U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party won a decisive victory in last week’s general election and can now make good on his vow to leave the European Union by the end of January. However, anti-Brexit wins in Scotland and Northern Ireland set the stage for potential conflict. Political scientist Brendan O’Leary, an expert on U.K. politics, shares five key takeaways from the vote with Penn Today.
Brexit is not going to be done quickly
“The election resolves none of the fundamental dilemmas of exiting. It is true that the U.K. will leave the European Union (EU) lawfully by Jan. 31, but it’s not true that there will be a rapid move to a trade agreement, unless Boris Johnson chooses to surrender to the EU, which is improbable. So now the hard work begins. By the middle of the summer Johnson will have to make a decision on whether to extend the U.K.’s transition period, or re-face a cliff-face exit. His problem is simple: The closer the U.K. remains aligned to the EU, the easier it will be to make an agreement but the more the entire enterprise will seem pointless. So, expect further delays. The Conservative Party’s gain of working-class voters concerned about job protection adds an additional challenge to negotiating a trade agreement with the EU. The Tories will have to adjust policy; if they don’t, they will pay voting costs later.”
The English Nationalists have won
“The Europhobic populists have fully captured the Conservative Party. The Brexit Party committed suicide in the south of England to ensure Johnson would win. The Tories have embraced being anti-immigrant and anti-EU and partly distanced themselves from neoliberal economics. They won the campaign inside England and Wales decisively. They did so partly because they kept to one theme: ‘Getting Brexit done’ and because Labour’s base was split asunder. The Tories also shielded their leader, successfully, from serious scrutiny, unlike Labour.”
The Labour Party’s predicament is excruciating
“Its leadership was ineffective and vilified. The stance of neutrality on Brexit by its leader, Jeremy Corbyn, however comprehensible given the divisions within Labour’s base and parliamentary party, was devastatingly damaging. It’s going to take Labour at least one and more likely two electoral cycles to be competitive with the Conservatives again. That leaves the Conservatives free to dictate the policy agenda for the 2020s.”
The union of Great Britain is on a precipice
“The Scottish National Party (SNP) won almost the same percentage of the vote in Scotland that the Conservative party won in England. That puts these parties and their governments on track for a head-on collision. The SNP said that in all circumstances they would treat the election as a mandate for a second independence referendum, and they have won that mandate.
In Northern Ireland, the party that championed a hard and uniform Brexit, the Democratic Unionist Party, received a bloody nose. Belfast is no longer a Unionist city. A majority of Northern Ireland’s Members of Parliament are not Unionists, for the first time. The Remain parties won decisively.
There is no mandate for an immediate referendum on Irish reunification, but there may be sufficient support to restore Northern Ireland’s power-sharing Assembly.
Johnson’s agreement with the EU obliges Northern Ireland to have special status. To avoid a fresh hard land border, Northern Ireland will remain in the European Union’s single market for goods and agriculture and de facto in its customs union. One can think of the Northern Ireland economy as about to be held in trust by the EU for future Irish reunification.
In Wales, Labour remains the largest party but only just. It lost a lot of seats in north and northeast Wales that look very similar to the post-industrial north of England. It retained its position, albeit much weakened, in the south of Wales.”
There won’t be a rapid trade deal with the U.S.
“That’s true for many reasons. The U.S. would be stupid to try to sign a trade agreement with the U.K. while the U.K. is negotiating one with the EU. And the U.K.’s rational priority has to be an agreement with the EU because that’s where it does most of its trade. In any case, it’s not in President Trump’s gift; Congress would decide the trade agreement, and it’s clear already that the Democrats and some Republicans have said there will only be a trade agreement if the Good Friday Agreement is protected in all its parts. That’s yet to be fully confirmed. Once it is, there’s a possibility of a trade agreement with the U.S., but it won’t be quick; it certainly won’t be reached before Trump’s attempted re-election.”
Brendan O’Leary is the Lauder Professor of Political Science in the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania.
