Post by Sysop3 on Dec 11, 2019 21:09:39 GMT -5
UK voters face a stark left-right choice that will (finally) decide Brexit — and might shape America’s future
This article seems a little different and I thought it might be an interesting point of view for election day.
Precisely as Donald Trump is being impeached by the U.S. Congress, British voters go to the polls on Thursday in a history-shaping national election, the U.K.’s third in less than five years. It has numerous echoes and resonances of the forthcoming U.S. presidential election, starting with the charismatic but abominable incumbent prime minister, Boris Johnson, who resembles Trump translated into Upper-Class Twit. But the differences are also striking, none more so than the fact that despite the enormous stakes in this election, in which Johnson’s Conservative Party and Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party have vowed to take the nation in dramatically different directions, the entire campaign has been confined to six weeks.
The fact that this election is happening at all is an indication of how much the battle over Brexit — the U.K.’s departure from the European Union, which still hasn’t happened and still, just conceivably, might not happen — has disrupted British politics. In earlier times a prime minister could simply call for an election at any point within the five-year term of an elected Parliament. But since 2011 the U.K. has theoretically committed to a more regular, American-style schedule, with national elections held in May every five years. It hasn’t worked out that way.
In the spring of 2015 — the first and, for now, last of those scheduled “fixed-term” elections — Tory (i.e., Conservative) Prime Minister David Cameron won an election many observers thought he might lose. One of Cameron’s campaign promises was to hold a referendum the following year on British membership in the EU. That was when the wheels started to come off.
It’s important to understand that Cameron, along with most leading figures in both the Conservative and Labour parties, favored remaining in the EU and assumed the Brexit campaign would fail. He resigned almost immediately after the shock result of the 2016 referendum, in which 52 percent voted for the “Leave” option. His replacement as prime minister, Theresa May, had also been a “Remainer,” which probably doomed her from the start. May got Parliament to approve an unscheduled “snap election” in 2017, hoping to consolidate power, and lost her governing majority, holding onto Downing Street only thanks to an alliance with the Democratic Unionist Party, a tiny right-wing grouping representing Northern Ireland Protestants. There will be a quiz!
But hang on. We have to back up here, because there’s a further level of irony that’s especially difficult for left-liberal Americans to grasp. After Labour’s defeat in 2015, a left-wing insurgency took control of the party in a populist uprising anticipated by exactly no one, after 20-odd years of more centrist, compromise-oriented leadership. Labour’s new leader, Jeremy Corbyn, was a longtime backbencher viewed as a relic of the Old Left, elected with the enthusiastic support of a generation of young activists. (We’ll discuss the obvious Bernie Sanders parallels below.)
Here’s the thing: Although Corbyn, as Labour leader, officially and somewhat begrudgingly advocated a “Remain” vote, he comes out of a tradition of deep skepticism towards Europe on the British left. Everyone could tell his heart wasn’t in it, and it has often been suggested he personally voted “Leave.” So as perverse as this may seem, it’s not entirely false to suggest that the leader of the Conservative Party in 2016 was a Remainer (while most Tory voters went for Leave) and the leader of the Labour Party was a Brexiteer (while most Labour voters chose Remain).
Theresa May replaced Cameron, nearly lost to Corbyn in 2017 and endured a series of epic humiliations in her attempt to craft a Brexit deal with EU leaders in Brussels. She quit in disgrace earlier this year and was replaced by Johnson, a world-class con man and incompetent who — after playing Tory moderate as mayor of London — has rebranded himself as an all-out Brexiteer wrapped in the Union Jack. No one quite like him could exist in the U.S., but if you took the worst qualities of Trump, Mitt Romney and Tucker Carlson and sort of Mixmastered them together, you’d get close. Author and journalist David Kogan, in our conversation below, described Johnson as “the most authoritarian, the most brutal leader of any party” in modern British politics.
That almost gets us to where we are right now, with a highly uncertain election between two leaders with devoted fan followings who are viewed with great suspicion, or significant dislike, by the wider public. Johnson is running on a Brexit deal that, in the best possible construction, is worse than the deals May made. Corbyn, meanwhile, has made clear why no one took him seriously as a leadership candidate. While embracing an ambitious and frankly inspiring left-wing reform agenda, Corbyn has steadfastly refused to take a clear position on Brexit and was extremely slow to respond to a series of ugly anti-Semitic episodes that have tarnished not just his image but the entire party’s.
In an effort to make sense of all this — and what the fate of Labour and the British left might mean for America — I reached out to David Kogan, whose recent book “Protest and Power: The Battle for the Labour Party” offers a definitive, deeply-reported account of that party’s ideological swings over the last 40 years, and the unlikely rise of the Corbynistas. It’s a book Americans should read too, both because at times it reads like a funhouse-mirror reflection of the Democratic Party’s history and because our two nations — so overly proud of our democracies for so long! — currently lead the world in political dysfunction.
more
www.rawstory.com/2019/12/uk-voters-face-a-stark-left-right-choice-that-will-finally-decide-brexit-and-might-shape-americas-future/
This article seems a little different and I thought it might be an interesting point of view for election day.
