Opinion｜Brexit: Desolation Row

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Britain is now indistinguishable from Bob Dylan’s 'Desolation Row.' It has been sucked into that latter-day Inferno, all paradoxes, paranoia and lies. Its very own Nero leads it through each new circle with a vice-like grip while the opposition does its best impression of Robin Hood, but no one listens to them recite their nonsense. Politicians blindly subvert the truth as they paint the country’s passports blue, while supporters of both parties shriek at the rest of us to pick between two despicable sides. The Brexit cruiser is finally setting sail on its doomed voyage. The circus is most definitely in town.

The UK’s political landscape is as surreal and hideous as the street Dylan envisioned in his 1965 epic of entropy, now that 50 years on the fury and rancor let loose by the Brexit referendum has turned this once practical, pragmatic nation into a seething, gurning mess. The recent general election on December 12 was defined not by policy but by fake news and meaningless slogans, and it resulted in a bold vindication of Boris Johnson’s Conservatives, who won in a near landslide victory with a total of 365 seats (an increase of 48) leaving the UK’s main opposition, the Labour party, with just 203 (a decrease of 60). As the postmortem starts, the moon is already hidden and the stars are beginning to hide.

The Brexit Election?

One thing is now certain following the vote: Brexit is happening, and happening soon. Johnson’s victory was by such a margin that he now controls enough of a majority (78 seats) to get his Brexit deal through Parliament with ease. The dream of a “People’s Vote” for us British citizens living in the EU—some deus ex machina to swoop in and save our ability to live and work throughout Europe with ease—is dashed. The UK will be leaving the European Union on January 31, and there is no way back (until the rejoin campaign begins in a couple of years time, that is). It is therefore imperative that anyone who has been putting off getting registered here in Spain now does so as an utmost priority before the end of January. You can find the details of what you need to do before the deadline through the British consulate’s website.

But was this really the Brexit election? It would be easy to characterize Johnson’s victory as a resounding ratification of the vote in 2016, a proxy second referendum where the British electorate’s blood-curdling scream of “Leave” was the loudest once more. But this is a bit misleading. In terms of the popular vote, only 47% of voters actually supported parties who stood on aggressive leave platforms (the Conservatives and the Brexit Party), while the other parties offering a second referendum (Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the Scottish Nationalists, the Greens) took home some 52% of the vote. In fact, the party who got the biggest increase in the popular vote were Remain’s biggest cheerleaders, the Lib Dems. They won 1,303,481 more seats than in 2017, while the Conservatives only won 304,516 more votes, and Labour lost over 2.5 million. 

However, in the cold hard game of election winning, none of that actually matters. The Lib Dems ended up one seat worse off thanks to the UK’s absolutely fine and normal “first past the post” voting system. Johnson will therefore take the result as a mandate for his deranged vision of sunlit, deregulated, unicorn-laden, post-Brexit uplands, even if the numbers prove that the fault lines Brexit carved in 2016, with 52% in favor of Leave and 48% for Remain, have largely endured. There won’t be any olive branches extended to the losers—there won’t be any olives at all once the extortionate tariffs kick in—and it’s probably going to take an economic meltdown or a generational demographic shift for all that to change.

Rather than a vindication of Brexit, then, what this election really tells us is just how sick of the B-word the UK electorate really is. But most especially, it tells us what they actually think about the leaders who took part in it.

A Tale of Two Parties

In May of this year, we covered what has now proved itself to be a key turning point in the run up to the vote—the European elections. The responses of each side tells you all you need to know about how the Conservatives achieved victory. It’s a tale of two parties—one with an unquenchable will to win, the other a stubborn, impotent joke.

Following a disastrous showing in the European elections, the Conservative party got rid of their inept leader, Theresa May, installed a populist firebrand in Boris Johnson, and gave him a backroom staff known to do anything they need—even break electoral law—to win. They dusted off the cat-o-nine-tails, kicked out all non-believers, and even tried to illegally shut down parliament, before pushing as hard as they could for what they knew they needed: an election, which was eventually given to them by the opposition, a move which was, in retrospect, the final nail in their coffins.

By hammering home a simple message (“Get Brexit Done,” which most disillusioned voters happily read as “we’ll make Brexit go away, promise”), refusing to come under media scrutiny at every possible juncture and swearing to fix the various crises their own party had a hand in creating over the past decade, the Conservatives waltzed to a majority. With the help of the Brexit Party of course, whose decision to stand down candidates in seats the Conservatives won in 2017 proved vital in making sure the pro-Brexit vote was not split like the Remain one (when it comes to Brexit or bust, even Nigel Farage can be noble). Where on earth all the money is going to come from to complete all the expensive policies they set out in their manifesto (some kind of special tree, perhaps?), is another matter.

