Vox - UK general election: polls and resultshttps://cdn.vox-cdn.com/community_logos/52517/voxv.png2019-12-13T10:00:00-05:00http://www.vox.com/rss/stream/155134452019-12-13T10:00:00-05:002019-12-13T10:00:00-05:00The fall of Jeremy Corbyn
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<figcaption>Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the just-defeated Labour party, on December 11, 2019. | Dan Kitwood/Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>Why Labour lost — and what it means for Britain.</p> <p id="Eap83F">The British electorate voted Thursday in one of the most important elections in the country’s modern history. And the results show that they voted overwhelmingly for Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson and for Brexit: <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/election-2019-50776671">a 78-seat parliamentary majority for Johnson</a> and the worst showing for the opposition, the left-wing Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn, <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/bc09b70a-1d7e-11ea-97df-cc63de1d73f4">in nearly 100 years</a>.</p>
<p id="9pV6pR">This does not appear to be because Johnson was a particularly adept or well-liked political figure. His approval ratings were <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/explore/public_figure/Boris_Johnson">deeply in the negative</a>, according to prelection data from YouGov. His central campaign promise, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/oct/30/boris-johnsons-brexit-deal-would-cost-uk-economy-70bn">finally getting out of the European Union</a>, divided the country in half. He has a reputation <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/12/06/corbyn-and-johnson-failing-impress">as an untrustworthy buffoon</a> and an even more sinister history of racism: He has compared women in burkas to “<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-45083275">letterboxes</a>” and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/boris-johnson-islam-is-the-problem-and-islamophobia-is-a-natural-reaction-2018-8">claimed</a> that Muslim immigrants lack “loyalty to Britain” because of their religion: “Islam is the problem,” as he put it. He once penned a column describing Africans as “<a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/boris-johnson-track-record-on-race_uk_5de7dfece4b0913e6f895667?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly90LmNvL1R2RmtPYzdUYUg_YW1wPTE&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAAb_xbwc3hTKngo8z3w5JfQoLknmuLgldE1tAMSE0QoOt27Zz_c4QtlC9RZwUmZWW8_3XoeAJvJBx5kTpoKlMG2ycGDlPCEJBTGq0t-_5YaIi2xVDnZStC4FlBkzjYEPTKMSXvmAq44gWi86EDCypEbJss8469Fb-cm-wgSWQQnd">pickanninies</a>” with “watermelon smiles.” </p>
<p id="HJf43Z">Johnson appears to have benefitted not from his own unique political talents, but from his opponent’s problems. Brexit put Corbyn in a much tougher position than Johnson, needing to appeal to both Leave and Remain voters while Johnson could focus on the former. But Corbyn was also profoundly unpopular personally: While Johnson was at minus 12 in the YouGov approval rating polling, <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/explore/public_figure/Jeremy_Corbyn">Corbyn was at<em> negative 40</em></a>.</p>
<p id="kUQP6D">Corbyn’s attempt to straddle the line on the decisive issue of Brexit ended up with a <a href="https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/jeremy-corbyn-news-election-labour-general-election-2019-uk">wishy-washy and incoherent muddle</a> that neither Remainers nor Leavers could believe in. Some of his leftist economic policies polled well, but Corbyn himself wasn’t viewed as a credible leader — <a href="https://twitter.com/JamesDMorris/status/1205252843831283714">even on issues like health care</a> where his policy approach resonated with a lot of the public. He also <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/massive-leak-debunks-uk-labours-claim-that-it-is-dealing-with-anti-semitism/">presided over a significant rise in anti-Semitism</a> in the party’s ranks; he had recently been condemned by <a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/438367082/Redacted-JLM-Closing-Submission-to-the-EHRC#from_embed">the leading Jewish Labour organization</a> for turning their party into “a welcoming refuge for anti-Semites.” </p>
<p id="eVeZTP">Corbyn is, in some ways, yesterday’s problem. He has already vowed to resign before the next UK election, his political ambitions in shambles. </p>
<p id="1jy3lG">But the question of how Labour can recover — and what this tells us about the global fight against parties like the Conservatives that embrace right-wing populism — is still very much unsettled.</p>
<h3 id="hgvgIl">What happened in the UK election results — and what it means</h3>
<p id="Dd5Lsd">Historically, both British and European politics more broadly have been heavily determined by class divisions. Left-wing parties like Labour dominated among the industrial working class, while right-wing parties like the Tories did well among society’s upper crust.</p>
<p id="LVMrWL">But in the past several decades, this historical pattern <a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2017/3/13/14698812/bernie-trump-corbyn-left-wing-populism">became unglued</a>. Educated urban professionals have drifted left and the working classes have tiled right, a shift that <a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2017/3/13/14698812/bernie-trump-corbyn-left-wing-populism">social scientists attribute</a> to the rising importance of immigration and identity issues in European politics. In Britain, Brexit supercharged this long-running process, as highly educated city dwellers tended to oppose Brexit (making them more likely to vote Labour) while rural and less educated voters tended to support it (making them more likely to vote Conservative).</p>
<p id="9cwWB1">The 2019 election results reflected the post-Brexit realignment. Labour was absolutely devastated in its traditional working class constituencies (the UK equivalent to congressional districts), with the Conservatives — long caricatured as the parties of the rich — making historic inroads. “The resounding Conservative victory was driven by a dramatic swing of working-class support away from Labour,” as <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/bc09b70a-1d7e-11ea-97df-cc63de1d73f4">the Financial Times</a> put it in a post-election data analysis.</p>
<p id="RjSTHh">“In seats with high shares of people in low-skilled jobs, the Conservative vote share increased by an average of six percentage points and the Labour share fell by 14 points. In seats with the lowest share of low-skilled jobs, the Tory vote share fell by four points and Labour’s fell by seven,” the FT said in its analysis. “The swing of working class areas from Labour to Conservative had the strongest statistical association of any explored by the FT.”</p>
<p id="NkfeGd">This is extremely preliminary: We don’t yet know which voters in these constituencies voted which way, so we can’t yet say whether class itself is the key. Indeed, <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/general-election-the-map-of-british-politics-has-been-redrawn-11885274">another analysis</a> by Will Jennings, a political scientist at the University of Southampton, suggested that education level — the percentage of college graduates in a constituency — was actually more important than income level or class per se, which would be consistent with long-term data on European political realignment.</p>
<p id="Z00b9q">But what’s clear is that Labour’s theory of the case — that its socialist policy manifesto would be able to win back Brexit voters in its traditional working-class heartland and secure the cities — was a failure. The question is why.</p>
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<img alt="The Conservative Party Win A Clear Majority In The UK General Election" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/D19YLKw1W3l9QclFV-PzsdaRuA4=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19526887/1188253462.jpg.jpg">
<cite>Stefan Rousseau/WPA Pool/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Prime Minister Boris Johnson, now and for quite some time.</figcaption>
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<p id="Et0puC">The debate among British analysts has largely polarized along pro- and anti-Corbyn lines.</p>
<p id="UYSUiR">The pro-Corbyn analysis is that Brexit was a unique event that swamped their otherwise popular economic agenda, creating <a href="https://twitter.com/OwenJones84/status/1205246679835910145">an impossible task</a> for Labour of appealing to both its Remain supporters in London and the Leavers in the north of England. </p>
<p id="ed2XwH">Anti-Corbyn analysts suggest that his attempt to have it both ways on Brexit — calling for a second referendum but not saying which side he would support — was a poor way of handling the dilemma, depressing Remain voters everywhere without winning over Leavers attracted to Johnson’s simple message. In this view, Corbyn was so incredibly unpopular, his socialism so out of touch with the British public, and his failure to tackle the anti-Semitism crisis so toxic, that he had doomed the party by leading it.</p>
<p id="TsfaMy">As is often the case in situations like this, the answer is somewhere in the middle. “In a shock move,” <a href="https://twitter.com/TorstenBell/status/1205454007373840385">UK politics analyst Torsten Bell writes</a>, “the ‘it was Brexit’ vs ‘it was Corbyn’ debate misses the blindingly obvious fact that it was both.”</p>
<p id="qWogAX">It’s true that Labour was in a tough position on Brexit, needing to hold support in Leave constituencies and turn out Remain voters. The Tories, by contrast, figured out a way to win on a simple Leave message. </p>
<p id="WSrpQx">But it’s also clear that Labour did badly across the board: Jennings’s analysis finds that Labour lost support <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/general-election-the-map-of-british-politics-has-been-redrawn-11885274">even in cities</a>, a result that suggests that Corbyn’s personal unpopularity was depressing voters who should (on the Brexit theory) be supporting the more Remain-friendly party. </p>
<p id="Zr4E1W">This early analysis suggests that Labour was simply unprepared to fight the battle on the terms the Tories were waging. Though Johnson was widely unpopular, his party also <a href="https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1205252286609547266">moved to the center on economic issues</a>, a strategy that <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/12/boris-johnson-britain-uk-election/603466/">helped sideline Corbyn’s class-based appeal</a> and emphasized the largely identity-based fight over Brexit. Brexit carried the day by appealing to British insularity and hostility to outsiders. Johnson mobilized voters who found this vision attractive, as well as those simply frustrated with the dragged-out Brexit process, and won a huge victory.</p>
<p id="NWcOaX">Due to a combination of legitimate strategic difficulty and the gross incompetence of its leader, Labour simply didn’t have an effective response. The question of how to fight back against the Tory embrace of right-wing populism, to mobilize a counter-movement in favor of a more inclusive British identity, is still an open one. </p>
<p id="Hur5et">For those of us troubled by the illiberal drift among advanced democracies — not just Britain or Europe, but also the United States — these results cannot be taken as a good sign.</p>
https://www.vox.com/world/2019/12/13/21004755/uk-election-2019-jeremy-corbyn-labour-defeatZack Beauchamp2017-06-14T07:10:01-04:002017-06-14T07:10:01-04:00The ultra-religious Northern Irish party about to help form a UK government, explained
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<img alt="Leader Of The DUP Arlene Foster Addresses Possibility Of Election Coalition" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/badwdUT4lJffMMy3qKLitootoJc=/0x0:4432x3324/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/55239795/694166364.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Leader Of The DUP Arlene Foster Addresses Possibility Of Election Coalition | Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>The 2017 election was a wake-up call for the UK to pay attention to its most religiously divided country.</p> <p id="O1ZgTB">Since British Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservative Party suffered a shocking loss of seats in the UK’s House of Commons during last Thursday’s election, ceding their overall majority, international attention has turned to the party’s future. May will likely hold on to a Tory government, however precariously, by aligning with the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).</p>
<p id="liOQEc">Much of the international coverage of the DUP has focused on the party’s perceived religiosity and how the DUP might move the Conservatives further to the right on social issues. A <a href="https://www.change.org/p/theresamayout-dupout-nearly-one-million-signatures-winston-brexitjobs-postmanpratt1">Change.org petition</a> against the expected agreement — which has as of today garnered almost 725,000 signatures — highlights the party’s track record on abortion and LGBTQ rights, as well as its less formal association with <a href="http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/party-conference-teach-creationism-in-science-class-40-of-dup-29781222.html">creationist </a>educational policy. </p>
<p id="5CdAhj">The Evening Standard<em> </em><a href="http://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/dup-abortion-stance-mps-could-hold-vote-on-reducing-abortion-time-limits-a3561836.html">raised the possibility</a> that DUP influence might lead to abortion restrictions within mainland UK; the Telegraph’s<em> </em>“Seven Things You Didn’t Know About the DUP” focused <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/06/09/7-things-didnt-know-dup/">almost exclusively</a> on the party’s religiously motivated, right-wing social policy, including the party’s position on the death penalty and climate change. British commentator Matthew D’Ancona<em> </em>even <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/09/opinion/sunday/after-britain-election-theresa-may-zombie-tory.html">characterized the DUP as </a> a “group of homophobes, zealots and creationists” in the New York Times.</p>
<aside id="9ZF9EK"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"The Journey reimagines the conversation that led to peace in Northern Ireland","url":"https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/6/15/15781176/the-journey-review-northern-ireland-ian-paisley-dup"}]}'></div></aside><p id="Ghvsbf">All of these issues are, of course, legitimate concerns for the Conservative Party going forward. But reducing the significance of the DUP to a “right-wing religious party,” or <a href="http://www.economist.com/blogs/erasmus/2017/06/ulster-s-old-time-religion">comparing it to the American religious right</a>, elides the complexity of religion and identity in Northern Ireland. Doing so overlooks how the DUP’s presence in government, especially with Northern Ireland’s resistance to Brexit, could prove even more catastrophic, threatening a delicate — and only recently won — peace in the region.</p>
<h3 id="x9g2nw">To understand the UK elections’ impact, look to Belfast, not London </h3>
<p id="xHK8wK">To understand the significance of the DUP today, it’s vital to understand the wider context of Catholic-Protestant relationships in Northern Ireland. </p>
<p id="6D7mxR">The typically wealthier Protestants — descendants of settlers sent by the British keep watch over the local Irish population — often functioned as an uneasy bridge between the two islands. After a century of political debate — and sometimes violence — about the “Irish question” of national self-governance in 1922, the twenty-six southern counties formed the Irish Free State. The northern six opted to remain part of Great Britain, albeit with a devolved government, creating what is now known as Northern Ireland.</p>
<p id="DDGLNt">Life in Northern Ireland operated on strict sectarian lines. While no formal system of segregation was ever in place, informal and institutional bias in housing and employment effectively made Catholics second-class citizens. Certain professions, including the civil service and other “middle-class” jobs, were all but exclusively Protestant. </p>
