It seemed an act of hubris when the LibDems and SNP handed Johnson a December election date. Drunk on their immediate ability to win more seats, they forgot that once he had his new withdrawal deal, December suited Johnson more than anybody. As long as he ran to the voters before Corbyn stood down as Labour leader, he was always in with a good chance of election victory.
There were three pieces of the jig-saw puzzle which needed to be put in place for the Tories to win. A new withdrawal deal (tick), a December election preferably on the 12th when students had headed home for Christmas (tick), and then, finally, a deal with the Brexit Party. This is now firmly a tick. I wonder what they offered Farage and his hugely controversial backer, Aaron Banks….time will tell…
The naivety and stupidity of the Opposition is now laid out for all to see. A deal between Plaid Cymru, the Greens and the LibDems won’t save them or the Remain cause. Possibly only a pact between Labour and the LibDems would but that is never going to happen. And Labour is also damaged in those marginal seats the Tories hope to win off them even though the Brexit Party is still standing. Why would any Leave voter support the Brexit Party when the latter has just signalled that the best way to achieve Brexit, at least in Tory held seats, is to support the Tories!
The Tories are now the Brexit Party in all but name and Remainers are distinctly unwelcome throughout today’s Conservative Party. Labour is firmly in the hands of Marxists. The centre ground, as represented by the LibDems, will splutter into life but nowhere near strongly enough to make a difference.
A comfortable Tory election victory may lead to the break-up of the Union both from a Scottish and Northern Irish perspective. It will mean a sharp tilt to the right in domestic and foreign policy. Johnson’s Withdrawal Agreement marks only the start of how our future relationship with the EU will unfold. There are now no plans to make the UK and EU a level playing field in many areas of regulation and the way this new deal is constructed could mean a very hard Brexit indeed by end 2020.
The forces shaping British politics and indeed politics elsewhere are ones that would have been considered wholly unacceptable just a few years ago. I hope I am wrong in my immediate analysis of GE2019. It would be a small price to pay! But we seem to live in an age of extremes and this is unlikely to change anytime soon.
Inside Right Politics 