The Labour party also had a terrible showing in the European elections. This saw them do… not much, really. We’ve come to expect a few things from Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour, and admission of error is not one of them. Rather than soul searching or a party shake up, we got more of the same: vile insults hurled at anyone who questioned them, dithering over Brexit and yet more things being dredged up about Corbyn fraternizing with repugnant anti-Semites.

From what I could make of it, Labour’s main election strategy seemed to revolve around creating frivolous viral videos for social media. This was headed up by their hard-left campaign group, Momentum, the “irresistible” grassroots force who were met with the immovable object of their own incompetence on election night. There seems to have been some surprise among Momentum and their cronies that the people who they so delightfully called “Tory Scum” in the run-up didn’t want to vote for them. When “Tory Scum” is every single person who doesn’t exactly agree with your warped vision of socialism, this presents an election winning problem.

One of the groups in the Corbynistas’ crosshairs was the huge number of voters who cared more about Britain remaining in the EU than constructing their new world order. Remain voters make up a majority of the Labour membership (who, lest we forget, Jeremy Corbyn assured would shape Labour party policy), but their grievances were largely ignored by the leadership and hard-left controlled party apparatus until the top brass were eventually dragged kicking and screaming into supporting a second referendum. But by that point it was too late. No one has trusted Corbyn or believed he actually wanted to stay in the EU for years—why on earth would they?

By being so very combative, partisan and tribal, Corbyn and his supporters lost at least 1.1 million remain voters to the Lib Dems, but also some 800,000 of their traditional voters to the Conservatives. People in working class towns across the UK who didn’t conform to the Corbynistas’ uber-woke view of the world, or who thought the other way on Brexit, or who mistrusted their leader were all told to “f*ck off and join the Tories.” Lots of people duly obliged. Corbyn and his supporters therefore handed the keys to Downing Street to the people they claim to oppose most fervently on a silver platter—so much for a “kinder, fairer politics.”

A New Dawn for Boris Johnson

What the result of this election means for the UK domestically is strangely hard to tell. Johnson is a political chameleon, but one of the most sinister kind. He is more than happy to change his politics and ideas to fit the baying of the mob, evolving from the liberal, well-liked Mayor of London to the main perpetrator of a dog whistling brand of politics that is high on public school bravado and low on compassion and empathy. His lust for power Trumps all else with a capital T, and it’s becoming harder and harder to tell the difference between him and his equally coiffured pal across the Atlantic. Some think that the Johnson we will see now he is cemented in power will be the bumbling buffoon of old, but given his first move in office has been to outlaw any further extension to the Brexit transition period, the contemptuous version of the last few years looks much more likely.

Johnson and his team don’t need to be eviscerated at any great length here; his failings are clear and obvious enough for even VAR to spot [insert laugh track], and others in the UK have taken him to task with enough acerbity. We saw the lies he and his party perpetuated on the campaign trail; we remember the racism and homophobia he spouted for years as a journalist; we know about the British citizens he abandoned to despotic regimes. The only thing neither we nor he seem to be any the wiser about is how many children he really has.

The Tories, in power and with a firm majority, now have nowhere to hide. They will be judged on what they do in government over the next five years: whether they can actually achieve the impossible and “Get Brexit Done,” and whether they can bring new prosperity to the Northern towns who did the unthinkable and put their trust in them. For the immediate future, what is more worrying is what Johnson and his party’s success means for politics across the globe. The manipulation of fact and the absolute refusal to come under any media scrutiny will serve as yet another election winning template for right-wing populists to follow. If someone so disliked by so many can win by so much, many other more sinister parties will follow the Dominic Cummings playbook and they will win.

Those who wish to copy Johnson, however, will be unlikely to have such an easy run to power. None of them will come up against an opposition leader so inadequate, so inept, so caught up in their own brand of 1970s tin-pot student Marxism that they fail to see that they are the problem. Johnson is beyond the pale—we know this—but those on the left who claim to be the country’s arbiters of moral purity should be held to a higher standard.

The End of Corbynism?

On December 13, 2019, after taking the Labour party to its worst defeat in a UK general election since 1935, losing 60 seats, including the “red wall” of constituencies in Northern England which have been the party’s heartlands since its inception, Jeremy Corbyn penned an article in the Guardian, the title of which begins: “We won the argument.” Yep, you read that right. Surveying the mess that he has left the country in after four years as Labour leader, Corbyn had the brass neck to claim he had somehow been victorious. 

The same article talks of his policies’ sustained popularity, that there was still a majority of people who could get behind his radical ideas. The proof? The general election he fought and lost (and lost!) in 2017, that time to Theresa May, now remembered for running the most bungled political campaign in recent memory.

There is no contrition in Corbyn’s article, no ownership of what he caused, no statesmanship or a semblance of dignity in defeat. And what’s more? He remains the leader of the Labour party, calling for a period of reflection rather than resigning on the spot as losing opposition leaders normally do. Instead, he will depart in the coming months, leaving the new leader with the unenviable task of constructing something, anything, from the wreckage he has left.

