the EU membership, hoping to get rid of the most Eurosceptic wing of his party and never expecting to lose, he ended up losing referendum and his job. Theresa May, comfortable in a 20+ percentage points lead in polls, called a snap election to have a stronger parliamentary support for her Brexit deal, she ended up without sufficient numbers at all.

If someone needed evidence that mainstream parties are detached from reality, it’s just there, one spectacular debacle after the other. After repeated terrorist attacks by Muslims in the United Kingdom, the best she could come up with was “internet censorship’’;¹⁾Theresa May doesn’t rule out regulating the internet like China, The Independent 2017-06-06.everyone should have their freedoms restricted because the UK government is unable to fix a problem resulting from decades of open borders policies, unwilling to break ties with countries like Saudi Arabia, despite the fact that secret services know it sponsors terrorism,²⁾Home Office may not publish terrorist funding report amid claims it focuses on Saudi Arabia, The Independent 2017-06-01.and negligence considering that attackers are often known to authorities for their views and previous crimes.

Unsurprisingly, the 20+ points lead evaporated within less than 2 months; the only reason Conservatives still come out as the biggest party is the disappearance of UKIP, former Conservative breakouts themselves in 1993, which having achieved their main goal, make the UK leave the European Union, have lost much of their purpose, their charismatic leader Nigel Farage and the funding; with former UKIP voters (12% of the total in 2015) switching to Conservatives, Theresa May managed to obtain more votes than her opponents, but not enough to secure the 326 seats majority needed in the lower chamber of the British Parliament.

What’s next? The last experience of the “hung government’’ saw a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, but Liberal Democrats are against Brexit and won’t likely work with Conservatives needing a majority specifically about that issue. The “Tories’’ might have to call for another election and in that case victory is everything but assured. May seems to have secured the support of the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland (10 seats, added to her 318) which has a more left leaning economic platform.

Corbyn the “unelectable’’
Labour leading figure David Miliband, brother of the candidate who had lost in an upset in 2015, is famous for having labeled Corbyn that way, an opinion supported by mainstream left leaning media.³⁾David Miliband savages ‘unelectable’ Jeremy Corbyn, and his own brother too, The Independent 2016-09-21.Corbyn was described as an extremist, a populist,⁴⁾Jeremy Corbyn is a great populist. But that’s no good for our democracy, The Guardian 2016-07-25.and received all the shower of insults reserved to candidates who do not adhere to the neoliberal stance of the progressive, third-way left, which in the meanwhile has proved to be unable to win in the us, as well as being at historical lows in the Netherlands and France (where it was dumped by Macron so as to enable him to run with a clean image).

Jeremy Corbyn is an old style socialist that still dares to speak about nationalizations after the end of the Soviet Union; but that wasn’t probably his appeal. As mainstream parties are increasingly seen as too corrupt to solve problems they themselves caused, Corbyn’s strength comes from having stuck to his principles, including sworn pacifism and rejection of the liberal interventionist foreign policy of Blair, Cameron, Bush and Obama.

Unlike Theresa May, he does not cover up Saudi funding of Salafist mosques in the UK, one of which was attended by the Manchester terrorist, but also calls out the Gulf state as an example of intellectual integrity that is rare these days.⁵⁾Jeremy Corbyn calls for ‘difficult conversations’ with Saudi Arabia and Gulf states over extremism funding, The Independent 2017-06-06.

In the end, he received more votes than his allegedly more electable predecessors, but still lost. What did he miss? His strong points were his anti-austerity economic agenda, his pacifism and integrity, some might argue that he offered a chance to disappointed “Bremainers’’ but it’d be a dishonest claim, Corbyn was never an EU enthusiast and reluctantly voted to remain, attracting massive criticism from the liberal left for his unconvinced campaigning,⁶⁾If we vote to leave the European Union, it will be Jeremy Corbyn’s fault, The Independent 2016-06-21..

Theresa May even helped him with her suicidal internet censorship campaign, that is sure to alienate the youth far more than Brexit ever could; someone in the mainstream media might still be tempted to spin it as a pro-EU surge, but it did not happen until the last few weeks and May’s totalitarian reaction against the internet; indeed youth participation was around 2/3 with a strong Labour support,(How young people made the difference in the election, Manchester Evening News 2017-06-09.)), while only 1/3 had voted in the referendum; if it was a pro-EU related it would have favore more the Liberal Democrats, the most pro-EU party, not Corbyn, but they had an even lower percentage than in 2015, despite winning more seats. Associating the youth surge in supporting Corbyn to willingness to remain in the EU is wishful thinking, causes are to seek elsewhere.

Nonetheless, why didn’t Corbyn win, despite his surge? The answer is simple and it’s the one that no one in left wing circles ever wants to address: immigration. The traditional left leaning voter, the working class is the one hurt the most by mass migration, via cheap wages, terrorist attacks and the high crime rates of migrant-inhabited suburbs; Aylesbury, ⁷⁾Six members of Asian sex gang are facing jail after being convicted of abusing a girl who was first groomed as she shopped in Woolworths aged 12, Daily Mail 2015-07-24.Banbury, ⁸⁾Banbury ‘social media party’ sex abuse gang jailed, BBC 2015-04-17.Derby, ⁹⁾Derby sex gang convicted of grooming and abusing girls, BBC 2010-11-24.Halifax, ¹⁰⁾How 100 men were able to prey on one vulnerable Halifax schoolgirl for two years, The Yorkshire Post 2016-06-17.Keighley, ¹¹⁾Keighley grooming case: ‘Arrogant’ Asian gang of 12 jailed for 130 years, The Yorkshire Post 2016-02-08.Oxford, ¹²⁾Oxford child sex abuse ring: seven jailed for torture and rape of girls, The Guardian 2013-06-27.Peterborough, ¹³⁾Peterborough grooming trial: Mohammed Khubaib guilty of sex offences on girls, BBC 2015-04-15.Rochdale, ¹⁴⁾Rochdale grooming trial: Nine found guilty of child sex charges, BBC 2012-05-08.Telford, ¹⁵⁾TV special to expose sex ring investigation in Shropshire, Shropshire Star 2013-05-19.and Rotherham, ¹⁶⁾‘Horrific’ Cases Of Child Abuse In Rotherham, Sky News 2014-08-26. have all in common the fact that they were hosts to gang rape rings, mostly perpetrated by people of South-Asian origin; in the last case the ethnicity of the perpetrators was the main reason it was covered up for years by the authorities out of fear to be called racist. The regularity of such occurrences in the last few years screams epidemic, yet falls on deaf years on the self-proclaimed protector of the working class. Too busy singing the praise of multicultural utopias, left wingers silence criticism on the matter, resulting in an anger that is unleashed in the voting booth. When it came to Brexit, immigration was a priority factor when deciding whether to leave or remain and in the end it proved to be decisive. Yet even if cheap labour resulting from mass migration should be a left wing economic argument, the Labour party is unable to have a discussion, leaving to Theresa May and her party’s so far empty promises to curb immigration. The result is that Labour still unable to reclaim much of rural England, once its core regions in terms of support.