Brexit Means a Three-Tier Europe
Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s resounding win in last week’s United Kingdom elections is the rough equivalent of winning the U.S. presidency by a margin of 10 percent. That’s a landslide by anyone’s measure.
Johnson campaigned on the slogan of “Get Brexit Done,” adding a few expensive promises to seduce wavering constituencies. Johnson’s win is the biggest for the Conservative Party since 1987 when Margaret Thatcher led that party to its third consecutive general election victory. It’s also the worst defeat the Labour Party has suffered since 1935.
“Get Brexit Done.” That was the slogan repeated on every billboard, pamphlet, and doorstep during the Conservative Party’s campaign for the U.K. election, held.
The “Get Brexit Done” slogan “obviously played a part” in Johnson’s victory, says Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary, University of London, “partly because it appealed to leavers but also because it appealed to some remainers who are sick to the back teeth of Brexit and want to get it over with.”
The additional seats won by the Conservatives largely came from the “red wall,” a swath of largely ex-industrial, working-class areas traditionally held by the Labour Party — but also ones where people overwhelmingly voted to leave the European Union at the Brexit referendum in June 2016.
Three and a half years later, Britain is still a member of the European Union, despite Brexit overwhelming the news cycle. The U.K. parliament has repeatedly voted against any withdrawal deal with the E.U., even after Johnson secured a new agreement in October.
Johnson plans to get the newly elected Parliament to quickly endorse the Brexit deal he’s negotiated, enabling the UK to exit the EU at the end of January. He will do that, but that’s far from the end of the matter. Both domestically and with the remaining EU members, Johnson faces great difficulties that will make it very rough going for him in 2020.
Many of the people in those leave-voting northern towns, and elsewhere in the country too, were frustrated at the apparent inability of Britain’s political class to make Brexit happen — and so the Conservatives did everything they could to tap into that frustration.
When Brexit occurs in January, there will be an interim period of 11 months in which the UK will remain in the EU customs union and in which the EU and UK are supposed to work out a trade deal. French President Emmanuel Macron said last Friday, “If Boris Johnson wants a very ambitious trade deal, there has to be very ambitious regulatory convergence. Be my guest.”
The Conservatives’ clarity of message on Brexit contrasted starkly with Labour, who after years of internal disagreement over Brexit, eventually came out in support of holding a second Brexit referendum if elected, with remaining in the E.U. being one option. They also committed to delaying Brexit in order to renegotiate a better deal. In televised debates ahead of Thursday’s vote, voters in the studio audience criticized the party for having an unclear Brexit position.
It’s not hard to see why, says Bale. “If you compare the two parties, the message discipline exercised by the Conservative Party was incredibly impressive relative to the very diffuse, very confusing signaling coming out of the Labour party”.
Nevertheless, “Get Brexit Done” was a deliberate oversimplification. Britain will be legally out of the European Union by the end of January if lawmakers vote to ratify Johnson’s exit deal, (a virtual guarantee now that Johnson has such a large majority,) but the next stage of Brexit negotiations, on trade, are still yet to come. “It was an illusion,” says Bale, “but a pretty powerful one that Boris Johnson created.”
The slogan wasn’t the first time that the Brexit-supporting wing of the Conservative Party has utilized catchy, focus group research-based messaging to win a national vote. “Take Back Control” was the slogan of the victorious “leave” side during the 2016 Brexit referendum, and the man thought to have coined it, Dominic Cummings, is now one of Boris Johnson’s senior advisers in Downing Street.
Johnson campaigned on the slogan of “Get Brexit Done,” adding a few expensive promises to seduce wavering constituencies. Johnson’s win is the biggest for the Conservative Party since 1987 when Margaret Thatcher led that party to its third consecutive general election victory. It’s also the worst defeat the Labour Party has suffered since 1935.
“Get Brexit Done.” That was the slogan repeated on every billboard, pamphlet, and doorstep during the Conservative Party’s campaign for the U.K. election, held.
The “Get Brexit Done” slogan “obviously played a part” in Johnson’s victory, says Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary, University of London, “partly because it appealed to leavers but also because it appealed to some remainers who are sick to the back teeth of Brexit and want to get it over with.”
The additional seats won by the Conservatives largely came from the “red wall,” a swath of largely ex-industrial, working-class areas traditionally held by the Labour Party — but also ones where people overwhelmingly voted to leave the European Union at the Brexit referendum in June 2016.
Three and a half years later, Britain is still a member of the European Union, despite Brexit overwhelming the news cycle. The U.K. parliament has repeatedly voted against any withdrawal deal with the E.U., even after Johnson secured a new agreement in October.
Johnson plans to get the newly elected Parliament to quickly endorse the Brexit deal he’s negotiated, enabling the UK to exit the EU at the end of January. He will do that, but that’s far from the end of the matter. Both domestically and with the remaining EU members, Johnson faces great difficulties that will make it very rough going for him in 2020.
Many of the people in those leave-voting northern towns, and elsewhere in the country too, were frustrated at the apparent inability of Britain’s political class to make Brexit happen — and so the Conservatives did everything they could to tap into that frustration.
When Brexit occurs in January, there will be an interim period of 11 months in which the UK will remain in the EU customs union and in which the EU and UK are supposed to work out a trade deal. French President Emmanuel Macron said last Friday, “If Boris Johnson wants a very ambitious trade deal, there has to be very ambitious regulatory convergence. Be my guest.”
The Conservatives’ clarity of message on Brexit contrasted starkly with Labour, who after years of internal disagreement over Brexit, eventually came out in support of holding a second Brexit referendum if elected, with remaining in the E.U. being one option. They also committed to delaying Brexit in order to renegotiate a better deal. In televised debates ahead of Thursday’s vote, voters in the studio audience criticized the party for having an unclear Brexit position.
It’s not hard to see why, says Bale. “If you compare the two parties, the message discipline exercised by the Conservative Party was incredibly impressive relative to the very diffuse, very confusing signaling coming out of the Labour party”.
Nevertheless, “Get Brexit Done” was a deliberate oversimplification. Britain will be legally out of the European Union by the end of January if lawmakers vote to ratify Johnson’s exit deal, (a virtual guarantee now that Johnson has such a large majority,) but the next stage of Brexit negotiations, on trade, are still yet to come. “It was an illusion,” says Bale, “but a pretty powerful one that Boris Johnson created.”
The slogan wasn’t the first time that the Brexit-supporting wing of the Conservative Party has utilized catchy, focus group research-based messaging to win a national vote. “Take Back Control” was the slogan of the victorious “leave” side during the 2016 Brexit referendum, and the man thought to have coined it, Dominic Cummings, is now one of Boris Johnson’s senior advisers in Downing Street.
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