As a result of votes in the House of Commons on Tuesday, Britons will go to the polls to elect a new Parliament on Dec. 12. Americans should pay heed, because in terms of our national interests, this will be the most important British election in at least 100 years.
Either a pro-American government will return to power with a mandate to implement Brexit or Britain will be led by the most anti-American prime minister in memory — perhaps the most anti-American prime minister since Lord North, who led the British government during the Revolutionary War.
More on that in a moment. First, however, it’s important to point out how we got here. Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson has spent the past few weeks pushing for a new election in the belief that only a new Parliament and Conservative Party majority will be able to fulfill the voters’ will and let Brexit happen. Until Tuesday, however, the Labour Party, the second-largest in Parliament, opposed such an election. They feared, and still fear, polling data which suggests that Johnson’s Conservatives will win and Labour will receive a historically low percentage of the vote. The most recent polls show the Conservatives with an 8-16 percentage point lead over Labour. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn evidently now believes he can beat the odds.
Americans can only hope Corbyn is wrong.
Corbyn isn’t just anti-American, he is fanatically so. A former employee of an Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps TV channel and a fan of Vladimir Putin, he is devoted in his opposition to the American-led international order. Largely disliked by his own members of Parliament, Corbyn supports Russia over Britain, terrorists over Israel, and Iran over everyone else. Supported by socialist Democrats such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders, Corbyn revels in damaging American interests. He also has a strange penchant for anti-Semitism, and his party has been found rife with it under his leadership.
This reality of all this is that the Trump administration, which Corbyn openly despises, would have to suspend fundamental tenets of the special relationship were Corbyn to become prime minister. The most notable consequence would be an American recalibration of British government access to the most highly protected U.S. intelligence material. While U.S.-U.K. intelligence cooperation is often symbiotic, Corbyn’s record means the United States simply could not trust him. The risk is that he would share critical U.S. national security information with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Putin, and Chinese President Xi Jinping (whom Corbyn also adores). On both sides of the Atlantic, top intelligence officials such as the CIA’s Gina Haspel and her friend and counterpart, Alex Younger, would have to mitigate this suspension by sharing intelligence on trust that Corbyn would not receive specifics on sources and methods.
Other ramifications would also be significant. Corbyn wants to gut the U.K. nuclear deterrent force, is skeptical about NATO, and is ardently opposed to increased U.S. trade.
If Boris Johnson wins a new majority, the special relationship will continue to flourish. If Jeremy Corbyn wins power, the special relationship will face a challenge unprecedented in the 20th and 21st centuries.
