Lockdown: The sequel

When the history of Britain in 2020 is written historians may well look back at Saturday 31 October as the point at which something changed. Not only did it mark the last weekend before the most momentous Presidential election in modern US history, which will have a big bearing on the UK (see below), but it was the day something else snapped. It was the day Boris Johnson was forced to introduce a second lockdown in England – a policy so deeply unpopular that he spent weeks denying it would be necessary despite calls from the scientific community that it was inevitable.

We can debate whether it is the right thing to do. My own view is that it is, and in the absence of effective medical treatment the government has little choice. But it represents yet another U-turn by a government which has continued throughout this year to follow a particular policy course despite evidence suggesting it was on the wrong track, only to do a 180 degree turn at the last minute. I suspect yesterday was the point when the government lost much of the little credibility it had left.

Other European governments have, of course, introduced second lockdowns and they are also unpopular. But the UK situation is different because it is led by a prime minister who is deeply distrusted by a large part of the electorate, despite winning a convincing victory in an election just over 10 months ago. Johnson carries so much baggage as a result of Brexit that he has to over-deliver in order to persuade his critics that he is up to the job.  Unfortunately for him, he has spent the last year over-promising and under-delivering. 

The domestic context 

Twelve months ago it was very different. Johnson had finally secured the go-ahead for the election he craved and went on to win a thumping majority in December, allowing him to deliver on his promise to "get Brexit done." The Conservatives promised to "level up" the regional imbalances in the UK, which gave a glimmer of hope to those outside the south east that they would finally get a fairer share of the national economic pie. It all sounded very promising. Then along came Covid-19.

Any government would have struggled in the face of this event. It represents the sort of exogenous shock that is talked about in economic textbooks with blithe authority but the reality of dealing with such shocks is a very different matter. It was inevitable that mistakes would be made. But it is the nature of the mistakes that has so undermined trust, giving rise to accusations of a lack of joined-up thinking.

One of the criticisms aimed at Johnson's government is that as the pandemic took hold the lockdown should have been introduced earlier. Maybe it should. But the scientific evidence at that time was not unanimously in favour and I would give the government a pass. But what was less forgivable was the decision to empty hospitals to make space to treat Covid cases without adequately testing whether those being sent out into the community were Covid positive. This allowed the disease to take hold in old age care homes and contributed to the UK's high mortality rate (this mistake was also repeated in Belgium). Nor did the government recover from the Dominic Cummings incident which gave the impression that there was one rule for those who were part of the inner circle and another for those who were not. The moral authority of the lockdown was at this point shot through.

Over the summer the government was understandably desperate to get the economy back on its feet. The policy of gradual reopening appeared to be working as case numbers continued to fall. But the Eat Out to Help Out scheme is now viewed as one of the catalysts of the second wave, with an economic paper by Thiemo Fetzer providing evidence that it “had  a  large  causal  impact  in  accelerating the  subsequent  second  COVID19 wave,” whilst the reopening of schools has accelerated the process. To some extent there is an air of retrospective criticism involved. However, whilst cautiously opening the economy was not necessarily a bad policy at the time, it may have been pursued too aggressively.

More damaging for the government has been the dispute between urban centres in northern England and the Westminster government about the introduction of regional lockdowns and the degree of financial support they can be expected to receive in return. The Mayor of Greater Manchester’s call for a package of measures costing a mere £65 million was rejected as being too expensive. But yesterday the government extended for another month the national furlough scheme, covering 80% of the wages of furlough workers, which is likely to cost around £10bn. To compound the problems, the footballer Marcus Rashford’s campaign to persuade the government to provide free school meals during holiday periods to children of low paid families has generated a huge groundswell of support. This comes after Tory MPs voted against the proposal on 21 October. In terms of the signals being sent, the electorate does not like what it sees. 