<p id="FuMKYQ">The prevalence and influence of the Orange Order — a Protestant fraternity charged with resisting “<a href="https://books.google.it/books?id=zWgfwHuOCHYC&pg=PA308&lpg=PA308&dq=to+resist+by+all+lawful+means+the+ascendancy+of+the+Church+of+Rome&source=bl&ots=zAc30j79Uc&sig=iLq22qe-kSp4NhB9z3-yCHkzUe0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwie6enJybrUAhULtRQKHa8iCqAQ6AEIKTAB#v=onepage&q=to%20resist%20by%20all%20lawful%20means%20the%20ascendancy%20of%20the%20Church%20of%20Rome&f=false">by all lawful means the ascendancy of the [Catholic] Church of Rome”</a> — at the upper echelons of political society only intensified these tensions; nearly every major Protestant political figure of the early and mid-20th century was a member. Meanwhile, Catholics, many of whom identified with their religious and cultural compatriots in the Republic of Ireland, formed their own similarly insular neighborhoods.</p>
<p id="k0eYdj">These tensions, which were not only religious in nature but also cultural, social, and economic, led to the decades known as the Troubles, roughly from the late 1960s to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. During this period, occasional sectarian violence gave way to much more regular armed conflict, street violence, and bombing campaigns fought through paramilitary forces like the Irish Republican Army (IRA) among Catholic nationalists and, among Protestants, the Ulster Defense Association (UDA). The lines between paramilitary and “legitimate” political institution weren’t always so easy to draw on either side of the divide. The mainly Protestant Ulster police force was often accused of collusion with loyalist paramilitaries, while several former members of the IRA later became significant players in the Irish nationalist political party Sinn Féin.</p>
<p id="ABbf6b">It was out of these tensions that the DUP arose. Founded by hardline loyalist and evangelical Protestant minister Ian Paisley in 1971, the party branded itself in opposition to what Paisley saw as the gradual weakening and “selling out” of mainstream Unionist parties in Northern Ireland during attempts at a peace process. The party has continually campaigned against nearly every attempt at a political agreement between Catholic and Protestant factions: opposing the 1974 Sunningdale Agreement and 1985’s Anglo-Irish Agreement. In fact, the DUP was the only major Northern Irish political party to oppose the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, the power-sharing agreement widely considered to have put an end to the Troubles.</p>
<p id="a3lC9O">Though Paisley’s stance softened significantly in later life — he ultimately agreed to a power-sharing deal with Sinn Féin in 2007 — his rhetoric was as incendiary as it was powerful. He famously condemned any “partnership with the IRA men of blood who have slain our loved ones, destroyed our country, burned our churches, tortured our people, and now demand that we should become slaves in a country fit only for nuns’ men and monks’ women to live in.” His language, though extreme, represents the sentiments of many in Northern Ireland at the time, on both sides of the political spectrum, for whom religious imagery and evocations of past violence were closely intertwined.</p>
<p id="lKvOGq">While the days of the Troubles may be over, tensions have not quite ended. The 2005 murder of local Belfast Protestant Robert McCartney, allegedly by members of the IRA, after an argument in a Belfast bar <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-20150925">made international headlines</a> as much as for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/feb/28/northernireland.northernireland">the seemingly extensive cover-up</a> as for the incident itself; only last month, DUP leader Arlene Foster faced <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/11/arlene-fosters-stance-on-paramilitary-groups-brought-into-question">questions about her own involvement</a> with paramilitary groups after a man was killed in a Carrickfergus parking lot over an internal UDA feud.</p>
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<img alt="Milltown Cemetery" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/hw_m3QI6cxACPiKJlC5dDq7Dyzc=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8680273/shutterstock_649537393.jpg">
<figcaption>Milltown Cemetery, Belfast, where several IRA members are buried.</figcaption>
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<h3 id="bsdEl1">It’s about identity, not theology</h3>
<p id="gEYUgb">It’s important to highlight that the religious conflict there has much less to do with any form of concrete <em>theology </em>(whether it’s the DUP’s well-known views on abortion, LGBTQ rights, or creation) than it does with something deeper: a sense of group identity that permeates all aspects of daily life in Northern Ireland. </p>
<p id="b9swkx">As late as this year, studies emerged <a href="http://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/two-tribes-a-divided-northern-ireland-1.3030921">showing almost-complete geographic and educational separation</a> of Catholic and Protestant populations in Northern Ireland. Despite a relative absence of overt bias, Northern Ireland is in many ways a segregated state. Or as Vinny, a Catholic from Belfast puts it in an interview with Claire Mitchell, author of <em>R</em><em>eligion, Identity and Politics in Northern Ireland: Boundaries of Belonging</em>: “Politics and religion are so confused [here] … <a href="https://books.google.it/books?id=Z_ChAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA59&lpg=PA59&dq=someone+who+plays+rugby+or+hockey+by+nature+is+stereotyped+as+a+Protestant&source=bl&ots=V8Nq5B3pLh&sig=F6g5GWlHUKlu_H4DUqtN1LBU9xM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwit-9v9qbjUAhXIUhQKHaHuBnsQ6AEIIjAA#v=onepage&q=someone%2520who%2520plays%2520rugby%2520or%2520hockey%2520by%2520nature%2520is%2520stereotyped%2520as%2520a%2520Protestant&f=false">someone who plays rugby or hockey by nature is stereotyped as a Protestant</a> … whereas someone who plays Gaelic [football] is a Catholic.” </p>
<p id="gs2GpZ">The DUP’s presence in the UK government, therefore, represents more than just the presence of a religious<em> </em>or even right-leaning political party in Westminster. It also represents the singular presence at the highest levels of UK government of a political party deeply associated with one side of a historically volatile, and violent, religious conflict. </p>
<p id="CTWrGf">That the Good Friday Agreement requires the British government to be totally impartial<em> </em>in matters of Northern Irish government doesn’t make anything easier: Even if Prime Minister May avoids forming a formal coalition in favor of a more fluid <a href="https://www.google.it/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiK9dSDn7jUAhXGWBQKHaVQAzgQqUMIOTAC&url=https%253A%252F%252Fwww.theguardian.com%252Fpolitics%252F2017%252Fjun%252F11%252Fconfidence-and-supply-what-does-it-mean-and-how-will-it-work-for-the-new-government&usg=AFQjCNFQ4IEZVCRl3kN3eMoR1uekkHYj0A">“confidence and supply” deal</a>, the combative symbolism of an avowedly anti-Catholic party with such close ties to the ruling party in Westminster is impossible to overlook. Already, some of the DUP and its allies’ early demands are thoroughly sectarian in nature: Members of Orange Order, with its historic ties to the DUP, are demanding that May <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/orange-order-portadown-northern-ireland-dup-use-banned-drumcree-march-negotiations-with-theresa-may-a7785026.html">reverse a ban on a loyalist march associated with</a> paramilitary violence. </p>
<p id="7ovpnG">All this would be bad enough against a more stable political backdrop. But local controversies over Arlene Foster’s involvement in a mismanaged green heating scheme — and the subsequent collapse of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/mar/04/northern-ireland-election-dups-arlene-foster-to-stay-as-first-minister">power sharing at Northern Ireland’s devolved-government seat of Stormont</a> — have already destabilized the delicate balance of power in the region.</p>
<p id="cfZAHS">Worse, the looming specter of Brexit — and the questions it raises about borders (including, vitally, the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/02/opinion/sunday/northern-ireland-border-brexit.html">Northern Irish-Irish border</a>) and identity — threatens to make the Conservative-DUP coalition disastrous. Writing a full year ago, the New Statesman’s<em> </em>Kevin Meagher warned that Brexit, which was massively disfavored by Northern Irish voters, was a political tinderbox waiting to ignite in Northern Ireland, because it could bring calls for Northern Irish reunification with its southern (and European) neighbor <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2016/07/brexit-beginning-end-northern-ireland">back into the spotlight</a>. </p>
<p id="WYhwah">The optics of the DUP propping up a pro-Brexit, Conservative government only add fuel to the fire. As Tony Blair’s former Chief of Staff<em> </em><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jun/10/theresa-may-deal-dup-threatens-20-years-hard-work">Jonathan Powell points out</a> in a Guardian<em> </em>op-ed: “If the British government cannot play the role of mediator ... [f]ailure to reach agreement will catapult Northern Ireland into a serious crisis and back on to our front pages, where it has been happily absent for 20 years.” On Tuesday, even former Conservative Prime Minister John Major weighed in, <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/election-2017-40255958">telling the BBC</a> that peace in Northern Ireland “should not be regarded as a given” and cautioning May against exacerbating division in the region.</p>
<p id="AQCzRr">That’s not to say we shouldn’t also watch the election’s effect on social issues across the UK. It’s true that Northern Ireland has traditionally been more conservative on both sides of the Catholic-Protestant divide. For instance, it’s the only place in the UK where abortion access is heavily restricted — a policy supported by both the DUP and Sinn Féin — and where same-sex marriage is still illegal. </p>
<p id="W9l67i">Still, says independent social science researcher Caitlyn Schwartz, renewed attention to the religious landscape of Northern Ireland might have an unintended upside: “Outside Northern Ireland, there's often this assumption that when Northern Irish values and policies are not socially progressive, Catholicism is at the root of it,” she says. “The religious divide doesn't manifest itself that way in 2017. </p>
<p id="3NVNT0">Sinn Féin has gradually rebranded itself as a socially progressive party, promoting equal marriage, for example, in stark contrast to the DUP. Look for a silver lining in what is quite an ominous cloud — the attention the coalition has drawn to the DUP could make many in Britain reconsider their assumptions about the interplay between religion and politics in Northern Ireland.” But if that interplay turns violent, the implications for the United Kingdom could be disastrous. </p>
<p id="xkoi2u">It might seem premature, if not alarmist, to talk about a resurgence of violence in Northern Ireland. But let’s not forget that in 1936, well before the start of the Troubles, historian Edmund Curtis <a href="https://books.google.it/books?id=cwOCAgAAQBAJ&pg=PR15&lpg=PR15&dq=%2522modern+reasonableness%2522+ireland&source=bl&ots=qxqyEb8gua&sig=XSZtoiBZDyhsqAEUj3W7tUZ87_c&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjsl53gqLjUAhXBPhQKHVf8CpsQ6AEIKjAB#v=onepage&q=%2522modern%2520reasonableness%2522%2520ireland&f=false">concluded that</a> questions of politics and religion in Northern Ireland had been “dissolved in the light of modern reasonableness.” Unfortunately for Theresa May — and the United Kingdom as a whole — violence is no less modern.</p>
<p id="v5ml8W"><strong>Correction: the original article misstated the number of counties in the Irish Free State. It is 26.</strong></p>
https://www.vox.com/2017/6/14/15794440/religious-northern-ireland-party-dup-uk-brexitTara Isabella Burton2017-06-13T09:20:01-04:002017-06-13T09:20:01-04:00How angry young voters help explain the historic UK election upset
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<figcaption>Photos: Getty Images, Photoillustration: Javier Zarracina/Vox</figcaption>
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<p id="NOmJNt">Analysts are calling it a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/09/corbyn-may-young-voters-labour-surge">“youthquake,”</a> a massive surge in voter turnout among 18- to 24-year-olds in last week’s snap British elections that decimated the Conservative Party, dealt a brutal<strong> </strong>blow to Prime Minister Theresa May, and capped a stunning turnaround for the left-wing Labour Party and its unabashedly socialist policies.</p>
<p id="Cg6l6d">If preliminary polling data holds true, this will have been the third national election in less than a year where young voters appear to have played a disproportionately large role in shaping the final outcomes. </p>
<p id="Yjvs2l">In the UK, voter turnout among 18- to 24-year-olds is estimated to have reached between <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/election-results-latest-youth-vote-swings-for-labour-jeremey-corbyn-hung-parliament-a7780966.html">66.4</a> and <a href="http://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/london-life/how-britains-youth-vote-general-election-swung-with-record-numbers-of-young-voters-a3561186.html">72 percent</a> (depending on the report) — significantly higher than the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/election-2017-39965925">43 percent </a>of voters in that same age range who cast ballots in 2015. (By comparison, American voters the same age had <a href="http://civicyouth.org/quick-facts/youth-voting/">50 percent voter turn out in 2016</a>.)</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Exact figure yet to be confirmed.</p>— Shakira Martin (@ShakiraSweet1) <a href="https://twitter.com/ShakiraSweet1/status/873138333886631936">June 9, 2017</a>
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<p id="cUgdRt">The post-Brexit UK has specific conditions that may have contributed to the massive surge in voter turnout, but we may be witnessing the beginnings of a global generational shift of voting and political engagement with implications far broader than the borders of the UK. </p>
<p id="vyDopv">From the rise of the far-left populist presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who surged in popularity during the first round of voting in the French presidential election partly<strong> </strong>on the strength of his appeal to the under-30 set, to America’s youthful romance with Sen. Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic primaries election to last week’s swing in the United Kingdom toward Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party, the West’s youngest voters are having a moment. </p>
<p id="sNhS27">The question is: Is it a <em>movement? </em>Are we in another 1968 or 1919? Is this a coming revolution? And if it is a movement — is it going anywhere? </p>
<p id="fxfIiq">One thing is clear: As researchers from the Washington-based advocacy group Young Invincibles have noted, young people are increasingly less <a href="http://younginvincibles.org/financial-security-report/">financially secure </a>than their parents were at their age, with fewer prospects for bridging the gap. When the system feels like it has failed you, upending the system sounds pretty appealing. </p>
<h3 id="4tJ44t">The youth vote played a real role in creating the UK’s hung Parliament </h3>
<p id="FHjVLM">On Thursday night, the UK witnessed an upset the likes of which hasn’t been seen in that country in a generation — or two. Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party thoroughly routed Theresa May’s Conservatives, obliterating her majority and resulting in a hung Parliament. Immediately, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/10/jeremy-corbyn-youth-surge-votes-digital-activists">pundits attributed</a> Corbyn’s remarkable, and unexpected, surge in no small part to 18- to 24-year-olds. </p>
<p id="q6Bjv7">Observers were already bracing for a potential youth impact on the election. When the prime minister called for the snap election back in May, the<a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-39678859"> BBC reported</a> there was a surge of new voter registrations from under-25-year-olds: Some 57,987 voters under 25 signed up <em>the first day</em> after elections were called, more than any other demographic. </p>
