President Donald J. Trump and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson continue to talk at the conclusion of their working breakfast meeting Sunday, Aug. 25, 2019, at Hotel du Palais Biarritz in Biarritz, France, site of the G7 Summit. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)
Originally posted on December 13, 2019.
After a tumultuous election campaign in the UK, Prime Minister, Boris Johnson will remain in power and govern with a massive majority in the House of Commons. Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn is being widely blamed for the Labour Party’s embarrassing loss. Corbyn tried every possible political gimmick in order to deny the will of voters who chose to leave the European Union, and he has paid the price for it. Corbyn is an extreme leftist-communist, who wanted to renationalize Britain’s industries and to remain in the dysfunctional European Union. In the end, the voters had simply had enough of him. Breck Dumas reports at The Blaze:
What are the details?
The BBC forecasted Conservatives (known as the Tories) leading with 362 seats compared to Labour’s 199 as of this writing, with Labour losing several seats in areas where they had historically enjoyed strongholds.
According to Fox News, if those numbers hold, it would mean the greatest Tory victory since Margaret Thatcher won 397 seats for Conservatives in 1983.
Johnson has been a passionate champion for following through with Brexit, the divorce from the European Union that British voters approved in 2016. His Conservative Party made it the focus of Thursday’s general election.
Mr. Corbyn, in his election night speech, announced he would step down as leader following a period of “reflection,” and directed partial blame toward “media intrusion” for the results. The socialist further asserted, “Brexit has so polarized debate it has overridden so much of normal political debate.”
“At this stage,” Johnson told supporters Friday, “it does look as though this one-nation Conservative government has been given a powerful new mandate to get Brexit done.”
Anything else?
Corbyn has been accused of being an anti-Semite and a communist sympathizer, themes that dogged him during the campaign. Even members of his own party called for him to step down before he announced his departure.
With the election out of the way, Johnson plans on getting Britain going again, through Brexit and on to independence from the EU. Paull Hannon reports in the WSJ:
Fresh from a decisive electoral victory, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson pledged to move quickly to take Britain out of the European Union, while promising to deliver billions of pounds in public spending to consolidate the Conservative Party’s once-in-a-generation gains among working-class voters still hurting from the financial crisis.
The Conservatives won 364 seats in the U.K. Parliament with just one seat yet to be declared, the party’s biggest win since former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s 1987 re-election.
Mr. Johnson, who gambled that a snap election would give him the parliamentary majority he needed to break a protracted deadlock on how and when the U.K. will leave the EU, trounced the opposition Labour Party, which won 203 seats, its smallest total since 1935. Mr. Johnson appealed to frustrations over the Brexit stalemate, as well as economic pain in traditionally left-leaning industrial areas in northern England.
As a result, the Tories won 79 more seats than all other parties combined. They took traditional Labour districts such as Sedgefield, once the seat of former Prime Minister Tony Blair and in the opposition party’s hands since 1931.
Early Friday, Mr. Johnson reiterated his promise to take the U.K. out of the EU by the current Jan. 31 deadline.
“We will get Brexit done, on time, by the 31st of January, no ifs, no buts, no maybes,” he said in his victory speech.
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