The recent landslide election of Boris Johnson in the UK bears a very strong resemblance to Trump’s election in 2016. For one thing, his margin was provided by traditionally working class Labour voters switching parties much as Trump’s winning of old, white, uneducated – meaning less than a 4 year degree – men gave him the presidency. Similar to Trump losing the popular vote by 3 million and winning the office by only 80,000 votes in three states, the total vote for Johnson’s Tory party was 43.6%, hardly a resounding popular mandate.
In fact the combined vote for Labour and Lib Dems added up to almost exactly the same 43.6%. When you consider the Scots are traditionally leftish, if there were no Scottish National Party, their votes would have made an easy majority for the non conservative side.
Johnson’s big push for Brexit was the determining factor for many otherwise Labour voters. The largely uneducated small-town working-class were big Brexiters. While there are many political divergences between the US and UK, people who vote Democratic in America; the young, minorities, women, urbanites is reflected in the Brexit vote where the young, London, the other big cities, Scotland and N. Ireland all voted to remain.
In both cases the culprit is voting systems which do not truly express the will of the majority. The US Electoral College is heavily weighted towards the small states. Each state gets one electoral vote for each senator and representative, but Wyoming with less than 600,000 people gets the same two senators, thus the same two electors, as California with 40 million. In the UK it’s more a result of dividing the vote between many parties that allows a winner of only 43.6% of the vote to garner a landslide.
UK voters had the opportunity to set up a more representative system a few years back. One of the conditions the Lib Dems placed on joining a coalition with Conservatives was a vote on proportional representation. Unfortunately both major parties campaigned vigorously against it and it lost. It was Labour’s loss since a coalition of Labour, Lib Dem and SNP would have easily constituted a majority in this election.
One other factor in the Trump/Johnson wins was the weakness of the opposition candidates. Some of the weakness was well deserved in Clinton’s case since she’s not a likable person and her politics was decidedly corporate. But a lot of it wasn’t since the Repubs have been harassing the Clintons from day one. The impeachment of Bill over lying about a blow job was an outgrowth of a special investigator the Repubs set up over a failed real estate development in which the Clinton’s lost $90,000, small potatoes, a nothingburger, simple harassment. In spite of a lot of people despising her she still won the popular vote by a wide margin.
Corbyn has been consistently slandered for his position wanting a fair deal for the Palestinians. All the crap about anti-Semitism and sympathizing with terrorists comes directly from his opposition to Israeli apartheid and oppression of the Palestinian people. His unabashedly leftist policies also laid grounds for fearmongering from the right. Still, in a system of proportional representation he would be the PM not Johnson.
Ironically, one of the outcomes of Brexit is likely to be Scotland exiting the UK. The big talking point against independence in the past referendum was that Scotland would be kicked out of the EU. I never understood why the EU would make it hard for Scotland to join on its own. At any rate among other things, that was a part of why it failed.
Now Johnson says he won’t allow another referendum in spite of the landslide victory of the SNP winning 48 out of 59 seats. Regardless it’ll happen one day for sure, Scotland voted very strongly for remain and will be very unhappy leaving. Also voting sentiment shows that it’s likely that N. Ireland will opt to join Ireland, They’ll prefer staying in the EU rather than leaving with the rump UK.
Personally, I think the UK will petition to rejoin the EU after about 5 years. In a second referendum as proposed by Labour, remain would’ve won. But it’ll good to leave and get the demons out, Brits have been complaining about the EU and demanding special privileges from day one.