Tory election win and the ‘Brexit hot potato’

Tory election win and the ‘Brexit hot potato’

So the election results are in and the Conservatives have won a sizeable majority, leaving Boris Johnson holding the ‘hot potato’ that is Brexit.

In 2017, I became convinced that the then Prime Minister Theresa May ran an election campaign that was designed so that the Conservatives would lose, and to hand over the proverbial ‘hot potato’ to Labour, and thus leave them to deal with this major political issue.

Looking back at the 2019 election campaign, while Boris Johnson seemed to come across as quite confident regarding this issue – what with his whole campaign being based around the mantra of ‘Get Brexit Done’ – it has to be said that otherwise the campaign was pretty poor, and many other policies were practically overlooked.

While the opposing Labour party tried to deflect attention away from Brexit, equally their campaign was pretty shambolic, and in fact it was at one point starting to look like neither party really wanted to win this election.

I did honestly think at one point that perhaps one or both of the Brexit Party and/or LibDems were going to surprise a lot of people and do much better than expected.

But ultimately the Conservatives won the day with a good majority, and now Boris’ Conservatives are left holding the Brexit ‘hot potato’, and are going to have to go through with their promises, otherwise they run the risk of completely alienating their voters.

As much as I would personally like to see the UK actually leave the EU, I’m still not convinced that any Tory government is going to do so, and even with a much increased majority in the House Of Commons, I do not think that Boris is going to find this plain sailing, and I am sure that there are still a number of Tory MPs who can be considered ‘Remainers’ that will attempt to scupper our withdrawal from the EU.

But what the Conservatives have successfully done, is to neutralise any perceived ‘threat’ from the Brexit Party, as has been successfully done with UKIP in the past. Obviously, as with UKIP, Nigel Farage has also successfully capsized his Brexit Party, and limited any substantial damage they could have done to the current two-party system by standing aside candidates, and thus leaving voters with the inevitable predicament of ‘only really having two choices’, namely Labour or Conservative.

Remember in 2017, having already stepped down as UKIP leader, Nigel Farage was urging UKIP supporters to ‘back a Brexiteer’ – in other words he was trying to get UKIP supporters to ‘vote Tory’.

If Nigel Farage was really serious about “changing politics for good”, I don’t think he would have so meekly stepped aside to let Boris steal his thunder. Unless he was just a ‘closet Tory’ after all…

I really don’t think this is all going to be ‘done and dusted’ by the end of January next year, after all we haven’t even started talking about any future trade deal with the EU yet – don’t forget all this current huff and bluster about ‘agreeing a deal’ with the EU is mostly just about ‘how’ we leave the EU and on what ‘terms’ we do so.

For all his pompous arrogance, Boris is just lying – he is going to betray us all next year, just watch this space. If you thought the ‘deal’ that Theresa May had agreed with the EU was bad, then Boris’ ‘deal’ is pretty much the same but with a few minor tweaks.

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