On Dec. 12, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party won 326 seats in the United Kingdom’s Parliament and secured an absolute majority. The victory is one of the largest seen by the Conservative Party in decades, and was viewed by some as a repudiation of Brexit.
“I think it’s not a surprise that he won. It is a surprise that he won by the margin that he won,” said WGBH News Analyst and CEO of the GroundTruth Project Charlie Sennott during an interview with Boston Public Radio on Monday. “I mean, this is a real mandate that Johnson has now.”
Sennott said part of the reason for the Conservative’s massive victory was frustration with Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of The Labour Party, the Conservative’s primary rival and the second largest vote-winner in the election. In the weeks preceding the vote, Labour had been dogged with allegations of anti-Semitism from members of the party. Corbyn said that though individuals within the party may have exhibited anti-Semitism at one point, it is not emblematic of Labour’s position, and apologized for any comments by Labour members that were anti-Semitic.
Sennott said that in addition to the allegations of anti-Semitism, Corbyn’s party struggled to rally citizens around its robust left-wing platform that included plans to require major firms to provide more ownership stakes to their employees and calls to nationalize major utility companies.
“[Johnson’s victory] has as much to do with Brexit fatigue as it does with Jeremy Corbyn fatigue,” Sennott said. “The tide of history just crashed over Jeremy Corbyn in a very harsh way.”
