On 8 June most MPs were elected on a Brexit or an even hard-Brexit platform. In that sense, Theresa May achieved her aims to the extent that this election confirmed both the referendum result and the triggering of Article 50. This is a significant change in so far as MPs who were elected in the 2015 election had not run on such a platform, while this time they ran on their party’s manifestos.
Of course, there can be no denial that Theresa May miscalculated her bet to substantially increase the number of Conservative MPs and thereby her grip on the Tory party. May and almost everybody else (even in the Labour party) underestimated Jeremy Corbyn’s success in the election campaign.
Yet it is puzzling that many analyses of the election results prefer to completely focus on the Labour party’s electoral success (although the party got 56 fewer seats than the Conservatives) and on May’s failed gamble, deriving implications for Brexit that we think are ill-founded.
Our four basic conclusions from the election outcome are as follows:
1) Theresa May and her hard-Brexit platform clearly won the elections
Under Theresa May, the Tories’ vote share actually increased by 5.5 per cent, that is, from 36.9 per cent to 42.4 per cent. To put the result into perspective, it equals the achievement by Margaret Thatcher (albeit twice) in the 1980s. Whereas she may have failed to increase the number of Tory MPs, she clearly won the popular vote: in the election, 42.4 per cent of the UK electorate supported her hard Brexit stance including the idea of “better no deal than a bad deal”.
In fact, in terms of voting share, Theresa May has not been matched by any other European leader in recent legislative elections.
2) Jeremy Corbyn was the second winner of the elections, on a clear Brexit platform
The elections meant that Corbyn’s pro-Brexit stance in the Labour party won. Corbyn’s position in the previous parliament with regard to triggering Article 50 was confirmed. As a result, the internal opposition (so called Blairites) will have difficulties trying to change his line as Corbyn obtained a voting outcome for Labour 10 per cent above what the party had obtained under the leadership of Ed Miliband and Gordon Brown and even 5 per cent more than Tony Blair in 2005.
It seems a fair observation that May did Corbyn a big favour by not discussing Brexit (and the economy). This allowed him to avoid tensions in his party and embark on his preferred topics such as the NHS, the elderly, tuition fees, public transport, etc. It was a strategic mistake by the Prime Minister. Corbyn, who had constantly been under attack particularly by the media and by part of his own party, was also able to appeal to the young voters and mobilise them, a bit like Bernie Sanders in the US or Jean Luc Mélanchon in France.
3) Anti-Brexit platforms led by Nicola Sturgeon and Tim Farron were defeated in these elections
The share of the vote of the parties opposed to Brexit decreased. The Scottish National Party (SNP), opposing Brexit, went significantly down from 4.7 per cent to 3.1 per cent of the vote and lost 13 MPs to the Tories running on Theresa May’s hard-Brexit platform. It is by all accounts remarkable how Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish First Minister, by far the biggest loser of this election, could say after her SNP loosing both voting share and seats, that the election was a big defeat for Theresa May and for Brexit.
The Liberal Democrats, who had aimed at getting the vote of part of the referendum’s 48 per cent remain vote, also went down to 7.36 per cent of the vote. Their pledge to hold a second EU referendum did not resonate with voters. It is therefore surprising that their leader, Tim Farron (who resigned in the meantime), and their former leader, Nick Clegg, who failed to regain a seat in Parliament, saw the party’s share go down and rather talk about a big defeat for Theresa May’s Brexit stance.
4) Parliament now has a clear and strong popular mandate for Brexit
With more than 84 per cent voting for parties advocating Brexit, the new government and the entire new Parliament have a clear Brexit mandate. The election seems to show clearly that a good part of the ‘Remainers’ are now supporting Brexit. About 44 per cent of voters supported hard Brexit. Another 40 per cent voted for a clear Brexit (Jeremy Corbyn’s stance was clear on that: in the official party line, voting the Article 50 bill and during the campaign).
Labour does not discuss what type of Brexit it wants, but so far has avoided any mention of staying in the single market even if that was possible – in fact, it voted against tentative amendments or has not defended even remaining in the Customs Union. Labour only pledges “tariff-free access to the EU market”, essentially a free trade agreement.
These results come on top of:
- the European Union Referendum Act 2015, which was passed by 544-53 votes on its second reading in the Commons and approved by the House of Lords;
- the result of the referendum in favour of Brexit;
- the triggering of Article 50 with the support of an overwhelming majority of MPs in parliament at the end of March 2017.
That notwithstanding, many anti-Brexit (not necessarily pro-European) observers circle in on May’s failed gamble to interpret the election results as popular support for a softer Brexit (whatever that means) or even for remain, subverting the popular mandate. And some EU leaders at the fact that the UK remain in the EU, without any mandate from colleagues, thereby undermining the position of the EU chief negotiator.
That seems to us, on the one hand, a subversion of the democratic process that led to the country’s decision to exit the EU and on the other a (not very wise) invitation for any EU country to try to extract short-term dividends at the expense of the common good and the sustainability of the European project. Were there no lessons learnt from the rise of populism?
By Annette Bongardt and Francisco Torres, Senior Visiting Fellows in European Political Economy at the LSE European Institute. A longer version of this article can be found on the LSE Brexit blog.