<p id="vILw4L">Those voters seem to have helped prop up Corbyn, who had seemed all but dead politically as recently as late March but instead saw his party gain an eye-opening 29 seats. Corbyn’s socialist policies — which include nationalizing key industries and sharply raising taxes on the rich — hadn’t resonated with the public in past elections. This time around, they did, especially among the young. </p>
<p id="fM39Gz">Corbyn and his strategists appear to have recognized, and acted upon, a point made to me by Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg of Tufts: Millennials do well with direct engagement and targeted calls to action. Corbyn’s team <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/10/jeremy-corbyn-youth-surge-votes-digital-activists">tailored their message</a> to the young and relied less on old-school campaigning than on a sophisticated social media campaign that addressed the local and national concerns of young voters.</p>
<h3 id="sFlPyz">What happens when the future looks worse than the past for the young? </h3>
<p id="FpVGKH">These three countries — France, the US, and the UK — share something important, and depressing: a young population that feels, justifiably, that their future looks far bleaker economically than the world their parents faced at the same age. That’s combined with an increasing <a href="http://www.people-press.org/2015/11/23/1-trust-in-government-1958-2015/">general distrust</a> of government that has begun to translate into political action. (The youngest voters, too, are less likely to be disenchanted with socialist messaging, as they didn’t grow up during an era when such ideas were instantly blackened by association with the Soviet Union.) </p>
<p id="TNmAWl">In France, <a href="https://tradingeconomics.com/france/youth-unemployment-rate">youth unemploymen</a>t hit nearly 25 percent in 2015 (it’s since dropped to 21.6 percent), and the job market has long been <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/hsbc-note-on-the-french-labour-market-and-economy-2016-3?r=UK&IR=T">dubbed</a> stagnant at best. It’s also<strong> </strong>an employment landscape notoriously difficult for new, younger workers to break into. </p>
<p id="I3aHFJ">In the United States, the millennial perspective is similarly bleak. <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/04/30/homeownership-for-millennials-declines-to-historic-lows">Homeownership</a> among under-35-year-olds is at a historic low — and increasingly out of reach — when compared with other generations at the same stage of life. </p>
<p id="7ziobu">American millennials carry <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/morganstanley/2017/05/23/how-rising-wages-may-help-lift-japans-economy-and-stocks/#223362cd5947">tremendous debt</a> and earn, on average, <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2017/01/13/millennials-falling-behind-boomer-parents/96530338/">20 percent less</a> than their boomer parents did at the same age. A study released in January by the <a href="http://younginvincibles.org/financial-security-report/">Young Invincibles</a> found that the ability to acquire and retain wealth had dropped radically for many millennials. </p>
<p id="qTk9qH">“Young adult workers today earn $10,000 less than young adults in 1989, a decline of 20 percent,”<strong> </strong>the report noted. “When baby boomers were young adults, they owned twice the amount of assets as young adults.” </p>
<p id="avBd3n">And in December, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/12/08/american-dream-collapsing-for-young-americans-study-says-finding-plunging-odds-that-children-earn-more-than-their-parents/?utm_term=.6a79f1a9aaba">researchers at Stanford University</a> found a dramatic downturn in what sociologists call “absolute mobility” — which is the potential for out-earning one’s parents. </p>
<p id="3l6pDo">Similarly, in the UK, a February study by the <a href="http://www.resolutionfoundation.org/media/press-releases/more-young-people-are-sticking-with-their-employer-and-missing-out-on-big-pay-rises-as-a-result/">Resolution Foundation</a> found that millennials earn, on average, some £40 less weekly than even their siblings a decade older than them earn, let alone their parents. </p>
<p id="PkLrQh">Finally, the cost of getting the one thing that can still help level income disparity — university education — has spiraled in recent years. Those costs are putting higher education further and further out of reach for more and more young people. One of the most successful rallying cries of both the US and UK elections centered on the rising cost of university and a desire, on both sides of the pond, for free (or nearly free) higher education.</p>
<h3 id="PIJsXq">Corbyn, Mélenchon, and Sanders all directly addressed the needs of the youngest voters</h3>
<p id="q9oesb">Each of the three men who benefited from the surging number of young voters promised to soften the edges of that economic malaise in a way that would have horrified baby boomers raised on a steady diet of Cold War anxiety: by repackaging socialism. </p>
<p id="MbGIqN">Corbyn promised to end college tuition fees. “The Conservatives have held students back for too long, saddling them with debt that blights the start of their working lives,” <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/may/21/labour-abolish-university-tuition-fees-jeremy-corbyn-eu-uk-europe">he said </a>on the campaign trail. Sanders insisted it was time to <a href="https://berniesanders.com/issues/its-time-to-make-college-tuition-free-and-debt-free/">make tuition at public universities free</a> and proposed altering student loan rates and fees to make them more favorable to students. And Mélenchon, who has expressed support for the policies of former <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/bd33712c-2383-11e7-8691-d5f7e0cd0a16?mhq5j=e1">Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez</a>,<strong> </strong>campaigned <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/bd33712c-2383-11e7-8691-d5f7e0cd0a16?mhq5j=e1">against capitalism</a> itself.</p>
<p id="cFaGp7">Though none of the three took his nation’s highest office, those campaign promises paid off, at least to some degree. <a href="http://www.france24.com/en/20170424-france-presidential-election-youth-vote-melenchon-le-pen">Mélenchon</a> was wildly popular among young voters who divided themselves on the far reaches of the spectrum, choosing to swing to the far left or the far right but largely rejecting the traditional parties. In the first round of the French elections on April 23, Mélenchon nabbed some 30 percent of the 18- to 24-year-old vote and 27 percent of voters between the ages of 18 and 34. In doing so, he shoved aside the socialists and pulled a healthy chunk of the youth electorate further to the left. </p>
<p id="3wHJ08">When it came to round two, many of those young French voters said they preferred to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/a-new-political-opposition-in-france--people-who-dont-vote/2017/05/09/4e084460-3433-11e7-ab03-aa29f656f13e_story.html?utm_term=.95de55fd032a">abstain</a> rather than vote for either the centrist Emmanuel Macron or the far-right Marine Le Pen, the two frontrunners. They weren’t kidding: The number of voters who abstained in the final round <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/french-election-results-2017-marine-le-pen-third-spoiled-ballots-abstentions-emmanuel-macron-a7723711.html">was greater</a> than the number who voted for the runner-up, Marine Le Pen.</p>
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<cite>Sarah Wildman/Vox</cite>
<figcaption>Referring to Macron and Le Pen students march for Abstention in Paris May 1, 2017. “Neither the Plague, Nor Cholera, Abstention,” the banner reads.</figcaption>
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<p id="rRnRWZ">In Paris, during the runup to the second round, thousands of young people marched in the streets refusing to remove their Mélenchon stickers, mulishly continuing to rally behind him as a candidate long after he was off the ballot. They insisted they did not want to support the “banker” (Emmanuel Macron, who has worked in finance, and who went on to win the presidency) nor the far right (Marine Le Pen, whose anti-immigrant National Front party has long carried the stigma of racism and anti-Semitism). </p>
<p id="h2pbwz">The US saw something similar last summer. In states that had held their primaries<strong> </strong>by June 1, 2016, Bernie Sanders, who has governed for decades as a senator from Vermont as a democratic socialist, not a Democrat, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/06/20/more-young-people-voted-for-bernie-sanders-than-trump-and-clinton-combined-by-a-lot/?utm_term=.d64e982c86ac">picked up 2 million</a> young voters. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump <em>combined</em> garnered just 1.6 million youth votes in the primaries. And remember the <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/sanders-bernie-or-bust-movement-i-m-not-you-n617186">Bernie or Bust</a> folks? They were positively Mélenchonian in their disgust with the mainstream party candidates. </p>
<h3 id="dtwxd6">The Cold War is really over</h3>
<p id="FymnVU">While these three candidates are hardly from the same party, nor do they share the same policies, their role in their respective elections present a picture that is hard to ignore:<strong> </strong>their support comes from a younger generation that feel cut out of the mainstream. That’s not that dissimilar from 1968.</p>
<p id="ZHVdDq">Corbyn, Mélenchon, and Sanders all claim to be outsiders (even though each has actually served a number of years in their respective legislatures), and each espouses policies that fall somewhere on the left of the political spectrum. Those two data points add up to an appeal to young voters who feel existing political parties don’t speak for their needs or their aspirations. </p>
<p id="vHtluY">Each candidate also addressed a rumbling discomfort among young people who fear that their own futures will not be nearly as bright as those of their parents, let alone their grandparents. This is a postwar Western generation without a sure sense of their future employment or their possibility of owning a home. </p>
<p id="BssIoD">“Many younger voters in Western countries believe the current political economic system doesn't serve them,” says David Bach of the Yale School of Management. He lists issues that younger voters gravitate toward addressing, including unemployment, job insecurity, and unaffordable housing, as well as climate change and social justice. </p>
<p id="WhPST7">“And unlike older voters, they have no direct experience of communism,” he says, “which means that the old playbook of dissuading voters from supporting leftist candidates by just labeling them ‘socialist’ doesn't work anymore.” </p>
<p id="94KJJP">So socialism no longer carries the stigma it once did. And, just as importantly, <em>capitalism</em> no longer appeals as it once did. A Harvard Institute of Politics study published in July 2016 found that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/04/26/a-majority-of-millennials-now-reject-capitalism-poll-shows/?utm_term=.47554efd08f1">51 percent </a>of 18- to 29-year-olds polled said they didn’t believe in capitalism. And in the UK, a February 2016 YouGov poll found a <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/02/23/british-people-view-socialism-more-favourably-capi/">general preference</a> for socialism over capitalism. </p>
<h3 id="RWjLbH">But isn’t Britain a unique case, given Brexit? </h3>
<p id="7RbYBn">After Brexit, there was no question that Britain’s youngest voters were angry about the direction the country was moving in. The British referendum on leaving the European Union last June was wildly skewed by age group, with voters under 24 voting 75 percent <a href="http://www.politico.eu/article/britains-youth-voted-remain-leave-eu-brexit-referendum-stats/">for Remain</a>. Those voters expressed <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/24/meet-the-75-young-people-who-voted-to-remain-in-eu">widespread dismay</a> when the Leave vote won the day. </p>
<p id="BBnEhv">“[O]ur futures have been governed by the votes of narrow-minded older generations who now will sit back and see our bright futures dimmed,” Lucinda Jones, age 20, told the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/24/meet-the-75-young-people-who-voted-to-remain-in-eu">Guardian</a> the day after. </p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">for every 1 student who voted Leave, 6 voted Remain <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/GenerationEUVote?src=hash">#GenerationEUVote</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/GenerationVote?src=hash">#GenerationVote</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Brexit?src=hash">#Brexit</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/StudentsIn?src=hash">#StudentsIn</a> <a href="https://t.co/aLGSs1Ba2g">https://t.co/aLGSs1Ba2g</a></p>— hannah charnock (@HannahMCharnock) <a href="https://twitter.com/HannahMCharnock/status/757698997482057728">July 25, 2016</a>
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<p id="fiVo06">So Brexit, some experts say, makes the UK’s recent electoral experience entirely unique, and not comparable to other elections across the West. There is tremendous anxiety among young British voters not just that their voices have been overruled but that because of it, there will be no job creation in the UK and no possibility to land jobs in Europe, points out Philippe Le Corre at the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution.</p>
<p id="sV5EJl">Even so, there was much skepticism prior to last week’s election that the youth vote would actually turn out on Election Day. Back in 2015, a pre-election <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/election-2017-39965925">BBC</a> report explained, there was a whopping 35 percent spread in turnout between the 18- to 25-year-olds (with 43 percent voter turnout) and the over-65-year-olds (boasting 78 percent voter turnout). That gap has been true for the past two decades, the BBC explained.</p>
<p id="IRj4BT">But while we’ve become used to a disenchanted youth electorate, you don’t have to go all that far back in history to find a moment when the youth vote was more engaged. Even in 1992, the split between those age groups in the UK was only 12 percent. </p>
<p id="PvXV1S">The increasing disaffection of youth had contributed to a vicious cycle: The political class had begun to ignore the youth, and the youth felt civic engagement was no longer worthwhile. "It's a no-brainer. Why spend time chasing non-voters rather than concentrating all your energy and effort on those who do vote," David Cowling, a King's College London political scientist, <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/election-2017-39965925">told the BBC</a>. </p>
<p id="mssyGt">But that’s meant that youthful issues like housing inequality, university fees, and stagnant job creation haven’t been addressed. </p>
<p id="LNWBi7">And while Brexit is certainly unique to Britain, the global youth awakening doesn’t feel limited to the UK. It’s likely to influence political campaigns — and elections — going forward. The youthquake, in other words, may be just getting started.</p>
https://www.vox.com/world/2017/6/13/15771640/bernie-corbyn-melenchon-uk-election-young-voters-youth-voteSarah Wildman2017-06-09T13:00:01-04:002017-06-09T13:00:01-04:003 winners and 4 losers from the stunning UK election
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<figcaption>(Javier Zarracina/Vox)</figcaption>
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<p id="X5xuEr">LONDON — Most of the United Kingdom appears to be in shock. Prime Minister Theresa May, once considered a virtual lock to dominate the 2017 election, actually lost 12 seats in the UK’s Parliament — enough to no longer control a majority. The Labour Party, led by left-wing insurgent Jeremy Corbyn, gained nearly 30.</p>
<p id="cdOVYy">It’s a stunning result — and a complicated one. To pick just one wrinkle at random: Despite the fact that May lost seats <em>and</em> lost control of the UK Parliament, she’s likely to remain prime minister. </p>
<p id="sSo0IJ">Understanding the significance of this event — and make no mistake, this is a big deal for millions of people both in Britain and around the world — you need to go beyond the obvious, top-line results. You need to understand how this election shaped key parts of our world: which important politicians got stronger and which ideas became more or less persuasive as a result of the election.</p>
<p id="9hDfsz">What follows is an attempt to figure all that out, at least preliminarily. We’ll look at what this election means for both the powerful people, like Theresa May and Donald Trump, and the ordinary people whose lives hang in the balance when politicians make decisions.</p>
