My thoughts on the 2019 UK General Election

I've just returned from my office Christmas party in Estonia and I would like to talk about our 2019 UK general election results in today's post. First of all, allow me to clarify that the results were predicted accurately in the opinion polls for weeks before the election, showing Labour trailing way behind the posts, so when the results were officially announced, nobody had the the right to claim to be surprised. So most people have accepted that Brexit is going to happen in early 2020 and I'll like to offer my personal take on Labour's catastrophic defeat at the polls this time. Much has already been said about the 2019 election in the media so I am going to begin with Jonathan Pie's summary on the whole situation.

The social media echo chamber 

Here's the thing about social media: if you scrolled through my Facebook feed and read the kinds of material my friends have been posting in the last few weeks leading up to the majority, you'll be led to believe that we were headed for the biggest Labour majority in history, that the Conservatives would seize to exist after this election. But of course, this is just a reflection of the kind of friends I have in London - I have decided to keep my mouth shut on Facebook about the election because they would attack anyone who dares to question Jeremy Corbyn despite the fact that he has just produced the worst ever result for Labour since 1935. Yet even after the results have come in, these people are still stubbornly attacking anyone who has dared to even try to question what could have been done differently to prevent such a dumpster fire of a result. Oh it is insane - it is like on the reality TV 'The Apprentice' when a contestant comes up with a terrible idea, loses the task by a landslide, gets brought back to the boardroom and then even at that stage, he still tries to defend that awful idea with statements like, "I stand by everything I have done, I am proud of everything I have achieved."  This is only because many people only read the news that agrees with their long held beliefs and they actively avoid anything that may challenge their position - this creates an echo chamber and I personally experienced that in the run up to the Brexit referendum when I simply assumed that there was no way it could happen based on the kind of opinions I had encountered in London but of course, this wasn't representative of the rest of the country and I've learnt my lesson since when it comes to the echo chamber effect. However, it looks like many on social media haven't.

The absence of the united left 

Labour might have avoided such a crushing defeat at the hands of the Tories if they had formed a coalition of the left with the Liberal Democrats, the Greens, Plaid Cymru and the SNP. But instead, they ignored the fact that they simply didn't have the numbers to beat the Tories. Heck, even if such a coalition did exist, these five parties on the left only have a total of 267 MPs vs the Tories who have 365. Yet despite staring down the barrel of defeat as the opinion polls predicted, Labour supporters still attacked others on the left (like myself) for not supporting Labour rather than trying to reach across the political divide to try to find a way to prevent Boris Johnson from getting the numbers he needed to get a majority. But even after they were soundly defeated, they are still condemning people like me who voted for the Liberal Democrats instead of questioning why a record number of former Labour supporters have voted for the Tories for the first time in their lives. Politics does make a lot of people extremely unreasonable whether they are on the left or on the right of the political spectrum. I've talked a lot about autism on my blog (given that I am indeed autistic) but when I look at my social media feed today, a lot of my friends are even more autistic than I am because their approach to politics is very much "your only acceptable response is to agree 100% with me, if you only agree 99% with me, I will hate you, attack you, unfriend you after insulting you and you can rot in hell." Whatever happened to having the necessary social skills to talk about a topic like politics like a sensible adult, willing to deal with another person who may just disagree with you?

Why did I vote for the Liberal Democrats?

Allow me to define my political identity: I am extremely left wing on social issues (gay rights, women's rights, equality for minorities) but I am extremely right wing when it comes to the economy. Thus I don't conveniently fit into either the right wing or the left wing of traditional British politics: I am an immigrant, I am openly gay, I am an ethnic minority - all these things ought to place me on the left of the political spectrum, yet I working in finance and am very rich, so that ought to put me on the right of the political spectrum. A lot of people (particularly Americans) are unable to differentiate their political views when it comes to social issues as opposed to the economy and once you add religion to the mix, good grief most people lose the ability to reason! I really dislike Boris Johnson but by the same token, I loathe Jeremy Corbyn just as much - talk about the devil and the deep blue sea. So my vote was always going to be a protest vote to reject the tradition bipartisan nature of British politics, of the right vs the left, of the Tories vs Labour. Democracy would be better served if we had a bigger array of parties and credible candidates to choose from because in this election I look at Johnson vs Corbyn and came to the conclusion that they're both equally shit - it's just a different kind of shit. So I was going to vote either Liberal Democrats or for the Greens as a statement of protest, but since I live in a Labour safe seat, my protest is a futile gesture as the result is a forgone conclusion. No matter whom I vote for, whether I vote or not, I simply have no power to influence the outcome of the election; that is so frustrating knowing that my vote doesn't matter.