The international context 

This brings us inevitably to Brexit. The government has already achieved its aim of leaving the EU but so far has not secured the trade deal with the EU that it claimed a year ago was “oven ready.” What is more concerning is that its handling of the Covid crisis betrays a government that is not fully in control of its brief. Worse still, people are now beginning to wake up to the prospect that it cannot be trusted to deliver a Brexit that delivers what its proponents promised, as latest survey evidence suggests. Whilst not absolving the EU for part of the blame, the UK’s petulant negotiating tactics have made things far more difficult than they need have been. I have long believed that the government would be forced to do a deal with the EU because not to do so would be economic suicide. But the “skinny” Brexit deal which is the best the government is likely to get, is insufficient to help large parts of the economy even in the absence of Covid. In the words of former civil servant Ivan Rogers “we are talking about the difference between a very hard Brexit and an ultra-hard Brexit.”

And so to the US election. You may think this is tangential to the UK but it is not. A Biden presidency would likely seek to normalize relations between the US and its traditional European allies. But the UK is increasingly out of step with the rest of the EU and the current British government is viewed with deep suspicion by the Biden camp. Johnson leads a government with a nationalist, (semi) populist agenda which is viewed favourably by Donald Trump. This is one factor likely to count against it. Biden has also come out in favour of supporting the Good Friday Agreement which the UK’s Internal Market Bill threatens to undermine. With Joe Biden in the White House, the UK can forget any preferential treatment in getting a trade deal with the US, which makes it all the more imperative that it can reach an agreement with the EU.

The bottom line 

It is difficult to make any objective assessment of how well the current UK government has performed against its predecessors or indeed against its peers in other countries. But the degree to which the electorate is split on important issues such as Covid and Brexit is in my experience unprecedented. That said, four decades of polling evidence suggest that the government’s approval ratings have not suffered as much as the headline writers might have us believe (chart above). Indeed the current approval/disapproval rating is bang in line with the average on data back to 1977 (at 30% and 60% respectively). Do not forget that in summer 2019 the government’s approval rating fell to an all-time low of just 8% yet six months later it secured a big election win. Whilst it is too early to write off Boris Johnson this early in his term of office, he needs some good news if he is to have any chance of leading his party into a second election.

No-one is above the law

Since early 2016 the well of public debate has become increasingly poisoned by rising levels of mendacity. It had been occurring before that, of course, but the Brexit referendum campaign brought out the worst in the political class with both sides – but especially the Leavers – making increasingly outrageous claims. One of the lasting consequences of the referendum is that public figures have realised that since there are no sanctions for lying in public debate, this tactic can be repeatedly applied. At some point, however, the lies begin to catch up with you. This week marked such a point with the government apparently intent on trashing its international reputation with its blatant willingness to break international law in order to secure the Brexit deal it wants. 

What happened? 

Earlier this week the UK government presented the Internal Market Bill (IMB) which, as a government minister admitted to parliament, would “break international law in a very specific and limited way.” That is a bit like saying a criminal charged with theft could claim that since they were not charged with murder, they breached only a limited part of the law in a specific way. The legal profession was quick to point out that the Attorney General’s defence of this action was “risible”. The shadow Attorney General noted: “The rule of law is not pick and mix, with acceptable laws chosen by the home secretary or an adviser in Number 10.” Such was the strength of feeling within the civil service that the head of the UK government’s legal department resigned. Clearly this action flies in the face of the image that the UK has tried to project for decades that it stands for the rule of law, and has prompted warnings from three former leaders of the Conservative Party that it threatens to undermine the UK’s standing on the world stage. So why has the government taken such a stance? 

What is the government trying to do? 

The government’s biggest concern is that the Withdrawal Agreement, drawn up by the UK and EU in October 2019 and passed into British law in January 2020, draws a border between Britain and the island of Ireland which runs down the middle of the Irish Sea. This has significant legal and economic consequences. One of those consequences is the treatment of state aid which underpins the enforcement of the European single market. In the Northern Ireland Protocol of the Withdrawal Agreement, Article 10 makes it very plain that “the provisions of Union law [relating to state aid rules] shall apply to the United Kingdom.” In other words, the limits on state aid which were in force when the UK was a member of the EU will also apply in the event that the Withdrawal Agreement comes into effect.

In the IMB legislation presented this week, the Bill states that “Regulations … may (among other things) make provisions – (a) about the interpretation of Article 10; (b) disapplying, or modifying the effect of Article 10”. Clause 45 of the IMB goes on to say the provisions in the bill “have effect notwithstanding any relevant international or domestic law with which they may be incompatible or inconsistent.” In other words the government has given itself carte blanche to take actions which are unlawful. This is not “a very specific and limited” breach of the law. The government intends to drive a coach and horses through it.