<p id="UWkPQ3">So without further ado, here are the three winners and four losers in the UK election.</p>
<h3 id="jDXG3M">Loser: Theresa May</h3>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr">'Hi, I'm the ghost of bad decisions that will haunt you forever. From now on I will always be by your side.' <a href="https://t.co/9oNOT24mNA">pic.twitter.com/9oNOT24mNA</a></p>— Karl Sharro (@KarlreMarks) <a href="https://twitter.com/KarlreMarks/status/873069072681885696">June 9, 2017</a>
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<p id="JmxIbI">So, technically, May won the election. </p>
<p id="i4R22D">Her Conservative Party (also called the “Tories”) got the most votes and the most seats in Parliament. While they didn’t win a majority of seats in Parliament — which is what gives you control of the government in the UK system — it looks like they’ll be able to form a government by forging an alliance with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), a right-wing regional party in Northern Ireland. </p>
<p id="Pru2TP">The DUP will support the Tories in the key vote May needs to win to form a government, which means she will remain in the prime minister’s office at Number 10 Downing Street barring the deal’s collapse.</p>
<p id="sUdPTX">Nonetheless, this election is a catastrophe for both the Conservative Party and May personally.</p>
<p id="cTG6ZH">“Anything other thing than a much bigger majority isn’t a success,” says Tony Travers, director of the London School of Economics’ Institute of Public Affairs.</p>
<p id="X1UMdg">You see, prior to the vote, May and the Conservatives <em>did</em> have a parliamentary majority. That meant they controlled enough seats to push through legislation on a party-line vote, without having to rely on unreliable partners like the DUP, on issues ranging from pension cuts to modernizing Britain’s nuclear arsenal to Brexit. </p>
<p id="RjSxCP">This wasn’t enough for May. She wanted to go even further: to win a larger majority so that she’d have a mandate to push for her preferred version of Brexit, one where the UK would sharply limit future immigration and trade with the European Union. </p>
<p id="FpUay7">This isn’t my spin — it was her explicitly stated rationale.</p>
<p id="k3yueI">"I have concluded the only way to guarantee certainty and security for years ahead is to hold this election," <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/18/breaking-theresa-may-make-statement-downing-street-1115am1/">she said in</a> in a televised statement explaining her decision on April 18. “Division in [Parliament] will risk our ability to make a success of Brexit."</p>
<p id="ZXeqEV">Oops.</p>
<p id="1WCMqY">Now she has no majority and even more division in Parliament. It’ll be much harder for her to pass any major Conservative priorities on any issue, be it economic, foreign, or social policy. The Conservative agenda will be largely stalled, and the harder Brexit May has been pushing might well be impossible (more on that later).</p>
<p id="opf7yr">And it all seems to be mostly her fault: both for calling the election in the first place and for running a campaign that basically every British political observer believes was dreadful. </p>
<p id="pCzkl2">That’s both in terms of speeches and TV appearances, which were poorly received, and policy proposals, most notably a boneheaded health care proposal that would functionally tax elderly people for getting dementia. The unveiling of that idea, and her subsequent flip-flop on it after a public outcry, seemed to directly precipitate her <a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2017/6/8/15752210/uk-election-2017-british-polls">drop in the polls</a>.</p>
<p id="I8TPDx">Now, the knives are out for Theresa May. While Travers believes she’s likely to hang on as prime minister, this is due only to the fact that the Tories don’t want to fight an internal battle in the midst of Brexit negotiations — which are set to begin in just 10 days. Those last for roughly two years; after that, her premiership may very well be over.</p>
<p id="kAzS2X">They’ll want her to “see Brexit through,” Travers says. But, he cautions, “the Conservative Party is famously ruthless.”</p>
<h3 id="BrhBAz">Winner: Jeremy Corbyn</h3>
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<img alt="Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn Heads To Labour Party HQ" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/MqQAcejNquuFL5Nx96yOhL2Rbmg=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8657893/694038036.jpg">
<cite>(Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)</cite>
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<p id="41J0AR">What the Labour leader has pulled off is nothing short of extraordinary.</p>
<p id="iOliBm">After the 2015 election, in which Labour suffered a surprising defeat, Jeremy Corbyn announced that he’d be running for leadership of the party. The betting markets put his odds <a href="https://www.vox.com/2015/8/13/9149623/jeremy-corbyn">at 100 to 1</a>. After all, who would expect that a far-left candidate who proposed nationalizing whole sectors of the British economy would actually be able to take over the same party that gave the world Iraq War supporter Tony Blair? </p>
<p id="y496aZ">Well, whoever bet on Corbyn back then won big. Anyone who did the same this year probably did too.</p>
<p id="9fLFUM">When May called the election in April, Corbyn was down 16 points in the national poll averages. The center-left Labour establishment, who had never really reconciled themselves to Corbyn’s control of their party, were preparing for a loss — expecting Corbyn to cost Labour dozens of seats, and getting ready to argue that he was unfit to lead the party.</p>
<p id="EQRsKv">Then this happened:</p>
<div id="gUTiq5">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Jeremy Corbyn has just increased Labour's share of the vote more than any other leader in any other election since Attlee in 1945 <a href="https://t.co/CwcHzHZ04q">pic.twitter.com/CwcHzHZ04q</a></p>— Fraser Nelson (@FraserNelson) <a href="https://twitter.com/FraserNelson/status/873081902558699520">June 9, 2017</a>
</blockquote>
<script async="" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div>
<p id="sF5VG3">What’s more, the initial data suggests some vindication for Corbyn’s theory of politics. He had banked on his radical proposals generating a surge of support from young people and other previous non-voters to counteract Conservative support among older voters. And there was, in fact, a youth surge: Turnout among voters ages 18 to 24 went from <a href="https://twitter.com/noreenahertz/status/873080172131434497">43 percent in 2015 to 72 percent in 2017</a>. They overwhelmingly went for Corbyn.</p>
<p id="6cJCTo">You can debate whether the victory was the result of his policy proposals platform, as his supporters argue vehemently, or May’s “dementia tax” and otherwise horrid campaign, or something else entirely — perhaps general anti-establishment sentiment. People <em>will</em> debate this, probably for years to come.</p>
<p id="Ip0J6A">But this is a mostly academic exercise. For right now, the sheer scope and improbability of Labour’s gains mean that Corbyn’s leadership is safe from his rivals within the Labour Party. There’s even a serious chance that he could become prime minister in the next UK election.</p>
<p id="9UuaKc">Not bad for an old socialist very few people had even heard of three years ago.</p>
<h3 id="nB7Iva">Winner: the European Union</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="The BBC Leader's Debate Takes Place In Cambridge" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/PJAElsiy8XtNmy26rNoRj-Fi4mM=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8658501/690965730.jpg">
<cite>(Carl Court/Getty Images)</cite>
<figcaption>An anti-Brexit wizard makes a rare appearance in the Muggle community of Cambridge.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="5fPXr2">Normally, British elections don’t have major stakes for the rest of the world. Brexit is the first big obvious reason why this one was different — and the European Union came out way better than it started.</p>
<p id="zncTNC">During the campaign, the Tories took a harsh anti-immigration position, calling for no more than 100,000 people to be admitted to Britain per year. For this to happen, they would need to end the free flow of people between the European Union and Britain currently mandated by EU law. Three million EU citizens currently live in the UK; <a href="https://fullfact.org/immigration/eu-migration-and-uk/">250,000 EU citizens</a> moved to the UK last year alone.</p>
<p id="x2mrXH">The problem, though, is that the EU is unlikely to agree to this while continuing to allow the UK access to the EU’s common market, which grants all EU countries privileged trade status with each other. The UK depends on trade with the EU: About <a href="https://fullfact.org/europe/uk-eu-trade/">44 percent of its exports</a> go to the rest of Europe. Getting starkly cut off from the common market could tank the UK economy — and likely damage the EU’s as well.</p>
<p id="XdztIF">That scenario, the so-called “hard Brexit,” will happen automatically unless the EU and UK come to softer terms. The EU doesn’t want a hard Brexit to happen, but preelection May appeared very comfortable with it, judging by her campaign rhetoric. “No deal for Britain is better than a bad deal for Britain” was a <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-38641208">common phrase</a> of hers.</p>
<p id="Sx0Kut">Assuming Theresa May remains prime minister, she’s going to have to soften her line.</p>
<p id="H5EN2T">A huge chunk of Parliament, including many of members in her own party, were already leery about the prospect of a hard Brexit when they had a majority. Now that the election has come and gone, and voters rejected May’s request for a hard Brexit mandate, she simply won’t have the support to take such a hard line.</p>
<p id="0ybgy1">“At any point, a tiny number of either Conservative or Democratic elite could say no,” Travers says. “This will weaken her negotiations with the EU ... they will now know they could push further, hard — and she would have to give.”</p>
<p id="oJmC9I">The German government, a key player on the EU side of the negotiations, wasted no time in signaling that they understand this dynamic.</p>
<p id="CEPMFi">“Theresa May said she wanted a strong majority for Britain’s exit from the EU. But she didn’t get that,” German Foreign Minister <a href="https://twitter.com/dw_politics/status/873118649606746112">Sigmar Gabriel</a> said in a Friday morning statement. “The message of the election is: Have fair discussions with the EU and think about whether it’s actually good for Britain to leave the EU in this way.”</p>
<p id="CuDBAP">The result, then, is that May’s gamble for a hard Brexit mandate may end up leading to a much softer Brexit — one that has a much less negative impact on the free movement of people throughout Europe and the British economy than observers had worried.</p>
<h3 id="aprwZA">Loser: Donald Trump</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="President Trump Meets With British PM Theresa May At The White House" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/XCom_cxZlbyK7kOHUV6Jmd2ybRo=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8657409/633265674.jpg">
<cite>(Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)</cite>
</figure>
<p id="8DmiFq">Theresa May is just about the only Western leader that Donald Trump seemed to get along with. Both of them came to power after nationalist surges in their respective countries, both are conservatives, and both speak English. They even were photographed holding hands during May’s state visit to Washington early this year (above, and also awwww).</p>
<p id="RNcT0V">Now, May is in the fight of her political life, and might well be ousted in the not-so-distant future. And there’s a plausible case that Trump helped make it happen.</p>
<p id="st1U83">After the terrorist attack on London Bridge last Saturday, Trump made a point of attacking Sadiq Khan, the popular Labour mayor of London:</p>
<div id="iK6MsX">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr">At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is "no reason to be alarmed!"</p>— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/871328428963901440">June 4, 2017</a>
</blockquote>
<script async="" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div>
<p id="2odIm0">Trump had taken Khan’s comments out of context (no surprise), and a lot of Brits were furious. Yet May repeatedly refused opportunities to attack Trump for his offensive statements, eventually offering only a tepid statement that “Donald Trump is wrong in what he said about Sadiq Khan.”</p>
<p id="RRnKlV"><a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-06-05/may-condemns-trump-s-attack-on-khan-as-she-backs-london-mayor">Labour politicians and the UK media</a> excoriated May for this. It’s not crazy to think that this hurt her poll numbers at the margins, especially since May had faced persistent <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-immigration-britain-idUSKBN15D0LW">criticism</a> prior to the vote for seeming too deferential to Trump. In an election this close, even a little Trump effect could make a big difference. (It’s also possible the attack itself mattered, but that’s very tough to say, as it <a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2017/6/6/15745058/donald-trump-sadiq-khan-london-explained">plausibly could have benefitted</a> either Labour or the Tories.)</p>
<p id="8o6jvx">This also fits with a broader pattern across Europe. Politicians across the political spectrum are increasingly seeing an advantage in attacking Trump on issues ranging from the travel ban to climate change to the trans-Atlantic alliance. </p>
<p id="E7w6if">Both French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have explicitly positioned themselves during their own campaigns as Trump foils. They’re right to: Surveys of European <a href="https://global.handelsblatt.com/politics/the-trump-effect-on-europe-in-one-poll-663416">public opinion</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2017/jan/20/how-donald-trump-is-viewed-by-europes-newspapers">studies of European newspapers</a> find broad and deep opposition to the new American president among continental voters.</p>
<p id="Vz9dST">What all of this suggests, then, is that Trump may be becoming toxic, at least in the West: that anyone who might want to align with him risks paying a price at home. Not exactly what the president was hoping for when he promised to stop foreigners from “<a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2017/06/05/the-credo-modern-conservatism-they-laughing/E88zPaPFr7ZXMPbqEe0uwJ/story.html">laughing</a>” at America.</p>
<h3 id="p516JH">Loser: Nationalism</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="UKIP Launch Their General Election Manifesto" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/0_V4QclC2rKhLXLCQ57krDFU66Y=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8657885/688143122.jpg">
<cite>(Carl Court/Getty Images)</cite>
<figcaption>Former UKIP leader Paul Nuttall,</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="d9bOZe">The story of 2016 was a story of rising nationalism: The Brexit referendum, Donald Trump’s victory, and a surge in support for anti-immigrant parties across the European continent all suggested that a nationalist backlash against immigration and global institutions like the EU might continue to cause new electoral shocks.</p>
<p id="QThdBU">But the 2017 British election didn’t follow this script. The UK Independence Party, the UK’s far-right nationalist party that was the driving force behind the Brexit referendum, collapsed. Their share of the national vote plummeted, from 12.6 in 2015 all the way down to 2 percent in 2017, and they lost their only seat in Parliament.</p>
<p id="WzeO8d">This was somewhat expected: UKIP’s core purpose was to get the UK out of the EU and, now that that’s happening, the party feels sort of irrelevant. But it also comes on the heels of a slew of defeats for other far-right nationalist parties in Europe: Austria’s far-right presidential candidate in December, Dutch anti-Islam firebrand Geert Wilders’s underperformance in a parliamentary election in March, and France’s Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Front, losing by a whopping 31 points to centrist Emmanuel Macron in May.</p>
<p id="ZZcOd0">This suggests that nationalism may not be as powerful a force in global politics as it looked last year.</p>
