Barbara Kay on the British general election results:
“Palace of Westminster” by michaelhenley is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Boris Johnson’s Conservatives racked up a stunning victory in the U.K. elections, with numbers so decisive — 365 of 650 seats — we will hear no more rumblings about a “second referendum” on Brexit. You can love Boris or hate him, or struggle with mixed feelings (as I confess I do), but he now has a mandate to get Brexit done.
But I have no mixed feelings about the Labour Party’s humiliating loss, at 203 seats their lowest ebb since pre-World War Two. If ever a party leader deserved a definitive smackdown, it was Jeremy Corbyn, and a victory lap is in order for democracy doing what it does best.
On seeing the results, I said to myself, “Yay!” The second thing I said to myself was, “Who will be the first to pull a Jacques Parizeau and how long will it take?” As it turned out, not long at all, and it was former London mayor Ken Livingstone who reprised Parizeau’s infamous “money and the ethnic vote” blame-shift after the Yes side’s narrow loss in the 1995 Quebec sovereignty referendum.
As soon as it was clear the U.K. Conservatives had crossed the threshold majority number of 326 seats, Livingstone announced Labour’s defeat was at least partially down to “the Jewish vote.” In fact, a Jewish population of 260,000 could not by itself have greatly influenced the result, but it is a mark of the anti-Semitic mindset to constantly exaggerate Jewish power.
Livingstone, who has called allegations of anti-Semitism within the Labour Party “lies and smears,” was himself suspended from Labour in 2016 over an assertion that Hitler supported Zionism. It was by no means Livingstone’s only egregiously insensitive remark. In April, he reportedly told the group Labour Against the Witchhunt that “It is not anti-Semitic to hate the Jews of Israel.”
Disappointed progressives, of course, are handling the Labour defeat with calm resignation, patience, and a spot of rioting.