What is the point of such action? 

A number of well-placed sources have reported that the UK has taken specific exception to state aid rules because it wishes to provide support to the tech industry as the economy repositions for the digital age. Ironically, the UK has traditionally been opposed to state aid to support particular industries. According to the EU’s State Aid Scoreboard the UK share of state aid spending in 2018 was 0.34% of GDP versus an EU average of 0.76%. It could thus double its support and not be out of line with the rest of the EU. Without knowing exactly who in government is pushing the idea, we know that Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s key adviser, is passionate about all things tech. According to Cummings: "Countries that were late to industrialisation were owned/coerced by those early (to it) ... The same will happen to countries without trillion dollar tech companies over the next 20 years." 

But the UK’s efforts to back industrial winners over the last 70 years have been abysmal. British Leyland, the former state-owned car giant, was a microcosm of all that was wrong with state-backed capitalism: Management which did not know how to manage organising a labour force which did not want to work to produce cars for a public which did not want to buy them. Previous efforts to back tech companies include ICL, formed in 1968 to create a British computer industry that could compete with major world manufacturers like IBM - an experience that did not end well. ICL was sold to Fujitsu in 1990. Nor did the Conservative government raise any eyebrows when ARM was sold to Softbank in 2016. In any case, for all the noises about generating tech titans to compete on the world market, the UK will not be able to develop one if it is unable to sell into the European market. And that is precisely what will happen if the current spat results in no trade deal between the UK and EU. 

Implications 

It is worth noting that the agreement which Theresa May’s government reached with the EU did not envisage a border in the middle of the Irish Sea. In her words to parliament, “no UK Prime Minister could ever agree to” such a plan. Her government therefore reached an agreement with the EU which created a UK-wide ‘single customs territory’, avoiding the need for customs checks between Great Britain and Northern Ireland although the province maintained regulatory alignment with the EU. But Northern Irish politicians objected because it would have introduced differences in regulation between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, even though a majority of the population were in favour. Hardline Brexiteers (including Johnson) objected because it would have meant the UK remaining in a customs territory with the EU, removing the UK’s ability to vary its tariffs. Therefore the plan which the Johnson government signed up to allowed the UK to vary tariffs but in return reintroduced the sea border. 

For anyone in government to argue that they did not understand the implications of the plan is disingenuous. This was a plan the Johnson government negotiated and signed up to in October 2019; sold to the electorate during the election campaign (“Our deal is the only one on the table. It is signed, sealed and ready”) and was passed by a majority of 331 to 231 in the House of Commons on 9 January. Johnson owns this – there is no getting away from that fact. So why undertake such a stupid act? 

Perhaps one of the objectives is to prompt the EU to walk away from negotiations, thereby delivering the no-deal Brexit which some in government appear to want. With the EU rather than the British government withdrawing, the government could then blame the adverse economic fallout on the EU. But the experienced EU negotiators are smarter than to fall for that trick and have instead called for the UK to withdraw its plans to override the Withdrawal Agreement by end-September or potentially face a legal challenge. The US has also applied pressure with Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House of Representatives, warning that if “Brexit undermines the Good Friday accord, there will be absolutely no chance of a US-UK trade agreement passing the Congress.” The Johnson government is thus looking ever more diplomatically friendless. Going ahead with a policy which jeopardises a trade deal with both the EU and the US would be the height of stupidity.

As to how all this ends, the next few days will tell. The IMB may fail to pass the House of Commons if sufficient MPs rebel against the government. It may be blocked in the Lords where by convention manifesto commitments are not blocked (the Salisbury Convention), but a policy which contravenes promises made to the electorate is likely to promote significant resistance. It may even be passed into law! However, I maintain that there is still a Brexit deal to be done but the limits of what the EU will tolerate are being tested. Whatever happens, this is a government which is rapidly losing the trust of large parts of the electorate as well as unsettling the international diplomatic community. At a time when it is drawing up new measures to combat the spread of Covid-19, it would do well to remember that they will only be successful if people comply with the law. And as last year’s legal challenge made clear, even the government is not above the law.