The traditional strongholds of Labour support deserted the party in this election. In Blyth and Burnley, in Grimsby and Wrexham—working class seats in the North of England and Wales that Labour has held for generations—voters took one look at Corbyn and his policies, turned and ran. That’s the reason they gave to candidates on the doorstep. They mentioned Brexit too, but Corbyn himself was the main issue. When you are proven this toxic to an electorate, when it is this apparent that you will never be able to win power, it doesn’t matter how compelling your policies are: you are a pointless, defunct, a waste of political air. As Jonathan Freedland writes: “A political party is ... not a hobby; it’s not a pressure group … it’s not ‘a 30-year project.’ Its purpose is to win and exercise power in the here and now.” The here and now has passed Corbyn and his followers by, leaving instead a grim decade of unchallenged Tory rule.

Does Jeremy Corbyn actually care about the working class? It might sound like an absurd question to ask of a Marxist, but if he did, surely he would have seen his own poll ratings—“most unpopular opposition leader of past 45 years,” step forward!—and moved aside to give someone less despised a shot at beating Johnson, a shot which anyone with any charisma, intelligence and political guile would probably have won. His supporters call him humble, but he is a narcissist of the worst kind, with one hand virtue signalling his support for the poor and anti-racist causes (bar the jews, of course) and with the other tightening his grip on power within his party, ensuring that his cult of personality remains untarnished while the country gets pushed to the literal brink.

The post-election “period of reflection” has been nothing of the sort, as Corbyn and his supporters’ immediate reaction has been to try and gaslight the entire UK. Labour’s hard-left insurgents claim Brexit was the only reason they lost. They claim their defeat (their defeat!) in the 2017 general election as proof of how popular their policies truly are. They claim that the idea of moving to a more moderate, center-left model that won Tony Blair three elections (the only elections that the Labour party has won in the past 50 years) is the last thing the recent vote proves they should do. It’s a rewriting of history before there has even been time for dust to touch the ground, let alone settle. “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears”—Corbynism’s final, most essential command.

Their response to the election reveals Corbyn’s supporters to be exactly the same as all the hard-leftists who have come before them—a “new kind of politics” this is not. The old Marxist tropes of anti-Semitism and blame-dodging were already there for all to see, and now they have made plain that keeping a stranglehold on the Labour party is far more important to them than winning future elections, too. Their preferred candidate after Corbyn must, they say, be one made in his unelectable image. If they get their way and that ends up being the utterly charmless Rebecca Long-Bailey, then God help us all. Roll on another defeat in five years time.

What Now?

What now indeed. With Brexit on the way—oven-ready and hot enough to scold the mouths of every single British citizen—some sort of certainty has returned to Britain’s shores for the first time in three years. But being certain someone is about to punch you in the mouth doesn’t make it hurt any less. It’s still impossible to see how Brexit is going to benefit the UK. In order to get a deal secured by the end of 2020 (which is by all accounts an absurdly short amount of time for negotiations this complex), Johnson will have to cave to the EU’s every demand. This probably includes leaving Britain aligned with the EU’s market and rules, but without a seat at the decision-making table. We will become, as the new forgotten man of British politics Jacob Rees-Mogg was so fond of saying, a vassal state. And if Johnson doesn’t cave, the No Deal fiasco will rear its head once more at the end of the transition period. A win-win, then.

But let’s look on the bright side: Brexit could well cause the disintegration of the United Kingdom, too. The success of the Scottish Nationalist Party was another of the biggest takeaways from the election; the new electoral map of Britain sees England and Wales blue and Scotland an ominous yellow, already looking like an independent state with vastly different priorities. Scotland voted overwhelmingly to remain in Europe in 2016, so when Britain leaves the EU, the clamor for a fresh referendum on an independent Scotland who remain in the EU will begin in earnest. In fact, it already has. Catalunya is no doubt watching closely.

Northern Ireland, meanwhile, is now controlled in the majority by the Irish republican parties of Sinn Féin and the SDLP, both of whom support reunification with the southern Republic. If Johnson’s Brexit deal includes a border down the Irish Sea, a clear sign to the already neglected Northern Irish that the rest of the United Kingdom sees them as a kind of pointless accessory, then a United Ireland there could be, too. Or, terrifyingly, a return to the violence which dominated both countries in the 20th century. This and the repercussions on the United Kingdom’s unity will be the vote in 2016’s most damning legacy.

The gravity of these potential outcomes says it all. What we have seen from 2016 until now has merely been a piercing, jarring overture for what is to come. Brexit will be truly judged once Britain leaves the European Union. Now this general election has finally facilitated it, let’s see which number on desolation row Britain chooses to move into.

Harry Stott is a regular contributor to the Barcelona Metropolitan covering Brexit, local political and social issues as well as the music scene. He recently received a B.A. in music from the University of Leeds, and now writes and produces radio content for a number of organizations in Barcelona and beyond. You can read more of Harry's articles here.