<h3 id="3BS5Mm">Winner: left-wing populism</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Sens. Sanders, Murray, And Reps. Ellison And Scott Introduce Minimum Wage Legislation" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/xe6qmHkTkS_Cc7l6zrRS5zuf-CE=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8657403/688308668.jpg">
<cite>(Drew Angerer/Getty Images)</cite>
<figcaption>“Bernie woulda won.”</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="Ob8lcG">When the news of the Labour Party’s stunning success reached Washington, at least one person was happy: Sen. Bernie Sanders.</p>
<p id="ocDWJo">“I am delighted to see Labour do so well,” Sanders wrote in an email to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2017/06/09/american-left-sees-hope-in-u-k-s-socialist-surge/?utm_term=.8618974fdf1a">the Washington Post</a>’s Dave Weigel. “All over the world people are rising up against austerity and massive levels of income and wealth inequality. People in the UK, the US and elsewhere want governments that represent all the people, not just the 1 percent.”</p>
<p id="ewG3AO">Sanders is right to see a kindred spirit in Corbyn. Though Corbyn is much further left than Sanders is, both share the same insurgent approach to politics: an attempt to win over a center-left party to their relatively much further left-wing approach, and to do so by foregrounding populist economic appeals.</p>
<p id="II58kf">Left-wingers the world over are taking note, and taking heart. Corbyn is for them a sign that there is still hope, that the world isn’t consigned to a choice between market-friendly liberalism and far-right nationalism.</p>
<p id="BDajZd">“His success provides a blueprint for what democratic socialists need to do in the years to come,” Bhaskar Sunkara, editor of the popular Marxist magazine Jacobin, writes. He continues:</p>
<blockquote><p id="fnJ1Im">Labour’s surge confirms what the Left has long argued: people like a straightforward, honest defense of public goods. <a href="https://jacobinmag.com/2017/06/labour-corbyn-general-election-nationalization">Labour’s manifesto was sweeping</a> — its most socialist in decades. It was a straight-forward document, calling for nationalization of key utilities, access to education, housing, and health services for all, and measures to redistribute income from corporations and the rich to ordinary people.</p></blockquote>
<p id="FCHnvV">Sunkara is right to take heart. </p>
<p id="w1mNS2">Corbyn’s election is a strong data point supporting the idea that their approach to politics may have a bigger constituency than previous evidence suggested. Some British polls suggest that Corbyn’s ideas were popular, with reporting suggested they particularly resonated with <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/01/why-young-voters-are-backing-jeremy-corbyn-labour">voters ages 18 to 24</a>. If this is right, this could explain the youth surge that was so critical in Corbyn’s victory. It also mirrors a <a href="http://www.france24.com/en/20170424-france-presidential-election-youth-vote-melenchon-le-pen">high level of youth support</a> for the left-wing populist in the recent French election, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, and for Sanders himself.</p>
<p id="TLhdLd">We can’t be sure that this theory of Corbyn’s victory is true yet: We’ll need a lot more data and fine-grained analysis to be certain about this kind of result. Already, there appear to be regional patterns — for instance, Labour performing stronger in the North of England than expected — that require deeper and more targeted analysis.</p>
<p id="GLdbTM">“It may be all sorts of different things going into different mixes in different places,” cautions Travers.</p>
<p id="Y4Zx9o">But if the initial evidence holds up, then the new left-wing populists — the Bernie Sanderses of the world — should be very happy.</p>
<h3 id="03wKv8">Loser: NATO</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Leaders Meet For NATO Summit" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/LLsXDMdyc6S4fxaUB_MRVqxUwLc=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8658849/688280322.jpg">
<cite>(Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)</cite>
</figure>
<p id="OFFrMy">The closer Jeremy Corbyn gets to 10 Downing Street, the more risk there is to the Western alliance’s coherence.</p>
<p id="DiKhRZ">Traditionally, Britain has been America’s closest modern ally and played an active role in Western military operations. It’s one of the world’s nine nuclear powers and an active participant in the NATO alliance. May is going to keep these policies, at least as long as she’s in office.</p>
<p id="5lvBzA">Corbyn, in keeping with his left-wing politics, would mean something very different. He once called NATO “<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/14/jeremy-corbyn-claimed-nato-danger-world-peace-arrested-ira-linked/">a danger to world peace</a>,” and has suggested that the UK should <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/apr/23/jeremy-corbyn-casts-doubt-labour-support-trident-nuclear-deterrent-manifesto">give up its nuclear weapons</a>.</p>
<p id="jWi2Uh">The Labour leader has been cagey on whether he would actually act on this rhetoric if elected. But the mere fact of a Corbyn premiership would spark fears that Britain might be heading toward less active involvement in NATO — further weakening a Western alliance already reeling from Donald Trump’s refusal to commit wholeheartedly to its defense.</p>
<p id="JKr4lN">“As far as I know, Mr. Corbyn says that NATO should give up, go home, go away,” Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former secretary-general of NATO, said in a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_TGbp5DtsA">BBC appearance</a> last year. “If he were to carry out what he said, it would tempt Mr. Putin to aggression, to test the resolve of NATO.”</p>
<p id="neT2ul">The risk here isn’t immediate. But the elevation of Jeremy Corbyn — and the very real chance that he could win a national election in the near future — has to be alarming NATO planners who can no longer be sure how long they can count on Britain’s military. That’ll be especially keenly felt in Eastern European countries, many of whose leaders see NATO as the only thing standing between them and a Russian-sponsored dirty war like the one currently raging in Ukraine.</p>
<p id="TqZ2c7">Vladimir Putin, by contrast, is probably in a pretty good mood.</p>
https://www.vox.com/world/2017/6/9/15766300/uk-election-results-who-wonZack Beauchamp2017-06-09T08:50:02-04:002017-06-09T08:50:02-04:00The shocking UK election results, explained
<figure>
<img alt="Protests As The British Prime Minister Triggers Article 50" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/yOoi250XqMenZnLQFd75rg_RTTI=/0x0:4874x3656/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/55170355/660179622.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>(Carl Court/Getty Images)</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Prime Minister Theresa May has just made a blunder for the ages.</p> <p id="BC97EX">LONDON — When the projections first came out showing Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May losing control of Parliament on Thursday night, the surprise at the watch party I attended in central London was palpable. People wandered around the basement of a fancy building at the London School of Economics, staring at televisions blaring the BBC with mouths open in either elation or despair, depending on who they supported.</p>
<p id="dm2Yao">The full results on Friday morning show that the shock was entirely warranted. </p>
<p id="qMLwhd">May’s Tories lost 12 seats in Parliament, when just two months ago they reasonably hoped to gain nearly 100. They’re still the largest party — having won 318 out of 650 total seats — but no longer hold a majority. </p>
<p id="J868CI">In the British system, this kind of situation — where no one party controls most of Parliament — is called a “hung Parliament.” Typically, it means that the largest party keeps control of the government, but cannot pass any major laws — a big deal when she’s attempting to work out a complex Brexit deal with the European Union.</p>
<p id="0qAL2L">So May is likely to stay prime minister, but will likely become an increasingly ineffectual unpopular one as she tries to navigate the country through the complex Brexit process. That’s especially the case since this election didn’t have to happen — the next one was scheduled to happen in three years, but May decided to have call one anyway in a bid to increase her majority.</p>
<p id="BXmAu6">What hubris. And she’s already facing calls to resign as a result.</p>
<p id="WCRUc4">Meanwhile, the opposition Labour Party, led by left-wing firebrand Jeremy Corbyn, surged — gaining 29 seats in Parliament. Corbyn’s Labour, once written off by most of the British media, managed to mobilize a huge coalition of voters who don’t typically turn out to back his unabashedly socialist platform. Even the Labour faithful didn’t expect Corbyn’s strategy to work so well.</p>
<p id="qeD6FW">"I am gobsmacked. Everyone is,” a senior Labour source told <a href="https://twitter.com/PickardJE/status/872950545757204480">the Financial Times’</a> Jim Pickard.</p>
<p id="OZrNA7">Much remains unclear about the election, both its causes and consequences. But most observers agree on one result: The election is a direct repudiation of May’s approach to the Brexit negotiations with the European Union. </p>
<p id="xMi5Q2">There are many different ways the UK could formally leave the EU, either retaining ties or cutting many. May was pushing for a “harder” Brexit, which meant seriously limiting trade and immigration with the EU. This seems far less likely now that UK voters have delivered such a decisive blow for the Tories. </p>
<p id="Ys9HhZ">“I don’t think she can go forward [with] ‘we make the Brexit policy on our own, we don’t consult with anyone else,’” says Patrick Dunleavy, a professor of political science at the LSE. </p>
<p id="6aHaNf">The stakes are very, very high. The nature of deal the UK strikes with the EU will shape the lives of millions, be they EU migrants or Britons who rely on doing business for their livelihood. The future of EU is also increasingly important for the rest of the world amidst a shakeup of global institutions created by the presidency of one Donald J. Trump.</p>
<p id="09Gzo8">Everything we thought we knew about UK politics has changed — with potentially massive consequences both inside the UK and out.</p>
<h3 id="GLHbNV">What the results mean</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="General Election 2017 - Comings And Goings At Conservative Party HQ" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/B_p_cpkaE-e-9jiV25UOaBvdFzk=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8657415/693966782.jpg">
<cite>(Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images)</cite>
<figcaption>Theresa May.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="d4XR6a">To understand the full significance of the results, and why they're so stunning, you need to understand a little bit about how the British system works.</p>
<p id="NyAGhU">Unlike America’s presidential system, where the chief executive is directly selected by the voters, the British system is parliamentary: Whichever party wins a majority of seats in the UK House of Commons, Britain’s more powerful equivalent of the House of Representatives, gets to pick the prime minister. Members of Parliament (MPs), like members of the US House, represent specific places (called constituencies) and stand for election in them.</p>
<p id="nuZP8Q">Before the election, Theresa May’s Conservatives controlled 330 of the House of Commons’ 650 seats. This was a very narrow majority, which makes it hard for her to pass major legislation. (Think how much trouble Republicans are having getting an Obamacare replacement plan through.)</p>
<p id="HvfstS">Now she has no majority at all. The Conservatives will control 318 seats, seven shy of an outright majority. This is a situation called a “hung Parliament” (think hung jury). </p>
<p id="VisuIz">That means May will need to form a coalition with another party, and many of them ended the elections stronger than when they had started them. Those parties include:</p>
<ul>
<li id="zOKb0k">Labour, which will control 261 seats, up from 232 but still 65 away from what it would have needed to have a majority of its own.</li>
<li id="ViCfNQ">The Scottish National Party, a party pushing for Scotland to secede from the UK, which will control 35 seats.</li>
<li id="qbnsmV">The Liberal Democrats (LibDems), an anti-Brexit and pro-Europe center-left party, which will control 12 seats.</li>
<li id="pWZcxg">The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), a right-wing Northern Irish party that opposes the Northern Irish independence movement, which will have 10 seats.</li>
<li id="9UpsVd">Twelve more seats will go to assorted other third parties, and one constituency (Kensington) is still too close to call.</li>
</ul>
<p id="nfDcx5">The way to resolve a hung Parliament is to for a larger party to make a deal with a smaller one to get majority support. Legally, the party that gets the largest number of votes will get the first crack at making such a deal. And the Conservatives appear to have struck one with <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/09/theresa-may-reaches-deal-with-dup-to-form-government-after-shock-election-result-northern-ireland?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other">the DUP</a>. </p>
<p id="w47ZEr">“It is clear that only the Conservative and Unionist Party has the legitimacy to [form a government],” May said in a <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2017-40219030">statement</a> Friday afternoon UK time.</p>
<p id="N9qOn5">This makes sense. The DUP is extremely conservative — they’re one of the few parties in Europe that’s <a href="https://leftfootforward.org/2017/06/who-are-the-dup-extreme-social-conservatives-who-have-blocked-gay-marriage-and-abortion-in-northern-ireland/">home to climate change deniers</a>. They also hate Corbyn personally: He had, in the past, expressed sympathy with the separatist Irish Republican Army (IRA), a group responsible for a great number of deadly terrorist bombings.</p>
<p id="h1AMZd">“We want there to be a government. We have worked well with May. The alternative is intolerable,” a DUP source told <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/09/theresa-may-reaches-deal-with-dup-to-form-government-after-shock-election-result-northern-ireland?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other">the Guardian</a>. “For as long as Corbyn leads <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/labour">Labour</a>, we will ensure there’s a Tory PM.”</p>
<p id="Xm1iay">There are basically two options for how such a deal would work. The first is that the Tories and DUP can form a formal coalition, in which they would share control over the government. This typically doesn’t work out well for the smaller party: They tend to get pushed around by their bigger partner, and lose their core supporters as a result.</p>
<p id="fGp4VW">This is what happened in the last hung Parliament, after the 2010 election: The LibDems formed a coalition with the Tories, got very little out of it, and then got pummeled in the 2015 election.</p>
<p id="1qIvlb">But judging from what we’re hearing from both parties, it looks <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/dup-conservatives-election-results-hung-parliament-theresa-may-coalition-deal-a7781281.html">like</a> they’ll pursue another option — what’s called a minority government.</p>
<p id="zfRwCz">In this scenario, the Tories run the government without majority support in Parliament. In this case, the DUP supports the Tory government from the outside — they don’t have any ministers in the cabinet, but still would vote to keep the Tories in power and perhaps for some legislation the two parties can agree on.</p>
<p id="MKcJt7">To make this happen, May would need to present her platform in a formal address — called a Queen’s speech — and then win a majority vote in Parliament of “confidence” in their leadership. With the DUP’s 10 votes, they have a mathematical certainty of winning it.</p>
<p id="jQWswt">“Queen’s speech, vote of confidence, and then they’re off,” as Tony Travers, director of the London School of Economics’ Institute of Public Affairs, puts it.</p>
<p id="zvwa5d">In this scenario, the DUP only commits to supporting the Tories’ basic control of government. They wouldn’t necessarily back any legislation the government proposes, which is why this is so much worse for the Tories than even the slim majority they had before the vote.</p>