How is he doing?

A year ago I posed the question “if Johnson is the answer, what is the question?” Twelve months on, the question still stands. It has been a remarkably turbulent year, what with last year’s constitutional shenanigans; a general election; Brexit and the outbreak of Covid-19. On the basis of this BBC Fact Check Johnson's record is at best checkered. He failed in his primary objective to leave the EU on 31 October ("no ifs or buts"); his position on the Irish border has been less than honest and his much-vaunted social care plan has yet to see the light of day. Being generous, Johnson’s programme has been derailed by the worst recession in 300 years. But as I noted around the time of last year’s election it is still not clear what Johnson believes in, apart from delivering Brexit – and even then, he has cynically used this cause celebre as a platform for his ambition rather than being a hardline supporter of the policy.

There have over recent months been many claims in certain areas of the media that the Johnson government is engaged in shifting the political centre of gravity to the right and it is prepared to ride roughshod over the niceties of the British constitution in pursuit of its aims. Reasonable people can agree to disagree on this point but it certainly looks as though his government has taken the old Facebook maxim to heart: “Move fast and break things.” Johnson’s actions over the last 12 months are more authoritarian than anything we have experienced in British politics in living memory. Take for example, the attempt to suspend parliament last year in a bid to deliver Brexit – subsequently overturned by the courts – and the suspension of 21 MPs from the Conservative Party for defying the government. Whatever you might think of the action, and regular readers will know I was not a fan, it was at least designed to break the parliamentary deadlock over Brexit which had paralysed the government over the preceding three years.

But the recent decision to withdraw the whip from Julian Lewis for having the temerity to run against, and beat, the government’s preferred candidate to chair the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) was worrying on a number of levels and it highlights many of the weaknesses at the heart of the Johnson government. First, it appears from the outside that the government was prepared to appoint a lackey to oversee the release of the highly sensitive report into Russian influence on British public life. Filling parliamentary committees with “yes” men (and women) erodes the ability of parliament to hold the government to account on matters of national importance. Second, the government’s preferred candidate, Chris Grayling, does not have a strong track record of delivering. As The Economist noted last week, there is a dearth of talent in government because MPs are subject to “a Brexit purity test” which acts as a barrier to many competent people. Third, the fact that the government managed to lose a rigged election to the ISC calls into question its general competence to deliver on some of the bigger issues it will have to face (notably Brexit). Finally, the fact that the ISC report found that the government had not even bothered to investigate allegations of Russian involvement – whether true or not – points to remarkable complacency on matters of national importance.

In a week when the UK and EU warned that little progress has been made towards signing a trade deal by year-end and there is no prospect of a trade deal with the US, the risks to the UK economy are mounting. As it happens, I still believe that the UK and EU will sign some form of trade agreement before 31 December for to do otherwise would be a major policy failure that the government cannot afford. But in terms of international economic relations, the government appears to have a dwindling circle of friends following its decision to cut Huawei out of the 5G network and this week’s spat with Russia. When the government claimed that Brexit would allow the UK to forge its own path, nobody imagined it would be quite this alone on the world stage.

During his tenure as London Mayor Johnson was noted for being a hands-off leader, preferring to delegate the hard thinking to a group of trusted advisers. At the heart of Johnson’s administration is his chief adviser Dominic Cummings who is a man in a hurry to get things done. Cummings appears indispensable to the Johnson project – after all, his clear breach of the Covid-19 lockdown guidelines would in most circumstances have seen him removed from office. For anyone interested in understanding Cummings, his views and modus operandi, I heartily recommend this BBC documentary (Youtube link here). I am uncomfortable with the media attention Cummings generates, and the picture that is painted of a guy who controls the heart of government (a view I hope is untrue). My impression is that Cummings is an iconoclast who wants to make radical changes to the way in which Britain is governed. Whilst he is clearly persuasive and articulate, I do not get the sense that he has thought through the longer-term implications of his ideas. In short, he is a campaigner rather than a man who follows through. 