Why did Labour lose so many seats in England, particularly in the north and Midlands? 

Oh this has far more to do with the economy than politics per se. Allow me to explain this one: you see, there are many parts of England today which are desperately poor and this wasn't always the case. This was because economy of England changed a lot in the 1970s and we saw a major shift from manufacturing to service industries. Most factories that made stuff from clothes to sports equipment to toothpaste to light bulbs closed down as a lot of these jobs went to places like China, Turkey and Bangladesh where labour costs are a lot lower. But more importantly, the UK economy transformed itself into a service industry where there were new jobs in IT, finance, tourism and education - today jobs in the service industry comprise of about 80% of all jobs in the UK. The problem is that many of the older workers who lost their jobs when the factories closed down were unable to get new jobs in the more lucrative service industry. If you spent most of your career working as a foreman in a factory making office furniture, then you won't have a lot to offer an IT company or an investment bank if you were suddenly made redundant at the age of 50 because it has become too expensive to manufacture office furniture in the UK. Instead, the IT company and the investment bank would hire younger graduates who have made far more strategic choices when it came to their education and training to enable them to access the best jobs today - unfortunately for our 50 year old foreman who has just been made redundant, oh dear, the world was a very different place when he got his education over 30 years ago. The Berlin wall had only just come down in 1989 and Jason Donovan was still a heartthrob then with a head full of his own hair: remember this song?

How drastic was this change in the UK economy over the last few decades?

Overall the UK economy boomed as we switched from manufacturing to a service-based economy, but the most lucrative service jobs tended to be in the big cities like London, Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham. Furthermore, technology progressed a lot in the meantime in industries like steel making, hence machines started taking over much of the work that was used to be done by hand - both production and profits went up whilst the number of employees required in the factories drastically fell. So even if some of these British factories stayed in business, they were now hiring far fewer people than a generation ago. Thus many older people were forced to take a massive pay cut as took on other jobs such as taxi drivers - this was a really nasty shock for them as they had originally planned to work in the manufacturing sector until they retired, having built up a career there but midway through their careers, the sector basically collapsed. There was a time in the 1960s through to the 1980s when many working class British people could support their families and have a reasonably comfortable life with a job in the manufacturing industry, but today, many of those people have seen a considerable drop in their living standards as there was really nothing to replace these factories that used provide a lot of local employment. As a result, many areas in these old industrial heartlands are desperately poor today: those who have had the means to leave have long left and those who are left behind are angry, bitter and desperate for any kind of help they can get. For many years, they have pleaded for the government to do something about their situation but successive governments have mostly ignored their plight and have not done much to rejuvenate these depressed areas.

Yes, but why would these traditional Labour strongholds switch sides?

These areas tend to vote Labour because a left-wing government is usually seen as their best bet for a better future - left-wing political ideology would advocate taxing the rich in places like London and redistributing the wealth to those in the poorer areas like Blackpool and Middlesborough, so these areas would usually vote in a Labour MP. However, this didn't happen in the 2019 elections and many of these seats swung over to vote in a Tory MP, some for the first time in several decades. There may be a sense of 'Turkeys voting for Christmas' here - why would some of the poorest people vote for the Tory party, who are clearly pro-business an anti-welfare? What makes them think that Boris Johnson and his government would care about helping these very poorest people in our country when they are too busy drinking champagne in London? Well, the answer is simple: Labour has done too little for them. For years, they have faithfully voted in one Labour MP after another, election after election, remaining solidly faithful to Labour and have they seen a rise in their living standards? Hell no, quite the opposite. Now we can debate about whom we could blame for this, it could be the central government, it could be the individuals affected not doing enough to adapt to a changing economy in a fast changing world or you could even blame the education system. So when Boris Johnson promises the Brexit will be the panacea that will solve all their woes, they bought it and voted for the Tories. For many of them, they feel like they have nothing to lose - vote Labour and they will see their living standards stagnate or fall, so why not give the Tories a chance and who knows? It's a choice between more of the same crap or something new, so they chose to go for something new and when I put it like that, how can you blame them for rolling the dice with the "something new" option?

