Why The Labour Landslide Is A “Moral” Victory Over Brexit Lies

-Analysis-

PARIS — There’s something fascinating, and somewhat moral — yes, moral — about the result of the British snap election. Moral, because the voters of the United Kingdom inflicted a brutal punishment against lying in politics.

The ruling Conservative party has suffered its biggest rout since 1906. It is paying a heavy price for Brexit, responsible for the decline in the British standard of living after holding out the prospect of a return to glorious times. The UK has the lowest growth in the G7, and 65% of Britons now believe that Brexit was a mistake.

It was weird to see British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak call on one of his predecessors, Boris Johnson, to help in the campaign, when the latter was a promoter of Brexit. The facetious Johnson got the country to vote yes in 2016, then jockeyed to become prime minister, before being ousted from 10 Downing Street, when he was unable to get the country out of the rut he’d thrown it into.

Promises on the bus

We have forgotten it, but the “yes” Brexit campaign had been marked by misleading promises. In particular, the one plastered on London buses: that London would give the National Health Service (NHS) the £350 million the UK was supposed to pay to Europe every week. Eight years on, the NHS is in tatters and hasn’t received a penny more.

The Brexit referendum was also marked by the first full-scale scandal of opinion manipulation through social network operations. This was the Cambridge Analytica affair, a company funded by the pro-Russian far right, a scandal that caused a stir as far away as Washington.

Labour’s victory is first and foremost the defeat of those who deceived their electors.

It is this “yes” based on lies, and eight chaotic years of five prime ministers, endless negotiations with Brussels, and a Conservative party on its knees, that has been punished. Labour’s victory is “moral” in the sense that it is first and foremost the defeat of those who deceived their electors, which is rare enough to be noted.

But if Brexit had been able to inoculate other peoples against listening to populist sirens, against believing in promises too good to be true, we’d know. We don’t learn, alas, from the failures or mistakes of others.

Lessons for Europe and the U.S.

But there is one positive effect of the Brexit impasse: it has dissuaded those who would imitate them, Frexit, Italxit or Polexit. Nobody’s talking about that anymore.

Instead, it’s time to take control of the European Union from within. That’s the Orban method, the Hungarian prime minister who just this week reaffirmed his hope that the far-right National Rally (RN) will win in France, and then Donald Trump in the United States.

The other lesson of Brexit is that the Labour Party won one of the biggest victories in its history without making any promises, other than a certain economic orthodoxy. First, it had to replace its radical leader with toxic behavior, Jeremy Corbyn, with the entirely relatable Keir Starmer; and become a party of government again. Perhaps there too, there are some lessons to be learned.