I can see why this appeals to Johnson, who is a fantastic campaigner in his own right and always looking for the next idea to sell. But this is not how the hard work of governance is conducted. If politics is the art of the possible, a sensible strategy is to adopt a small number of ambitious but achievable goals rather than trying to do too many things at once. Arguably it is this rush to do too much that has forced the government to crack down on those who get in the way of it achieving its goals. However it creates the impression of unstable government in which a small, unchanging, group of people are driving the agenda.

Johnson won a handsome majority at the December election on the promise of getting Brexit done and creating opportunities for those voters outside the London bubble who perceive they have been left behind. The UK may have left the EU but Brexit is far from done, and the government has its work cut out to deliver on its promises now that Covid-19 has turned the economic landscape upside down. Johnson has had a difficult year, and not all the problems are of his own making. But too many are, and if he fancies another term as Prime Minister, he will have to change his approach to government.

Get a grip

I received a text yesterday from an old friend who was incensed at the conduct of Boris Johnson’s government over the provision of free school meals to the children of poor families during the Covid-19 crisis. For those not following the story, the Man United footballer Marcus Rashford issued a plea to the government to continue the practice during the summer but the government announced on Monday that it would not do so. Following a host of bad publicity on social media, the government yesterday reversed its stance. In the words of my buddy, “The PM, no. 10 and the whole government have been made to look useless by a 22 year old footballer.” He went on to make the point that the government’s inability to make decisions on key policy matters is increasingly harming the electorate be it health, the economy or Brexit.

He speaks for many. Indeed, the United Kingdom could not be a less appropriately named country at the present time. For one thing the fact that the monarch is a woman makes it a Queendom, but perhaps more importantly it is far from united. It is fighting what appears to be a culture war in which the respective factions see only the righteousness of their arguments whilst dismissing those of their opponents. What passes for public debate takes place in an echo chamber in which the volume is being cranked ever higher (viz. the demonstrations in the streets last weekend) and matters have come to a stage where people appear to identify more with what they oppose than what they support. As an economist who still believes in rational evidence-based policy, this is all very disheartening. 

The origins of (culture) war 

Like many wars, the origins of the present conflict lie deep in the past and people may differ as to the proximate causes. For my money, a key turning point occurred around 1979-80 with the election of neo-liberal governments in the US and UK which subsequently gave primacy to the markets over the state and heralded the breakup of the post-1945 consensus. It unleashed a conflict between traditionalists and progressives, conservatives and liberals, hawks and doves etc. The shared values which had characterised the reconstruction of the post-war global economic order began to fray, particularly following the collapse of the Soviet Union. 

This was particularly apparent on the right of the US political spectrum, the lessons of which were absorbed by many in the UK. Remember the efforts by US Leader of the House Newt Gingrich to shut down Congress in 1995-96 purely for political reasons? Or the attempts to impeach President Clinton in 1998-99 as the political right became desperate to deliver a political knockout? This was followed by the rise of the Tea Party movement which subverted the Republican Party and propelled Donald Trump into the White House.

On this side of the Atlantic, the culture war has been fought less aggressively but it has been bubbling away nonetheless with some of the tricks from the US playbook having been adopted in the UK. The rise of the Tea Party is mirrored in the emergence of UKIP and the Brexit Party whilst the politically motivated Congressional shutdowns found expression in Boris Johnson’s attempt to prorogue parliament. The leitmotif of the UK culture war was Euroscepticism. Many Conservatives who never quite got over the deposition of Margaret Thatcher in 1990 rallied behind this cause, culminating in the Brexit referendum of 2016 and lighting the touchpaper of division which had been simmering for some time. For many on the right, Brexit represents the Trumpian equivalent of draining the swamp: It was the culture war writ large as Brexiteers made out that this was an opportunity for the politically disenfranchised to take back control. This was hogwash in 2016 and as the events of the past four years have shown, it still is.

Far from resolving anything, the divisions sown by Brexit have widened. The referendum was won by a narrow majority and the government has done nothing to assuage the concerns of those who voted Remain. And whilst it is true that in the December general election the party which promised to “get Brexit done” won the biggest parliamentary majority since 2001, much of the evidence suggests this was less due to the fact that people had a favourable image of the Conservatives than they had a negative view of the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn. 

