Boris Johnson swept to a thumping election victory in Britain as voters, wearied by three years of Brexit wrangling, handed him a mandate to pull out of the European Union next month.
With results still coming in, the Conservative leader was on course to win a majority of more than 80 seats, the best result for the party since Margaret Thatcher’s majority of 102 in 1987.
The results gave the Conservatives “a powerful new mandate to get Brexit done,” Johnson said.
“I hope you enjoy a celebration tonight,” he said in a jubilant message to party members. “You powered this campaign. We couldn’t have done it without you.”
With one constituency left to declare, Conservatives have picked up 46 seats, giving them 364 Members of Parliament in total. Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party, meanwhile, was on course for 203, the Liberal Democrats 11, the Brexit Party none, and the Scottish National Party 48.
The first results bore out the forecast, showing a big swing to Conservatives in northern, industrial constituencies that have voted Labour for generations. They also showed that Johnson’s gamble on a snap election, promising to increase public spending while forging ahead with Brexit, paid off.
One of the big early shocks was Johnson’s capture of Blyth Valley. Once a center of coal mining and shipbuilding, it has returned a Labour MP since 1950, when the constituency was created.
All across the north, Labour’s vaunted “red wall” appeared to be crumbling as blue-collar voters ditched tradition to vote for a party led by a man educated at the country’s most exclusive school and who likes to quote Latin. Seat after seat registered double-digit swings from Labour to Conservative.
Nicholas Soames, the grandson of Winston Churchill and a former Conservative MP, said the result is a “political watershed.”
“This election is an extraordinary result and proves that this type of Toryism is extremely popular,” he told the BBC.
Johnson has promised to “get Brexit done” by Jan. 31.
“This result gives Boris all the clout he needs for phase two of Brexit,” said a senior Conservative strategist.
Party insiders admit that there is still a long way to go if they are to secure the trade deals they need to survive outside Europe. But they say they are on course to deliver Brexit in the first 100 days of a new government, bringing back its Brexit bill to Parliament next Friday, before embarking on a major Cabinet reshuffle in the new year and setting out a fresh vision of Britain’s place in the world.
The scale of Labour’s defeat, the party’s biggest loss since 1935, prompted immediate calls for Corbyn to step aside as leader.
His hard-left leadership, failure to tackle anti-Semitism among the party’s members, and apparent sympathy for terrorist groups proved unpopular with much of his party’s traditional support.
However, a leaked internal memo advised candidates to blame Brexit for the defeat and promise to spend more time listening to Labour supporters from working-class communities.
“The defeat is overwhelmingly down to one issue — the divisions in the country over Brexit, and the Tory campaign, echoed by most of the media, to persuade people that Boris Johnson can ‘get Brexit done,’” it said.
One of the other losers was Nigel Farage, leader of the Brexit Party. He claimed credit for taking votes away from Labour and helping Johnson to victory.
“We are going to get Brexit. Are we going to get the right one? Maybe not,” he told BBC TV. “My purpose was to try to get the right kind of Brexit. If we get half a loaf out of it, well, that’s what we’ve achieved.”
Meanwhile, the pound rose against the dollar and the euro as bankers reacted to the decisive result. It showed gains of as much as 2% against both.