<p id="fResIa">If for some reason the DUP-Conservative agreement falls apart, Labour will get a chance to form a government — but the votes don’t seem to be there. If that too fails, then Britain will likely need to hold another election, which would be absolute chaos. Both the Tories and the DUP don’t want that, so the agreement will probably hold.</p>
<p id="w06u2k">This means Theresa May is likely to remain as prime minister.</p>
<p id="C2FT9e">Though her party is furious with her over the poor election results, it’s clear that she’s refusing to resign. And other prominent Conservative politicians may not risk challenging her for leadership at this particularly sensitive juncture.</p>
<p id="7xAqRW">“The Conservative Party is famously ruthless,” Travers says. “[But they’ll want her] to see Brexit through.”</p>
<p id="gWLnv8">Yet it’s worth being cautious. If this election and the Brexit referendum taught us anything, it’s that predicting the future of British politics is a very, very tough game.</p>
<h3 id="CsT44E">The election was a Conservative gamble that backfired — badly</h3>
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<img alt="Labour Party Herald Election Gains At Party HQ" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/pakqPzLPzL0DLxjhy8ysdvzawbs=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8657417/694043190.jpg">
<cite>(Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images)</cite>
<figcaption>Jeremy Corbyn.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="NX3h9X">The deep irony of these results, and the key reason why Tories are furious at May, is that the devastating election didn't have to have happened. In fact, there wasn’t supposed to be a British election until 2020. </p>
<p id="uAmHuZ">May called an early election on April 18, something PMs can do in parliamentary systems, because she had good reason to believe she’d win by a massive margin. Labour was down by about 16 points in the national polls; Corbyn had a net-negative approval rating among voters from his own party.</p>
<p id="w4dAFI">The stated rationale May gave the British public was that negotiating Brexit with the EU required a more unified Parliament. At the time, the Tories had a 17-seat majority in parliament).</p>
<p id="VXVzFp">"I have concluded the only way to guarantee certainty and security for years ahead is to hold this election," <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/18/breaking-theresa-may-make-statement-downing-street-1115am1/">she said in</a> in a televised statement explaining her decision. “Division in [Parliament] will risk our ability to make a success of Brexit."</p>
<p id="QFGkvT">This gamble, we now know, backfired horrifically. And it’s mostly May’s own fault.</p>
<p id="9LIBUn">The key turning came on May 19 — when the Conservatives released their manifesto, the British equivalent of a party platform. That day, the Conservatives led Labour by 47.2 to 31 — a 16.2-point margin. The margin started dropping almost immediately after that day, falling more than 6 full points, down to roughly 10.1 (44.8 to 34.7).</p>
<p id="dWkjkV">The key problem with the Conservative manifesto was a proposal to require individuals who need in-home support services, like a nurse, to pay for these services on their own if their combined savings and assets, including property, total 100,000 pounds (roughly $130,000) or higher. Currently, the UK’s <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/topics/social-care">”social care” system</a> pays for this kind of in-home assistance for many more people than would be covered under the Conservatives’ plan.</p>
<p id="DOi9N3">The proposal, which reportedly was added to the manifesto at the last minute, was an immediate disaster. Critics dubbed it the “dementia tax,” as many people who rely on social care are elderly individuals afflicted with dementia. It came across as unnecessarily cruel, once again playing into a longstanding sense that the Conservatives aren’t really interested in helping Britain’s most vulnerable.</p>
<p id="cZZjCy">The criticism of the “dementia tax” was so overwhelming that, three days later, it was removed from the Conservative manifesto. This actually managed to make things worse: It suggested that May, who had been running on the slogan “strong and stable,” wasn’t actually to be trusted.</p>
<p id="C724xU">“We saw favorability for Theresa May crash that weekend, after the social care fiasco — and Jeremy Corbyn’s jump,” Ben Walker, founder of the poll analysis site BritainElects, says. “The Tory campaign has been perceived to have been bad — and, I think, it has been bad.”</p>
<p id="KcImDc">It might have been possible for May to salvage this debacle if she sold voters on her own personal qualities. But she was horrifically wooden on the campaign trail; the word “robotic” was commonly used in the British press to describe her performance. She didn’t really speak to large audiences and rallies, and refused to participate in a debate among leadership candidates.</p>
<p id="vpRN8v">“May gives the impression that she takes it all for granted ... that she’s not going to have the voters interfere,” Sir Robert Worcester, senior adviser to the ISPOS-MORI polling group, said. “It’s resented.”</p>
<p id="oqpKpn">Corbyn, by contrast, held big rallies showcasing his ability to work a crowd. The Labour leader actually performed relatively well in high-profile media interviews, like a <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/15/jeremy-corbyn-quizzed-live-television-jeremy-paxman-first-time/">live grilling</a> from popular TV host Jeremy Paxman. This steady performance in the face of Conservative blunders made him seem like a fresher choice than most people thought.</p>
<p id="FDGqfy">“For Jeremy Corbyn, a lot of the members of the public had this perception of him as a complete disaster,” Clarkson says. “He’s outperformed the really, really low expectations.”</p>
<p id="D8zF8L">There’s also some reason to believe that Corbyn’s ideas may have energized new voters.</p>
<p id="DAxze4">Corbyn is a socialist, a kind of politician that hadn’t led Labour since the 1980s. He is far to the left of Bernie Sanders: Corbyn has proposed renationalizing Britain’s rail system, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/jul/15/jeremy-corbyn-announces-10bn-plan-to-scrap-university-tuition-fees">abolishing tuition</a> for British universities, massively hiking taxes, capping CEO salaries, and imposing rent controls to deal with Britain's affordable housing problem. He's even suggested <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11791434/Jeremy-Corbyn-Labour-could-reopen-coal-mines-and-nationalise-gas-and-electricity-sector.html">reopening the coal mines</a> that used to be a big part of Britain's economy.</p>
<p id="EX0Orb">Initially, this <a href="http://www.vox.com/world/2017/3/13/14698812/bernie-trump-corbyn-left-wing-populism">appeared to be a problem for him</a>. It seemed like his low favorability ratings before the election were the price he was paying for being well to the left of the modern British mainstream.</p>
<p id="j1SCa5">But polling cited by Worcester and others suggests that many of his ideas were ended up being popular, particularly among voters ages 18 to 24. If this is right, this could explain why there was such a surge in youth turnout — a surge that appeared to be responsible for much of Corbyn’s gains:</p>
<div id="2MBxGY">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr">It was always going to be about the youth turnout. And they turned out. 72% yesterday (initial estimates) versus 43% in 2015.</p>— Noreena Hertz (@noreenahertz) <a href="https://twitter.com/noreenahertz/status/873080172131434497">June 9, 2017</a>
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<p id="TLhdLd">We can’t be sure that this theory is true: We’ll need a lot more data and fine-grained analysis to be certain about this kind of result. Already, there appear to be regional patterns — for instance, Labour performing stronger in the north of England than expected — that require deeper and more targeted analysis.</p>
<p id="GLdbTM">“It may be all sorts of different things going into different mixes in different places,” cautions Travers.</p>
<p id="spx0kd">But the strength of Corbyn among young voters is certainly one very plausible explanation for the election result given the huge youth turnout, which is hard to ascribe solely to people hating Theresa May.</p>
<h3 id="rbor6j">The biggest impact will be on Brexit — with consequences that effect millions of lives</h3>
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<img alt="Protests As The British Prime Minister Triggers Article 50" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/bpfU291Q7Zj5EUXLn2gQJhqaZ74=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8657425/659983996.jpg">
<cite>(Carl Court/Getty Images)</cite>
<figcaption>Anti-Brexit demonstration in London.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="5fPXr2">Normally, British elections don’t have major stakes for the rest of the world. But this one is different — and Brexit is the most obvious reason why.</p>
<p id="zncTNC">The Tories have taken a harsh anti-immigration position, calling for no more than 100,000 people to be admitted to Britain per year. For this to happen, they need to end the free flow of people between the European Union and Britain currently mandated by EU law. Three million EU citizens currently live in the UK; <a href="https://fullfact.org/immigration/eu-migration-and-uk/">250,000 EU citizens</a> moved to the UK last year alone.</p>
<p id="x2mrXH">The problem, though, is that the EU is unlikely to agree to this and continue to allow the UK access to the EU’s common market, which grants all EU countries privileged trade status with each other. The UK depends on trade with the EU: About <a href="https://fullfact.org/europe/uk-eu-trade/">44 percent of its exports</a> go to the rest of Europe. Getting starkly cut off from the common market could, as a result, tank the UK economy — and likely damage the EU’s as well.</p>
<p id="fnTTwX">That scenario, the so-called “hard Brexit,” will happen automatically unless the EU and UK come to softer terms. Preelection May appeared very comfortable with it, judging by her campaign rhetoric: “No deal for Britain is better than a bad deal for Britain,” <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-38641208">she’s said repeatedly</a>.</p>
<p id="Sx0Kut">Assuming Theresa May remains prime minister, she’s going to have to soften her line.</p>
<p id="H5EN2T">A huge chunk of Parliament, including many of members in her own party, were already leery about the prospect of a hard Brexit when they had a majority. Now that the election has come and gone, and voters rejected May’s request for a hard Brexit mandate, she simply won’t have the support to take such a hard line.</p>
<p id="0ybgy1">“At any point, a tiny number of either Conservative or Democratic elite could say no,” Travers says. “This will weaken her negotiations with the EU ... they will now know they could push further, hard — and she would have to give.”</p>
<p id="oJmC9I">The German government, a key player on the EU side of the negotiations, wasted no time in signaling that they understand this dynamic.</p>
<p id="CEPMFi">“Theresa May said she wanted a strong majority for Britain’s exit from the EU. But she didn’t get that,” German Foreign Minister <a href="https://twitter.com/dw_politics/status/873118649606746112">Sigmar Gabriel</a> said in a Friday morning statement. “The message of the election is: Have fair discussions with the EU and think about whether it’s actually good for Britain to leave the EU in this way.”</p>
<p id="S6ATUi">The result, then, is that May’s gamble for a hard Brexit mandate may end up leading to a much softer Brexit — one that has a much less negative impact on the free movement of people throughout Europe and the British economy than observers had worried.</p>
<p id="jxwrvv">How’s that for irony.</p>
https://www.vox.com/world/2017/6/9/15767522/uk-election-results-hung-parliamentZack Beauchamp2017-06-08T17:51:23-04:002017-06-08T17:51:23-04:00The UK election exit polls show a “hung Parliament.” Here’s what that means.
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<figcaption>(Javier Zarracina/Vox)</figcaption>
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<p>This would be an absolute shock.</p> <p id="fgYcQJ">LONDON — The exit polls for Thursday’s UK general election show that Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservative party, which controlled the government prior to the election, will lose 17 seats in Parliament — while the opposition Labour Party, and led by far-left firebrand Jeremy Corbyn, will gain 34 seats.</p>
<p id="3Sj4Om">This is a big, big deal. If it’s right, it means the UK will have what’s called a “hung Parliament” once you factor in third parties. This means no party will control an outright majority of seats in Parliament (326 out of 650), which means it’s not obvious who the prime minister will be going forward. May is likely to keep control of the government — but Prime Minister Jeremy Corbyn can’t be ruled out.</p>
<div id="yWWu57">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Exit poll: HUNG PARLIAMENT<br>Tories - 314 (-17)<br>Labour - 266 (+34)<br>SNP - 34 (-22)<br>Lib Dems 14 (+6)<br>Plaid - 3<br>Green - 1<br>UKIP - 0</p>— Nick Eardley (@nickeardleybbc) <a href="https://twitter.com/nickeardleybbc/status/872921221171728384">June 8, 2017</a>
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<p id="Y3RiGY">The exit polls are <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/jamesball/your-definitive-guide-to-what-to-look-out-for-on-uk-general?utm_term=.vtE9P3WEk#.ebD5joMyr">generally considered quite accurate</a> in the UK — unlike the preelection polls, which have a long history of mistakes. Data provided by <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/0e38ae9e-4a16-11e7-a3f4-c742b9791d43">the Financial Times</a> shows that the exits have been really close for the past five elections. So while these results aren’t definitive — there could be some surprise error this year — there’s good reason to take them seriously.</p>
<p id="9IyYNo">And what they’re showing is a stunning Labour come-from-behind surge, throwing the entire UK political system into chaos in the midst of the Brexit negotiations and at a time of unprecedented tensions in the broader Western alliance pegged to President Donald Trump.</p>
<p id="MKcJt7">“This suggests that there will be some instability — and it will be hard for the UK government to negotiate a position on Brexit,” says Tony Travers, director of the London School of Economics’ Institute of Public Affairs.</p>
<p id="p58ArY">Buckle up.</p>
<h3 id="CkeJi7">How a hung Parliament may have happened — and how it works</h3>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/RGWQEQ6vSdarEizncT9a5ZbVtD8=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8652099/britain_elex_illo.jpg">
<cite>(Javier Zarracina/Vox)</cite>
<figcaption>May and Corbyn.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="NX3h9X">The deep irony of these results — if they are, in fact, right — is that there wasn’t supposed to be a British election until 2020. May called an early election on April 18, something PMs can do in parliamentary systems, because she had good reason to believe she’d win by a massive margin. Labour was down by about 16 points in the national polls; Corbyn had a net-negative approval rating among voters from his own party.</p>
<p id="TGqbbE">Since then the preelection polling had tightened, showing Corbyn behind by a little under <a href="http://britainelects.com/">8 points</a> in the national poll averages heading into today’s vote. This owed largely to May’s own screw-ups, most notably a callous health care proposal that would functionally tax elderly people for getting dementia. Corbyn, meanwhile, appeared to run a much better campaign that expected, seeming stable and assured compared to May. Other shocks during the campaign — most notably two terrorist attacks — didn’t appear to fundamentally alter the race.</p>
<p id="sLNKbc">The exit polls suggest that people were significantly <em>underestimating</em> May’s decline. The most likely reason why is that Corbyn’s support was concentrated among young voters and people who didn’t vote in the last election, groups that typically don’t vote in high numbers. </p>
<p id="sXVX6U">Moreover, it appears that the Scottish National Party — a pro-Scottish Independence Party that had sapped seats away from Labour in progressive Scotland — declined significantly. That would indicate a Labour surge in Scotland.</p>