Boris Johnson’s problems are piling up

Whatever else we may think of Boris Johnson he is a brilliant political salesman – he is, in short, a populist. He is also a product of the culture war in which his set of political values is rooted in a vision of a glorious imperial past. But this is where he may run into difficulty. The tectonic plates of the culture war have shifted – maybe temporarily but perhaps sufficiently to cause more permanent damage. This finds expression in the current strength of the Black Lives Matter movement, which runs contrary to the Johnson view of the UK’s imperial past and threatens to heap more trouble on a government which is now feeling the pressure (for German speakers interested in a Swiss perspective, I liked this article in the NZZ). 

His government’s handling of the Covid-19 crisis has been less than sure-footed and it has scored a number of own goals, most notably by failing to sanction Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s chief adviser, for breaking lockdown rules. It is also hard to imagine that the electorate will easily forgive the highest number of Covid deaths in Europe. We are only six months into what is scheduled to be a five year term for Johnson’s government. But the weaknesses inherent in his character mean that he has got off to a rocky start. As a populist, Johnson wants to keep as many people happy as he can but this is inconsistent with the credo of good governance which requires setting out a number of objectives and working out a plan how to achieve them.

These problems will be compounded by the fact the government will have to cope with the deepest recession in living memory. To turn things around from here requires discipline and hard work, neither of which the prime minister is noted for. I am reminded of the Conservative government of 1992-97 which was faced with an economic crisis early in its term (expulsion from the ERM) and which spent almost five years trying to get ahead of the agenda. It failed and was eventually swept aside by a Labour Party led by a moderate leader in the form of Tony Blair which condemned the Tories to 13 years in opposition.

This is not to say that we will necessarily see a rerun of the 1990s. But aside from getting Brexit done, it is not at all clear what Johnson’s government stands for. This makes it incredibly important that it gets Brexit right, by which we mean not compounding the economic damage. Failure to deliver on the signature policy at a time of mounting economic difficulties and the shifting sands of cultural change would end the career of most politicians. Boris Johnson is no ordinary politician but he has a lot of work to do to pull things around. Demonstrating leadership and running government to manage the country, rather than operating permanently in campaign mode, would be a good start.

Johnson's jamboree

Wow! That was the election result the pollsters did not see coming. It was seismic for a number of reasons and it is hard to refute the view that Boris Johnson emerged as the most attractive candidate in a contest of the ugly. Even Johnson’s victory speech acknowledged that many voters who have not voted for them before may simply have loaned their votes to the Tories because: (a) they had no interest in backing Corbyn and (b) they really do want to “get Brexit done.” A big majority of 80 seats – the largest by any government since 2001 and the largest Tory majority since 1987 – gives Johnson a mandate to do more than deliver Brexit. If he plays it right, he could potentially cement the Tories in power for another decade, such is the catastrophic state of the opposition.

Labour lost it in more ways than one

Indeed, this was a result which requires Labour to reflect on where it wants to go next. This was its worst showing since 1935 in terms of seats (chart above), although its share of the vote was higher than in 1983, 1987, 2010 and 2015, But it nonetheless underscored the extent to which Labour has lost touch with its core voters and Thursday’s result was a damning indictment of the direction the party has taken under Jeremy Corbyn. I pointed out in 2016  that Corbyn was the wrong man at the wrong time and I was not taken in by the 2017 election result, attributing this to a  backlash against Brexit, particularly amongst younger voters who looked for Labour to oppose it. However, I was astonished by the extent to which his unpopularity amongst voters was even cited by his own MPs. Labour’s problems with anti-Semitism and the perception that Corbyn is a terrorist sympathiser do him no favours amongst ordinary voters. His inability to take a position on Brexit lost him the youth vote and he was roundly criticised for signing off on Labour’s tax-and-spend policy.

But Corbyn is merely one manifestation of Labour’s drift to the left. To hear some of his fellow travellers deny the reality of the party’s position in the wake of this resounding defeat is to realise that it will be a long way back for Labour before it can be considered electable. The party has traditionally performed well when it tacks towards the centre, as it did under Tony Blair. But when it drifts to the left as it did in the 1930s, 1980s and under Corbyn this tends to be a recipe for electoral disaster. Blair was a proven winner who tapped into the national Zeitgeist and it is a measure of how far Labour has moved that party activists would rather criticise Blair for his involvement in the Iraq War than recognise his election-winning genius. When Labour loses long-held seats in my native north-east England, you know the game is up.