Precisely as Donald Trump is being impeached by the U.S. Congress, British voters go to the polls on Thursday in a history-shaping national election, the U.K.’s third in less than five years. It has numerous echoes and resonances of the forthcoming U.S. presidential election, starting with the charismatic but abominable incumbent prime minister, Boris Johnson, who resembles Trump translated into Upper-Class Twit. But the differences are also striking, none more so than the fact that despite the enormous stakes in this election, in which Johnson’s Conservative Party and Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party have vowed to take the nation in dramatically different directions, the entire campaign has been confined to six weeks.
The fact that this election is happening at all is an indication of how much the battle over Brexit — the U.K.’s departure from the European Union, which still hasn’t happened and still, just conceivably, might not happen — has disrupted British politics. In earlier times a prime minister could simply call for an election at any point within the five-year term of an elected Parliament. But since 2011 the U.K. has theoretically committed to a more regular, American-style schedule, with national elections held in May every five years. It hasn’t worked out that way.
In the spring of 2015 — the first and, for now, last of those scheduled “fixed-term” elections — Tory (i.e., Conservative) Prime Minister David Cameron won an election many observers thought he might lose. One of Cameron’s campaign promises was to hold a referendum the following year on British membership in the EU. That was when the wheels started to come off.
It’s important to understand that Cameron, along with most leading figures in both the Conservative and Labour parties, favored remaining in the EU and assumed the Brexit campaign would fail. He resigned almost immediately after the shock result of the 2016 referendum, in which 52 percent voted for the “Leave” option. His replacement as prime minister, Theresa May, had also been a “Remainer,” which probably doomed her from the start. May got Parliament to approve an unscheduled “snap election” in 2017, hoping to consolidate power, and lost her governing majority, holding onto Downing Street only thanks to an alliance with the Democratic Unionist Party, a tiny right-wing grouping representing Northern Ireland Protestants. There will be a quiz!
But hang on. We have to back up here, because there’s a further level of irony that’s especially difficult for left-liberal Americans to grasp. After Labour’s defeat in 2015, a left-wing insurgency took control of the party in a populist uprising anticipated by exactly no one, after 20-odd years of more centrist, compromise-oriented leadership. Labour’s new leader, Jeremy Corbyn, was a longtime backbencher viewed as a relic of the Old Left, elected with the enthusiastic support of a generation of young activists. (We’ll discuss the obvious Bernie Sanders parallels below.)
Here’s the thing: Although Corbyn, as Labour leader, officially and somewhat begrudgingly advocated a “Remain” vote, he comes out of a tradition of deep skepticism towards Europe on the British left. Everyone could tell his heart wasn’t in it, and it has often been suggested he personally voted “Leave.” So as perverse as this may seem, it’s not entirely false to suggest that the leader of the Conservative Party in 2016 was a Remainer (while most Tory voters went for Leave) and the leader of the Labour Party was a Brexiteer (while most Labour voters chose Remain).
Theresa May replaced Cameron, nearly lost to Corbyn in 2017 and endured a series of epic humiliations in her attempt to craft a Brexit deal with EU leaders in Brussels. She quit in disgrace earlier this year and was replaced by Johnson, a world-class con man and incompetent who — after playing Tory moderate as mayor of London — has rebranded himself as an all-out Brexiteer wrapped in the Union Jack. No one quite like him could exist in the U.S., but if you took the worst qualities of Trump, Mitt Romney and Tucker Carlson and sort of Mixmastered them together, you’d get close. Author and journalist David Kogan, in our conversation below, described Johnson as “the most authoritarian, the most brutal leader of any party” in modern British politics.
That almost gets us to where we are right now, with a highly uncertain election between two leaders with devoted fan followings who are viewed with great suspicion, or significant dislike, by the wider public. Johnson is running on a Brexit deal that, in the best possible construction, is worse than the deals May made. Corbyn, meanwhile, has made clear why no one took him seriously as a leadership candidate. While embracing an ambitious and frankly inspiring left-wing reform agenda, Corbyn has steadfastly refused to take a clear position on Brexit and was extremely slow to respond to a series of ugly anti-Semitic episodes that have tarnished not just his image but the entire party’s.
In an effort to make sense of all this — and what the fate of Labour and the British left might mean for America — I reached out to David Kogan, whose recent book “Protest and Power: The Battle for the Labour Party” offers a definitive, deeply-reported account of that party’s ideological swings over the last 40 years, and the unlikely rise of the Corbynistas. It’s a book Americans should read too, both because at times it reads like a funhouse-mirror reflection of the Democratic Party’s history and because our two nations — so overly proud of our democracies for so long! — currently lead the world in political dysfunction.
more
www.rawstory.com/2019/12/uk-voters-face-a-stark-left-right-choice-that-will-finally-decide-brexit-and-might-shape-americas-future/
Alpha 