For the fourth time in as many years, the United Kingdom is going to the polls.
It is, as we Brits say, “not the done thing.” We think of frequent elections as a characteristic of hot countries — the sorts of places where the politicians wear sunglasses. But the sad truth is that we have started to think of our politicians in much the same way that Italians or Argentines think of theirs — that is, as remote and self-serving.
The current election was prompted by the continuing refusal of MPs to implement the result of the 2016 Brexit referendum. But the issue now goes beyond Brexit. What is at stake is the legitimacy and authority of our system of parliamentary government.
Britain has not been itself over the past four years. I don’t just mean that we have lost the common sense and phlegm that we like to imagine are our national traits. I mean that we have lost respect for our institutions.
This Tuesday, as every year, bonfires will flame in every village. The English are a surprisingly unhistorical people, but there is one date that they all know: “Remember, remember, the fifth of November, gunpowder treason and plot.” The one true folk tradition that England retains is Guy Fawkes Night, which commemorates the foiling of a terrorist attack on Parliament on Nov. 5, 1605. In colonial America, as in Great Britain, huge crowds used to gather to see Guy Fawkes burned in effigy every year — the origin of the colloquialism “guy,” as in “you guys.”
No other country made the supremacy of its elected assembly so central to its identity. “Parliament,” as the romantic Tory MP Enoch Powell used to observe, “is a word of magic and power in this country.”
But that was then. Over the past four years, our MPs have diligently and determinedly destroyed the respect they used to depend upon. In the run-up to the 2016 Brexit referendum, they swore blind that they would implement the result either way. In the 2017 general election, they stood on manifestos promising to deliver Brexit. But the moment the votes had been safely counted, they started collaborating with Brussels to overturn the referendum.
Worse, they did so furtively. Rather than simply voting to revoke Brexit — something they did not have the guts to do openly — they strung the process out, first using technicalities and then, with the assistance of a biased speaker of the House of Commons, making up the rules as they went along in order to keep delaying.
Against an inert, frightened dullard like Theresa May, it was an effective tactic. But Boris Johnson was not going to play that game. If Parliament was unwilling to implement Brexit, despite its promises, there would have to be a new Parliament. Eventually, he maneuvered MPs into allowing a dissolution of Parliament. Polling day is now set for Dec. 12.
Who will win? I can’t say for sure, of course, because a British election is not like a Russian one. But every bone in my body tells me that the country will give Johnson the mandate he is asking for. There is something intrinsically unconvincing about the pitch of the leftist parties. They use anti-elitist slogans, railing against bankers and billionaires, yet they simultaneously propose to overturn a referendum result on the grounds that they know better than the masses.
It’s not just that they think Euroskeptics are working-class numbskulls; it’s that they can’t hide that belief. Until this week, their entire strategy was to force the prime minister to delay Brexit — Parliament actually passed a law requiring him to seek an extension — in the belief that the dimwitted proles would then blame him. Instead, unsurprisingly, voters blamed not the prime minister who was visibly trying to deliver Brexit but the MPs who had written the legislation to block it.
As I write, Johnson is between 8 and 17 points ahead in the polls.
To see why, ask yourself the following question: How might a country like Britain, a country that values civility and moderation, end the wretched polarization of the past four years? Is it a) by canceling the largest vote for anything in its history (Liberal Democrat policy), b) by prolonging the bitterness through another referendum (Labour policy), or c) by delivering Brexit in a liberal and internationalist spirit, showing the doubters that their fears of an introverted Britain were groundless? That last is Johnson’s policy. And of course, you only have to put the question to know the answer.
Two months ago in this column, I suggested that “an election before the end of the year is inevitable” and that “Boris will win.” The first prediction has now been vindicated. I stand by the second.