<p id="xbC7HX">Now, we can’t be too precise on the numbers. Historically, British exit polls have been off by roughly 15 seats. Their estimate for the Conservative total, about 314, is within that margin — remember, a majority is 326. So if they’ve underestimated the Tories by 12 seats, which is possible, the country may be able to avoid a hung Parliament.</p>
<p id="pOwww7">But if a hung Parliament or even close — a four seat majority isn’t much better — it’s chaos. </p>
<p id="MMrbOJ">There are basically two options for how to deal with it. The first is that the Tories or Labour can form a coalition with one or more of the smaller parties, essentially pooling their votes to create a majority. The Tories, remaining the largest party, would get the first crack at making a coalition — but if they couldn’t form one, Labour would have a chance. <strong> </strong></p>
<p id="ppwv1z">But given the wide difference in policy views among the small parties and between them and the major ones — they range from anti-immigrant demagogues to pro-Europe dead-enders to Scottish secessionists — it’s not clear how a coalition could be formed.</p>
<p id="1pDkjH">“I doubt it will be a coalition,” Travers says.</p>
<p id="lLLnCm">The other alternative is something called a minority government, where the Tories maintain control but don’t have enough votes to pass major legislation. This has happened only a handful of Times in UK politics: 1923, 1974, and 1977-78.</p>
<p id="85Qlwo">It usually doesn’t last long for a reason. Minority governments have to rely on votes from other parties to do anything, including agreeing to the terms of a Brexit agreement with the European Union (which the Tories have committed on doing).</p>
<p id="pbcnoK">Again, we shouldn’t assume any of this is going to happen. It’s possible that the exit poll completely blew it.</p>
<p id="o1sB8i">“There was one major error before, in 1992,” Patrick Dunleavy, a professor at the LSE, says. “But the reason that happened in 1992 is not likely to be the reason [for error] today.”</p>
<p id="cFp1C1">But if it’s even close to right, then it is a massive, massive defeat for Theresa May and the Tories — and a huge shock to Britain’s political system.</p>
https://www.vox.com/world/2017/6/8/15762520/uk-election-results-exit-pollZack Beauchamp2017-06-08T12:00:06-04:002017-06-08T12:00:06-04:00The BBC made an Anchorman video to explain the British election
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<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/KJ-BRssgdo9d5ZOZCDC6kElnGzE=/0x0:1233x925/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/55155801/Screen_Shot_2017_06_08_at_3.59.32_PM.0.png" />
<figcaption>(<a href="https://twitter.com/bbcthree/status/872548697846018048?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=about%3Asrcdoc">BBC Three</a>)</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="ziTyjE">Remember that crazy fight scene in the movie <em>Anchorman</em>? The one where Ron Burgundy and his team get into a murderous five-way brawl with other newscasters?</p>
<p id="xqN6VS">Well, a branch of the BBC has edited that scene to explain the UK’s 2017 election. And it’s amazing:</p>
<div id="ckyS50">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Here we go. <a href="https://t.co/WNnjttAWNM">pic.twitter.com/WNnjttAWNM</a></p>— BBC Three (@bbcthree) <a href="https://twitter.com/bbcthree/status/872548697846018048">June 7, 2017</a>
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<p id="1N31Jp">This might not make a lot of sense if you don’t follow the British election super closely. So here’s a quick explanation of what’s going on:</p>
<ul>
<li id="b11cNl">The first person to speak, taking the place of Ron Burgundy, is Jeremy Corbyn — the left-wing firebrand and leader of the opposition Labour Party. He’s flanked by leading members of his party, like his deputy Tom Watson (in the Champ hat). </li>
<li id="CWh0jm">He’s immediately confronted by incumbent Prime Minister Theresa May, from the Conservative Party. She’s with members of her government, most notably Boris Johnson — the current foreign secretary and former mayor of London. She says that “the UK needs a strong and stable leadership,” the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/may/10/strong-and-stable-leadership-could-theresa-mays-rhetorical-carpet-bombing-backfire">slogan</a> of her campaign, as she pulls out a switchblade.</li>
<li id="wfUiB9">Then Tim Farron, the head of the anti-Brexit Liberal Democrats, storms in yelling about “forces of darkness.” They then keep one of the original <em>Anchorman</em> quotes — “You dirtbags have been in third place for five years!” — which is a bit of a joke, as the LibDems actually have been in third place in national polls for a while now.</li>
<li id="aZvRWm">The next one to show up is Nicola Sturgeon. She heads up the Scottish National Party, which wants Scotland to leave the United Kingdom. Her character is smoking a pipe.</li>
<li id="PRDOOD">The next one to talk is the head of the Green Party, who has replaced an irrelevant random character because the Greens are entirely irrelevant in national politics.</li>
<li id="LD57pz">Finally, Paul Nuttall — the head of the UK Independence Party, or UKIP — comes in. They put a line from Ben Stiller’s character in the movie — “Cómo están bitches” — in his mouth, which is especially funny for Americans because UKIP is the hardcore anti-immigrant xenophobic party.</li>
</ul>
<p id="vWgRDd">Then everyone starts fighting, and Nigel Farage — the tragicomic former head of UKIP — shows up in the middle of everything. It’s great.</p>
<p id="KTeIzW">If you want a more substantive explanation of this actually important election, covering how it works at a basic level to the stakes to very detailed analysis of who’s likely to win, <a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2017/6/8/15752210/uk-election-2017-british-polls">I’d recommend this explainer</a>. If you want to stick to the <em>Anchorman</em> video — well that’s fine with me too.</p>
https://www.vox.com/world/2017/6/8/15761942/uk-election-bbc-videoZack Beauchamp2017-06-08T10:20:02-04:002017-06-08T10:20:02-04:00Thursday’s historic UK election, explained
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<figcaption>(Javier Zarracina/Vox)</figcaption>
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<p>The British vote will affect millions of people’s lives outside of Britain.</p> <p id="gvJZAx">LONDON — There’s excitement in the air here in London on Thursday. That’s because British voters are going to the polls — in one of the most bizarre, unpredictable, and momentous elections in the country’s long history.</p>
<p id="1haWz9">Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May began the campaign on April 18 confident that she’d win by a massive margin. The opposition Labour Party was down by about 16 points in the national polls; its leader, left-wing firebrand Jeremy Corbyn, had a net-negative approval rating among voters from his own party.</p>
<p id="OU1PRe">But since then the race has gotten much closer, with Corbyn behind by a little under <a href="http://britainelects.com/">8 points</a> in the national poll averages heading into today’s vote. This owes largely to May’s own screw-ups — most notably a boneheaded health care proposal that would functionally tax elderly people for getting dementia — but nonetheless means that Corbyn has now made this a real race. Despite the fact that every objective indicator suggests May should win by a fair margin, things feel very unsettled — especially in the wake of Saturday’s deadly terrorist attack in London.</p>
<p id="sipXWL">“My hunch is that the Conservatives will win a majority,” Matt Williams, a political scientist at the University of Oxford, says. “But it’s very difficult to predict these things.”</p>
<p id="aGVOx5">The stakes are very, very high. May and Corbyn disagree strongly on issues ranging from Brexit to the country’s relationship Donald Trump to the future of the NATO alliance, meaning that this election has the potential to further unsettle a global political system rocked by the controversial American president. </p>
<p id="cB87zk">Millions of people outside Britain will be affected by what British voters do today. So what follows is a guide to the momentous 2017 election — who the major players are, how the British system works, and why this matters so much for Europe and America.</p>
<h3 id="XdatOf">A guide to the 2017 UK general election</h3>
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<img alt="British Voters Go To The Polls In The 2017 General Election" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/uYjZ5u54W5bQfICmIQZ5eyPIPKg=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8651785/693712174.jpg">
<cite>(Ian Forsyth/Getty Images)</cite>
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<p id="Ma7b7l">The first interesting thing to note about this election is that it wasn’t supposed to happen at all. As recently as this April, Britain’s next national election was <a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2017/4/18/15339312/uk-snap-election-june-8-theresa-may">planned for 2020</a> — and then things changed.</p>
<p id="NyAGhU">Unlike America’s presidential system, where the chief executive is directly selected by the voters, the British system is parliamentary: Whichever party wins a majority of seats in the UK House of Commons, Britain’s more powerful equivalent of the House of Representatives, gets to pick the prime minister. Members of Parliament (MPs), like members of the US House, represent specific places (called constituencies) and stand for election in them.</p>
<p id="Mm5qeh">There are 650 seats in the House of Commons; before the election, Theresa May’s Conservatives controlled 330 of them. This is a very narrow majority, which makes it hard for her to pass major legislation. (Think how much trouble Republicans are having getting an Obamacare replacement plan through.)</p>
<p id="UPQ2gf">Hence the 2017 election. In April, May decided that her majority wasn’t large enough and called a new election (which you can do in parliamentary systems). The thinking behind this “snap election,” as it’s called, was that Labour was so unpopular that the Conservatives were sure to win, pad their majority, and use it to push through legislative priorities like pension cuts.</p>
<p id="u0u0VM">This was especially important in light of last year’s vote to leave the European Union. Theresa May had never actually won a national election: She was a cabinet minister in the prior government who took power after David Cameron, the last prime minister, quit. Cameron, like many in the Conservative Party, had opposed Brexit — and resigned in disgrace after the vote.</p>
<p id="4dxgTZ">May, too, had opposed Brexit. But after taking office, she reinvented herself as a champion of the new “Brexit consensus,” the right person to stand for Britain in negotiations with the EU. Because Britain isn’t just quitting: It needs to come to terms with the EU over issues like access to the EU’s common market and whether Britain will continue to allow unrestricted immigration from EU countries.</p>
<p id="GadAZv">This election was supposed to be a kind of coronation for May, a vote to anoint her Britain’s unchallenged representative to the EU.</p>
<p id="fVv61h">“She needs an election win to give her a mandate to lead the country, the Conservative Party and the Brexit negotiations,” Tim Oliver, a professor at the London School of Economics who studies Brexit, explained in an April email to me. “The EU referendum result gives a mandate to leave the EU, but is not clear as to what ‘leave’ means and May needs a mandate from the people to back her interpretation of leave.”</p>
<p id="qdMkhw">May was confident that she’d get this mandate — owing largely to her opponent.</p>
<p id="DAxze4">Corbyn is a socialist, a kind of politician that hadn’t led Labour since the 1980s. He is far to the left of Bernie Sanders: Corbyn has proposed renationalizing Britain’s rail system, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/jul/15/jeremy-corbyn-announces-10bn-plan-to-scrap-university-tuition-fees">abolishing tuition</a> for British universities, massively hiking taxes, capping CEO salaries, and imposing rent controls to deal with Britain's affordable housing problem. He's even suggested <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11791434/Jeremy-Corbyn-Labour-could-reopen-coal-mines-and-nationalise-gas-and-electricity-sector.html">reopening the coal mines</a> that used to be a big part of Britain's economy. His position on Brexit was wishy-washy, meaning he didn’t seem like much of a threat on the key issue in the election.</p>
<p id="JaobqE">He also has a long history of unsavory political associations. In the 1980s, British intelligence <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/21/growing-row-jeremy-corbyns-links-ira-refuses-five-times-condemn/">reportedly opened a file</a> on him due to links to the terrorist Irish Republican Arm. More recently, in 2009, he invited members of the terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah to speak in Parliament. “It will be my pleasure and my honor to host an event in Parliament where our friends from Hezbollah will be speaking,” Corbyn said.</p>
<p id="sEoaKU">That’s a particularly bad problem for his party, which is already struggling to figure out how to handle Labour MPs who have made profoundly anti-Israel, and in some cases openly anti-Semitic, comments.</p>
<p id="r0cQn5">May gambled that Corbyn’s far-left economic views and sketchy ties would render him unelectable: That Labour voters, furious with the party’s past 20 years of relative centrism, had overcorrected. The poll numbers appeared to bear her out — at least at first.</p>
<h3 id="oIhScY">The massive global stakes</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Leaders Meet For NATO Summit" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/qhFz9zmxkSmFiW7FGA0BGrNXZXE=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8651793/688279898.jpg">
<cite>(Dan Kitwood/Pool/Getty Images)</cite>
<figcaption>Theresa May with Trump.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="2kgPkb">Normally, British elections don’t have major stakes for the rest of the world. But the Brexit referendum, the much-larger-than-normal ideological divide between the Conservatives and Labour, and the Trump presidency have all amped up the consequences. It’s not an overstatement to say this is one of the most profoundly significant British elections for the rest of the world in recent memory.</p>
<p id="zLgZvd">Brexit is the most obvious reason why. The Tories have taken a harsh anti-immigration position, calling for no more than 100,000 people to be admitted to Britain per year. For this to happen, they need to end the free flow of people between the European Union and Britain currently mandated by EU law. Three million EU citizens currently live in the UK; <a href="https://fullfact.org/immigration/eu-migration-and-uk/">250,000 EU citizens</a> moved to the UK last year alone.</p>
<p id="x2mrXH">The problem, though, is that the EU is unlikely to agree to this and continue to allow the UK access to the EU’s common market, which grants all EU countries privileged trade status with each other. The UK depends on trade with the EU: About <a href="https://fullfact.org/europe/uk-eu-trade/">44 percent of its exports</a> go to the rest of Europe. Getting starkly cut off from the common market could, as a result, tank the UK economy — and likely damage the EU’s as well. </p>
<p id="V68Ql7">That scenario, a hard break from both EU immigration and trade laws, is called a “hard Brexit,” and will happen automatically unless the EU and UK come to softer terms. May appears very comfortable with it, judging by her campaign rhetoric: “No deal for Britain is better than a bad deal for Britain,” <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-38641208">she’s said repeatedly</a>.</p>
<p id="bxuKPF">Corbyn and Labour, by contrast, seem more willing to compromise on immigration. Whoever wins, then, will be in charge of negotiations that affect millions of immigrants’ lives and billions of dollars of economic activity.</p>
<p id="6Z4Csl">Britain’s future role in global politics beyond the EU is in question too.</p>