Lib Dems demonstrate the ineptitude of the centrists

Whilst on the subject of opposition parties, the Liberal Democrats’ failure to capitalise on its centrist credentials was a spectacular indictment of its own failings. Slightly less than half of voters supported Remain but the Lib Dems managed to capture only 11.5% of votes and won just 11 seats – one less than in 2017, with leader Jo Swinson losing her seat. Let us not forget that the Lib Dems were the enablers of this election. However, their promise to revoke the Article 50 notification was a serious policy mistake as it reinforced the perception of a party that was prepared to ignore the wishes of those voters who favoured Brexit. Many people have asked me why they would do something so dumb. I think the answer is that they assumed Labour would back a referendum and they simply wanted to differentiate themselves. 

But by ruling out any cooperation with Corbyn, the Lib Dems are directly responsible for scuppering any chance of a Remain coalition that might have given them a fighting chance of achieving their goal of overturning Brexit. To put it bluntly, both the main opposition parties made too many strategic and tactical errors that were evident to anyone with more than a passing interest in politics. One does have to wonder who was in charge of the election strategy for both the main opposition parties, for they were spectacularly incompetent. Next time round, folks, I am available for hire - I certainly could not do any worse.

The Tories could not lose against this level of opposition

The Conservatives did not exactly fight a stellar campaign but they kept their message simple and did not tackle Labour head-on on their own ground. Johnson largely avoided making too many gaffes and his promise to move beyond Brexit clearly resonated with a large part of the electorate. My views on Johnson have been well documented on this blog over the years and they have not changed. But I have to admit that the Tories fought a well-disciplined campaign and they were canny enough to pick a fight they could win. The party knew that it had a good chance of beating a Corbyn-led Labour Party. It might have struggled against a more credible leader, although it would almost certainly not have pushed so hard for a winter election if they thought they might lose. As it is, their vote share of 43.6% has not been bettered since Margaret Thatcher’s 1979 victory (chart below).

I will deal with the outlook in future posts. But the key concern right now is whether we will see a party that tacks to the right, as many of its more prominent politicians appear to want, or whether a more centrist version of Johnson will emerge that permits a broader church.  Johnson has a big majority which means he will be far less reliant on a small number of MPs to ensure the passage of legislation. This raises the possibility that he may not need to push for a hard Brexit in order to keep his MPs onside – a luxury that Theresa May did not enjoy. He may also be more emollient on the question of extending the transition period than he sounds today.

 

Holding the union together will be a challenge

But there are some big issues on the horizon. The SNP won 48 of the 59 Scottish seats, implying that neither the Conservatives nor Labour will have much representation north of the border. It is clear that Scottish voters, who voted 62%-38% in favour of remaining in the EU in 2016, do not buy into the policies espoused by the main Westminster parties and the push for a second independence referendum will gather momentum.  Similarly, nationalist politicians now outnumber unionists in Northern Ireland for the first time, indicating a possibly more favourable view towards a united Ireland. Future Conservative governments will thus have to devote more attention to maintaining the union. It can no longer be taken for granted.

Can the Tories demonstrate they are about more than Brexit?

The mould has also been broken in another way. Whereas in the past Labour could rely on the votes of working class voters in the former industrial heartlands, that may no longer be true in future. A generation of Labour voters would not countenance voting for the Tories after their policies were deemed responsible for triggering a wave of deindustrialisation. That changed this week. This is a sign that the old tribal certainties are breaking down as younger voters are no longer influenced by the historical conflicts that shaped their parents’ generation. Maybe Boris Johnson still has the old magic; Heineken Man refreshing the parts that other politicians cannot reach, rather than Marmite Man who is loved and hated in equal measure. Maybe! Johnson has the potential to be the unifying candidate that the country needs. But he carries so much Brexit baggage that he will have to redouble his efforts to prove that the Tories are more than a single issue party. It is going to be an interesting ride.