This is foreboding for the US Democrats.
- First Brexit vote in 2016
- Then Trump’s election,
- Now the conservative tsunami in the UK, and
- Next the overwhelming re-election of Trump in 2020.
THE CONSERVATIVE party did everything it could to hand an election victory to Labour. It gestated Brexit in its womb and then failed to deliver it. It presided over ten years of austerity that strained public services to breaking point. It promoted fanatics while expelling first-raters. Yet Labour has managed its fourth loss in a row and its second under Jeremy Corbyn, and not just any old loss. As we went to press Labour was set to win only around 200 seats, its worst performance since 1935.
Under Michael Foot in 1983 Labour responded to a similar humiliation by moving to the centre. You might imagine that this would happen in double-quick time today, too—that Mr Corbyn and John McDonnell, his shadow chancellor and comrade in arms, would be marched out of Labour headquarters in sackcloth and ashes; and that Seamus Milne, chief strategist, and his fellow Marxists would be subjected to a suitably Stalinesque show trial. Having won three elections under a moderate leader, Tony Blair, Labour has now lost three as it has charged ever further to the left. Enough said, surely?
Not in Britain’s looking-glass politics. In a graceless speech on being re-elected to his seat in Islingon North, Mr Corbyn attacked the press and said that, though he will not lead the party into the next election, he will stay on for an interim period while it sorts out its future, probably in alliance with John McDonnell, his shadow chancellor. More important, Corbynism as a philosophy is probably here to stay for some time to come; Labour’s ideas were “eternal”, Mr Corbyn said. Potential successors will blame the messenger rather than the message. Blairism will remain in the grave.
https://www.economist.com/britain/2019/12/13/jeremy-corbyns-crushing-defeat