London
In British politics, a “snap” election is a gamble, and as every gambler knows, the odds always favor the house. Theresa May gambled on a temporary advantage in the opinion polls to increase her party’s majority in the House of Commons—and, ostensibly, to strengthen Britain’s hand in the Brexit negotiations in Brussels. But in an age of skepticism about polls, and throw-the-bums-out politics, her gamble did not pay off, and she must now live with the consequences.
It’s difficult, in that sense, to characterize what has happened. May and the Conservative Party did not exactly “lose” the election: The Tories remain the dominant party in the country and in Parliament, and will enjoy a narrow governing majority with the help of the Ulster-based Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). Their share of the national vote, moreover, compares favorably with Margaret Thatcher in her heyday. But parliamentary politics is complicated, and unforgiving: May did have a working Tory majority in the House, and was not required by law to call an election until 2020. She threw away this comparative advantage at the gaming table and will pay a personal price.
If experience, rather than confidence, were any guide, she might have resisted the temptation. Within living memory, two prime ministers—Harold Wilson (1970) and Edward Heath (1974)—gambled on a transient political advantage in polls. Both lost their majorities, and their jobs. British voters have also been called upon to cast more ballots than usual lately: There has been a referendum in Scotland on independence (2014), a general election (2015), and the referendum on the European Union (2016), the outcome of which prompted her predecessor David Cameron to resign. (There had been a similar vote on the EU in 1975, with very different results.) Whatever logic compelled Mrs. May to act—and to be fair, her instinct to increase her parliamentary majority to strengthen Britain’s hand in Brussels was not irrational—should have been tempered with caution.
On the other hand, the results were interesting, even revealing, in unexpected ways. While the Conservatives lost some ground in England and Wales, they actually gained 13 seats in Scotland—their best performance there since 1983, and a place largely devoid of Tory members for the past two decades. This was partly a tribute to the political skills of Ruth Davidson, the 38-year-old leader of the Scottish Conservatives, and largely a rebuke to the Scottish National Party (SNP), which controls the devolved Scottish Parliament and had been agitating for a second referendum on independence. The SNP lost 21 members in Westminster—an astonishing third of their number—including the seats of their leader in the House of Commons (Angus Robertson) and the party’s former chairman (Alex Salmond). The SNP remains in control in Edinburgh, but there will be no independence referendum anytime soon.
So the post-election watch word, among Conservatives at any rate, has been stability. With the help of the UDP, May will continue to function in Downing Street, for now: Brexit negotiations are about to commence, and the Queen’s Speech—roughly the British equivalent of a State of the Union address—is imminent. There is no appetite, at this juncture, for a disruptive public struggle over the Tory leadership. But the groundwork has certainly been laid for maneuver, and as always, there are plenty of aspirants. It is impossible to imagine that Theresa May will lead her party into the next general election, or last indefinitely: Her ill-advised gamble revealed fundamental weakness, and strengthened the improbable hand of Labour’s hard-left leader, Jeremy Corbyn.
Indeed, as admirers of Margaret Thatcher can attest, the Conservative Party can be ruthless when leaders stumble, or exceed their shelf life. The longest-serving Tory prime minister in modern times was unceremoniously shown the door by colleagues when her ill-advised poll tax led to widespread discontent. In the dozen years between the election of Tony Blair (1997) and David Cameron’s coalition government (2010), there were no less than three Conservative leaders in rapid succession.
So the immediate future is stable, more or less, while the long term is uncertain. And ’twas ever thus. When Anthony Eden succeeded Winston Churchill in 1955, he called a snap election the following month that increased his Tory majority by 60 seats, and made Eden very nearly unassailable in Parliament. Until, of course, less than two years later when the Suez Crisis plunged Britain into turmoil, and Eden was out. As Harold Wilson is supposed to have said, “A week is a very long time in politics.”
