UK/US Political Parallels?
December 13, 2019Posted in 5. Politics 9 comments
Last night while the Beloved Spouse was off at a holiday-themed meeting of her book club, I was glued to the Sky News coverage of the British election. As you are no doubt aware, the Conservative party won big – bigger than it had since Thatcher’s day. That result was clear from the moment that polls closed – 5:00 PM our time – though, so it wasn’t curiosity about who won that held my attention. Rather, I was fascinated by the emergence in the constituency-by-constituency results of two facts that seem highly relevant to our own politics.
The first of these relates to a profound change in traditional party loyalties. Regions that had been the heart of Labour’s support – old mining and industrial towns – went for the Tories, many for the first time since the 1930s or before. Meanwhile, prosperous, university-educated, urban voters shifted broadly toward Labour, just not in numbers that offset Labour’s losses in its traditional constituencies.
One of the on-air commentators remarked that these shifts represent a seismic change in how the British think about politics: whereas for generations, political loyalties had been determined by class – with the lower classes fiercely loyal to Labour, the upper to the Conservatives – this election marked a shift toward identity-based voting. Those who see themselves as solidly, and perhaps defensively, British voted Tory because Boris Johnson was quite clear about his intention to get Brexit done, while those who saw themselves as happy participants in the global economy either went for Labour, where Corbyn was equivocating on Brexit, but had a chance to win, or for the Liberal Democrats, a party that was fiercely pro-Remain, but had no shot at an over-all victory. (The Scots also voted their identities: they went for the SNP in a big way).
It almost goes without saying that this change in British voting patterns closely parallels the equally-unexpected shift in American voting patterns in 2016, when formerly-solidly-Democrat areas in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio and Missouri went for Trump while prosperous big-city suburbs moved away from the Republicans and into the Democrat camp.
The second aspect of the British election that fascinated me is the quite possibly decisive role played by a man – a very, very intelligent man, in my book – who was not on the ballot. Nigel Farage’s Brexit party had done very well in the 2017 British election with its extremely clear platform advocating a hard Brexit. Even though Farage thinks of Johnson as a relative “wet” on the Brexit question – Johnson would clearly prefer an exit negotiated on a friendly basis over simply quitting and sorting out the trade arrangements later – Farage decided not to contest yesterday’s election in districts in which he saw a real chance of a Tory victory.
Rather than split the broadly pro-Brexit votes and run the risk of an over-all Labour victory (or, worse yet, a Labour/Liberal Democrat coalition that might keep the UK in the EU) , Farage opted for supporting what he clearly saw as a second-best outcome that would inevitably deprive him and his followers of any formal power at all. He chose to advance his policy aims over personal advancement. Consequently, the pro-Brexit vote wasn’t split between the Tories and the Brexit party and the Tories had much better chances of prevailing, as they did.
The Liberal Democrats did exactly the opposite. They contested seats everywhere, offering the clearest anti-Brexit platform, thus giving upper-crust pro-Remain voters an alternative to voting for the frankly odious (but perhaps ultimately pro-Remain) Corbyn. The result was a bloodbath for Labour and the Liberal Democrats.
The American parallel to the counter-productive purism of the Liberal Democrats’ strategy is the apparently suicidal desire of the Democratic base to impeach President Trump. Apart from being, in my view, wrong on the facts and the law, Congressional Democrats’ apparent inability to control their base’s Trump Derangement Syndrome -derived compulsion to impeach is, well, stupid. They have no chance whatsoever of removing Trump and, again in my view, a Senate trial can only highlight both the flimsiness of their case and the corruption behind both the Mueller investigation and the Bidens’ family activities in Ukraine. The Trump-obsessed Democrats won’t get what they want and they will almost certainly end up with a lot of egg on their faces.
Like the Liberal Democrats, the Democrats are letting their passions get in the way of their preferred policy outcomes; they are opting for the politics of personal destruction over the steady or considered advancement of their policy aims – and I expect that they will pay a similar price to that of Labour and the Liberal Democrats.