<p id="DiKhRZ">Traditionally, Britain has been America’s closest modern ally and played an active role in Western military operations. It’s one of the world’s nine nuclear powers, and an active participant in the NATO alliance. A May victory would basically mean status quo on all of these policies. Corbyn, in keeping with his left-wing politics, would mean something very different. He once called NATO “<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/14/jeremy-corbyn-claimed-nato-danger-world-peace-arrested-ira-linked/">a danger to world peace</a>,” and has suggested that the UK should <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/apr/23/jeremy-corbyn-casts-doubt-labour-support-trident-nuclear-deterrent-manifesto">give up its nuclear weapons</a>. </p>
<p id="jWi2Uh">The Labour leader has been cagey on whether he would actually act on this rhetoric if elected. But the mere fact of a Corbyn premiership would send a clear signal that Britain was about to retrench in some way — further weakening a Western alliance already reeling from Donald Trump’s refusal to commit wholeheartedly to its defense.</p>
<p id="52RxNN">“As far as I know, Mr. Corbyn says that NATO should give up, go home, go away,” Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former secretary-general of NATO, said in a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_TGbp5DtsA">BBC appearance</a> last year. “If he [Jeremy Corbyn] were to carry out what he said, it would tempt Mr. Putin to aggression, to test the resolve of NATO.”</p>
<p id="Ytje3w">The future of the US-UK relationship is also at stake in Thursday’s vote, largely because of Trump.</p>
<p id="EyuClT">Theresa May and Trump are close — she literally held Trump’s hand when the two met in Washington earlier this year. Corbyn, by contrast, has told the US president that he needs to “grow up,” blasting May for “pandering to an erratic Trump administration.” Trump bashing is popular in the UK: Ben Walker, founder of the poll-watching site Britain Elects, estimates that just “10 percent” of Britons like the guy. And Labour candidates down the line have echoed some of Corbyn’s rhetoric.</p>
<p id="hzbGdY">“What greater cheerleader do we have for saying Muslims have no place in liberal democracy than the president of the United States?” Mike Katz, a relatively moderate Labour candidate for Parliament in Northern London, said when I asked him about Trump at a campaign event on Sunday. </p>
<p id="Z9MnAf">A Labour Britain, then, would move further away from the United States, opening up a rift with one of the few allies Trump has been able to count on.</p>
<p id="6z3cPt">"It is very, very difficult to imagine Trump and Jeremy Corbyn getting on," Timothy Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London, told <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/06/07/theresa-may-faces-challenge-from-jeremy-corbyn-in-british-election/102541946/">USA Today</a>. "Anything from May will be mild and muted compared to Corbyn."</p>
<h3 id="oMN7fb">How Theresa May botched a landslide — and made this a close race</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Leader Of The Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn Casts His Vote In The 2017 General Election" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/n57kwqCqm4gOZwC3TlSdztT8VG8=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8651795/693704918.jpg">
<cite>(Leon Neal/Getty Images)</cite>
<figcaption>Happy Corbyn.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="f2Z12x">Though the stakes in the election have always been huge, it didn’t get as much attention internationally early on as you might have thought. That’s because, for the first month of the campaign, the outcome seemed clear. May’s lead remained steady at around 16 points, and even grew somewhat from April to mid-March.</p>
<p id="vj39YD">The UK’s third parties, which had been relatively strong in recent years, were also working to the Conservatives’ advantage. The Scottish National Party, SNP, is a regional party expected to get around 50 Parliament seats in one of Britain’s most historically left-wing regions. They sap votes from Labour a bit like the Green Party does in the US, only much more so. The Liberal Democrats, a center-left party running on opposition to leaving the EU, was also expected to draw votes from disgruntled Labour supporters who couldn’t bear to back Corbyn.</p>
<p id="HAlwVd">The far-right United Kingdom Independence Party, UKIP, traditionally drew votes from the conservatives. But their core issue was Brexit, which the Tories had now embraced, causing them to seem irrelevant. Their voters were fleeing to May, giving her yet another boost.</p>
<p id="WU7IgL">But then the Conservatives started to stumble. It began with a departure from their core Brexit message, taking high-profile stands on divisive issues like legalizing fox hunting, which is apparently a thing here.</p>
<p id="UsCxxS">“The Conservatives moved away from Brexit during the campaign,” Tom Clarkson, vice president of the political consultancy firm <a href="http://britainthinks.com/">BritainThinks</a>, says. “You could say that was a mistake, because they don’t lead as strongly on other issues as they do on Brexit.”</p>
<p id="9LIBUn">The critical turning point came on May 19 — when the Conservatives released their manifesto, the British equivalent of a party platform. That day, the Conservatives led Labour by 47.2 to 31 — a 16.2-point margin.</p>
<p id="O2bmJZ">The margin started dropping almost immediately after that day, falling more than 6 full points down to roughly 10.1 (44.8 to 34.7). The race has continued to tighten since, with declines in third-party and Conservative support seemingly translating into Labour gains:</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/0NbEXKbGvaVxhJPtfGFWycV9RjA=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8631203/BRITAIN_VOTE_CHART1.jpg">
<cite>(Javier Zarracina/Vox)</cite>
</figure>
<p id="dWkjkV">The key problem with the Conservative manifesto was a proposal to require individuals who require in-home support services, like a nurse, to pay for these services on their own if their combined savings and assets, including property, total 100,000 pounds (roughly $130,000) or higher. Currently, the UK’s <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/topics/social-care">”social care” system</a> pays for this kind of in-home assistance for many more people than would be covered under the Conservatives’ plan.</p>
<p id="DOi9N3">The proposal, which reportedly was added to the manifesto at the last minute, was an immediate disaster. Critics dubbed it the “dementia tax,” as many people who rely on social care are elderly individuals afflicted with dementia. It came across as unnecessarily cruel, once again playing into a longstanding sense that the Conservatives aren’t really interested in helping Britain’s most vulnerable.</p>
<p id="cZZjCy">The criticism of the “dementia tax” was so overwhelming that, three days later, it was removed from the Conservative manifesto. This actually managed to make things worse: It suggested that May, who had been running on the slogan “strong and stable,” wasn’t actually to be trusted.</p>
<p id="4QOlpA">“We saw favorability for Theresa May crash that weekend, after the social care fiasco — and Jeremy Corbyn’s jump,” says Walker. “The Tory campaign has been perceived to have been bad — and, I think, it has been bad.”</p>
<p id="h4um0l">Anti-May sentiment has only risen since. The <a href="http://www.officialcharts.com/charts/singles-chart/">fourth-most-popular song</a> in the UK singles charts at this moment, by an artist named Captain Ska, is titled <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxN1STgQXW8">“Liar, Liar.”</a> The chorus — “She’s a liar, liar / No, no you can’t trust her” — is of course referring to the prime minister.</p>
<p id="Zfol8p">After a Tory cockup of this magnitude, all Corbyn had to do to rise in the polls was not do something worse. But he did one better than that: The Labour leader actually performed relatively well in high-profile media interviews, like a <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/15/jeremy-corbyn-quizzed-live-television-jeremy-paxman-first-time/">live grilling</a> from popular TV host Jeremy Paxman. This steady performance in the face of Conservative blunders made him seem like a fresher choice than most people thought. </p>
<p id="0Ftp9T">“For Jeremy Corbyn, a lot of the members of the public had this perception of him as a complete disaster,” Clarkson says. “He’s outperformed the really, really low expectations.”</p>
<p id="vYvkrA">Interestingly, the first terrorist attack during the campaign — the deadly suicide bombing at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester that happened just after the Tory manifesto was released — did not become a major issue in the race. </p>
<p id="HnWC30">But the London attack last Saturday was different, as the candidates pivoted directly to attacking each other’s approaches to jihadism. May attacked Corbyn as being soft on terror, while Corbyn blamed the attack on May’s cuts to police funding.</p>
<p id="9UKEA6">“I have to say I was pretty surprised, and slightly disappointed, that the parties ... were using these events to damage their opponents,” Williams said. “I had thought that British politics had a slightly higher sense of propriety — that they wouldn’t take advantage of these horrible events for their own political benefit.”</p>
<p id="ihtE9j">Normally, the Conservatives would clearly benefit from this debate. Polls have shown for some time that they’re the party with a stronger reputation on security and terrorism issues. Corbyn’s links to the IRA, Hamas, and Hezbollah have seriously damaged his credibility on these issues.</p>
<p id="nqlXCh">But Theresa May’s previous job in the cabinet was as Home Secretary, a cabinet position responsible for (among other things) internal security, prior to being prime minister. There’s a real argument that Britain’s terrorism problem manifested on her watch; that she’s had ample time to do something about it, and failed to do so.</p>
<p id="LFmhpK">Polling so far has been inconclusive as to who’s winning this debate. The effect this final horror will have on the election is very far from clear.</p>
<h3 id="apgIOx">A Conservative victory is still the most likely outcome — but the margin really matters</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Leader Of The Conservative Party Theresa May Casts Her Vote In The 2017 General Election" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/lGGqamudL8qcNd_OSGTRP34WuGo=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8651801/694012630.jpg">
<cite>(Matt Cardy/Getty Images)</cite>
<figcaption>Happy May.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="eQppAC">It’s important to be clear about this: Both the numbers and the fundamental nature of British politics point to a clear Tory victory. </p>
<p id="3qunas">None of Britain’s <a href="http://www.britishpollingcouncil.org/">major polling firms</a> have shown Labour ahead. <a href="https://dashboards.lordashcroftpolls.com/Storyboard/RHViewStoryBoard.aspx?RId=%C2%B2%C2%B6&RLId=%C2%B2%C2%B2&PId=%C2%B1%C2%B4%C2%BA%C2%B5%C2%B4&UId=%C2%B4%C2%B9%C2%B9%C2%B9%C2%BC&RpId=25">Lord Ashcroft</a>, one of Britain’s most eminent number-crunchers, projects that the Tories will end the night with a significantly enhanced parliamentary majority — gaining about 50 seats over what it had before the election. <a href="http://britainelects.com/nowcast/">BritainElect</a>’s projections are nearly identical.</p>
<p id="FjNenn">Polls also find strong underlying support for May and the Conservatives on the most important issues.</p>
<p id="w2gCuk">“A party that is behind on leadership and economic competence is heading for defeat,” Peter Kellner, the former head of the polling firm YouGov, writes in the UK’s <a href="https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/blogs/peter-kellner/why-is-labour-surging-and-how-worried-should-the-tories-be">Prospect</a> magazine. “On both the Conservatives still enjoy clear, if reduced, leads — by 13 points as to who would make the best PM, and 8 points on managing the economy.”</p>
<p id="DoDfDo">What’s more, there’s are regional dynamics that make this harder. The Scottish Nationalist Party’s dominance in Scotland makes it hard for Labour to get a majority; Scotland is one of the more progressive parts of Britain, so every seat the SNP wins there is one seat that otherwise would have gone to Labour.</p>
<p id="34xPqr">Outside of Scotland, Labour’s voters tend to cluster in cities like London. The Conservatives, by contrast, have worked successfully to appeal to more working-class voters in former Labour strongholds like the Northeast of England, places that emerged as Brexit bastions in last year’s referendum. </p>
<p id="UbJ3id">“The feeling on the ground outside the capital is very different — just like the referendum,” one Tory insider explains.</p>
<p id="06wnYd">The result is a kind of sorting of British politics: Labour voters have become more concentrated in a handful of constituencies in cities, while Conservatives have gotten stronger in a much larger number of constituencies.</p>
<p id="aoJjkC">One Labour activist I spoke to agreed. He said that even if the poll surge continued and Labour ended up outright winning the popular vote, the Conservatives would still retain a majority of seats in Parliament — a bit like how Trump won the Electoral College despite losing the popular vote, or how Democrats consistently lose the House despite winning a national majority of votes in House elections. </p>
<p id="Lnqlta">When you tally up these regional effects, the intrinsic Conservative advantage is truly staggering. <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/jamesball/your-definitive-guide-to-what-to-look-out-for-on-uk-general?utm_term=.fmwkmbZjr#.mpeMzWD8B">BuzzFeed UK</a>’s James Ball and Tom Phillips estimate that Labour would need to win the popular vote by at least 7 points in order to win a bare minimum majority. Since they’re down by nearly 8 in the averages, the polls would have to be off by <em>15 points</em> for Labour to win outright. British polls have been off in the past, but this would be unprecedented.</p>
<p id="BE1WOQ">All that being said, it’s important not to rule anything out — even a Labour victory. Anything is still possible, according to experts like Clarkson and Walker — and the key reason why is the youth vote. </p>
<p id="dCVzrj">Corbyn’s poll surge in the past month seems to come principally from young voters and people who didn’t vote in the last election, among whom he is extremely popular. Typically, these people vote. If the traditional pattern holds, then the polls are actually underestimating Theresa May’s support — and we’re headed for a Tory landslide, perhaps over a 100-seat majority.</p>
<p id="BRfbce">If that’s the case, then May’s gamble will have more than paid off. Some observers have speculated that this scenario would produce a <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/jimwaterson/the-labour-centrists-have-a-problem-jeremy-corbyn-is-doing?utm_term=.fnJLNGpVZ#.dndKwGYrx">civil war</a> in the Labour party, where anti-Corbyn centrists try to topple him or even split off and form their own party. </p>
<p id="epIURO">“In recent days, I have been speaking to Labour candidates, including those defending small majorities in marginal seats, as well as to activists. The picture emerging is bleaker than the polls would suggest,” writes Jason Cowley, the editor of the left-wing <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2017/06/labour-reckoning">New Statesman</a>. “What will come next? No one knows.”</p>
<p id="hIgWZO">But this could all be wrong if young voters and previous nonvoters turn out in historically unprecedented numbers, as Corbyn allies are suggesting. If that’s true, then the poll average is considerably <em>underestimating</em> his support. If that’s the case, the Tories might lose seats. This could create chaos short of a full Labour victory: If the Tories don’t win an absolute majority, then there’s what’s called “hung Parliament,” when no one can really govern alone. British politics would crawl to a standstill at a critical time in global politics.</p>
<p id="D5M560">In that scenario, Corbyn and his allies will cement their control on the Labour Party. Meanwhile, it’s May’s head that would be on the chopping block. Tories furious about her decision to call an election that lost seats might rebel and vote her out of the party leadership.</p>
<p id="QdGOrE">“I do wonder if this next term will be her last,” Walker muses. “She ain’t Maggie Thatcher.”</p>
<p id="Eu60wK">The point, then, is that there’s a large band of potential results — and each of them could have profoundly different consequences for both British politics and the world.</p>
<p id="BNed3y">Buckle up.</p>
https://www.vox.com/world/2017/6/8/15752210/uk-election-2017-british-pollsZack Beauchamp