And, oh, by the way, Farage will get most of what he wanted in terms of policy outcomes; he’ll also likely be treated as the extremely important power-broker that he is.
M.H. Johnston
http://civilhorizon.com/2019/12/13/uk-us-political-parallels/
The first of these relates to a profound change in traditional party loyalties. Regions that had been the heart of Labour’s support – old mining and industrial towns – went for the Tories, many for the first time since the 1930s or before. Meanwhile, prosperous, university-educated, urban voters shifted broadly toward Labour, just not in numbers that offset Labour’s losses in its traditional constituencies.
One of the on-air commentators remarked that these shifts represent a seismic change in how the British think about politics: whereas for generations, political loyalties had been determined by class – with the lower classes fiercely loyal to Labour, the upper to the Conservatives – this election marked a shift toward identity-based voting. Those who see themselves as solidly, and perhaps defensively, British voted Tory because Boris Johnson was quite clear about his intention to get Brexit done, while those who saw themselves as happy participants in the global economy either went for Labour, where Corbyn was equivocating on Brexit, but had a chance to win, or for the Liberal Democrats, a party that was fiercely pro-Remain, but had no shot at an over-all victory. (The Scots also voted their identities: they went for the SNP in a big way).
It almost goes without saying that this change in British voting patterns closely parallels the equally-unexpected shift in American voting patterns in 2016, when formerly-solidly-Democrat areas in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio and Missouri went for Trump while prosperous big-city suburbs moved away from the Republicans and into the Democrat camp.
The second aspect of the British election that fascinated me is the quite possibly decisive role played by a man – a very, very intelligent man, in my book – who was not on the ballot. Nigel Farage’s Brexit party had done very well in the 2017 British election with its extremely clear platform advocating a hard Brexit. Even though Farage thinks of Johnson as a relative “wet” on the Brexit question – Johnson would clearly prefer an exit negotiated on a friendly basis over simply quitting and sorting out the trade arrangements later – Farage decided not to contest yesterday’s election in districts in which he saw a real chance of a Tory victory.
Rather than split the broadly pro-Brexit votes and run the risk of an over-all Labour victory (or, worse yet, a Labour/Liberal Democrat coalition that might keep the UK in the EU) , Farage opted for supporting what he clearly saw as a second-best outcome that would inevitably deprive him and his followers of any formal power at all. He chose to advance his policy aims over personal advancement. Consequently, the pro-Brexit vote wasn’t split between the Tories and the Brexit party and the Tories had much better chances of prevailing, as they did.
The Liberal Democrats did exactly the opposite. They contested seats everywhere, offering the clearest anti-Brexit platform, thus giving upper-crust pro-Remain voters an alternative to voting for the frankly odious (but perhaps ultimately pro-Remain) Corbyn. The result was a bloodbath for Labour and the Liberal Democrats.
The American parallel to the counter-productive purism of the Liberal Democrats’ strategy is the apparently suicidal desire of the Democratic base to impeach President Trump. Apart from being, in my view, wrong on the facts and the law, Congressional Democrats’ apparent inability to control their base’s Trump Derangement Syndrome -derived compulsion to impeach is, well, stupid. They have no chance whatsoever of removing Trump and, again in my view, a Senate trial can only highlight both the flimsiness of their case and the corruption behind both the Mueller investigation and the Bidens’ family activities in Ukraine. The Trump-obsessed Democrats won’t get what they want and they will almost certainly end up with a lot of egg on their faces.
Like the Liberal Democrats, the Democrats are letting their passions get in the way of their preferred policy outcomes; they are opting for the politics of personal destruction over the steady or considered advancement of their policy aims – and I expect that they will pay a similar price to that of Labour and the Liberal Democrats.
And, oh, by the way, Farage will get most of what he wanted in terms of policy outcomes; he’ll also likely be treated as the extremely important power-broker that he is.
M.H. Johnston
http://civilhorizon.com/2019/12/13/uk-us-political-parallels/
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