Will this 'something new' gamble pay off for them?

Will the Tories do much for these communities in the Midlands and the north of England which voted for them in the first place? Personally, I'm cynical but that's me rushing to judgement just days after we have had the election results and admittedly, that's perhaps somewhat unfair. The government will instead give these people something they promised: Brexit. Oh yeah, we'll get out either with Johnson's current deal or crash out with no deal - but either way, Brexit isn't going to do anything to boost the failing economies in these poverty stricken areas of England. Yeah right, like try persuading Google or Goldman Sachs to set up a new office in somewhere like Oldham or Walsall and hire the locals there - it just isn't going to happen. Google's stunningly beautiful head office in the UK is in Kings Cross, London and it is there for a reason: it can attract the best talent in the country in a central London location like that. If you're a bright, young person from Oldham or Walsall, you'll simply move to London to find better employment opportunities, rather than wait indefinitely for the government to try to rejuvenate the local economy there. Hence as a result, such depressed places have experienced a massive brain drain in the last three decades, hemorrhaging their brightest and most talented young people to the big cities - it is a vicious cycle that successive governments have failed to fix, despite having tried hard to stimulate the economies in these depressed areas. It's not like the government doesn't want to help these areas but rather, no one actually has a simple solution that can fix such a problematic situation. I suspect many of these areas will go back to voting Labour in future elections after this interesting 'experiment' which will not give them what they want.

Are there better ways to register your 'protest' than at the ballot box? 

Well, they are desperate. They voted for Brexit as a protest vote, because they have seen places like London boom and get richer as a result of trade with the EU but they haven't seen any benefits, so they voted for Brexit. Veteran Labour politician Dennis Skinner lost his seat in Bolsover after holding onto that seat for 49 years - now Bolsover is a typical traditional Labour voting area: very working class, former industrial heartland, loads of poor people. But if you were to walk around Bolsover town center today and observe the poverty around you, you can see why the locals were desperate for change. They had faithfully supported the Labour party ever since 1950 when the ward was created, but what has the Labour party done for them? So a vote for the Tories is indeed a massive protest vote by the people of Bolsover to say, "we've voted Labour for nearly 70 years and you've done fuck all for us, we're just getting poorer whilst the fat cats down in London are getting richer, this is a protest vote." I do see the logic behind it - when Obama stood for election as president, I talked to a black American friend and assumed that she would be excited about supporting him. Actually her response took me by surprise, "well Obama is black, so he's probably going to assume that all black people are going to vote for him once they see the colour of his skin. Whereas if it was a white candidate trying to win over the black vote, then he or she would go out of his way to woo the black voter and promise to do loads of great things for the African-American community. So whilst I am of course very happy to see a black president in the White House, I'm not sure he has that much motivation to do much for us ordinary black folks because we all just support him by default." By the same token, I can see why the people of Bolsover have finally gotten sick and tired of the Labour party assuming that they will always vote for Labour simply because they are poor and this is a last ditch attempt at a protest vote by them.

Do you blame Corbyn for this result? 

Oh yes, 100% - look, we can analyze his policies but I think that's a moot point. The bottom line is that there was no way in hell he would ever stand a chance against Boris Johnson in a general election and the only predictable result is a crushing defeat for Labour in nearly a century. This was entirely predictable according to the opinion polls as he struggled to even unite his own party, never mind try to appeal to voters from across the political spectrum in order to gain any chance of a victory at a general election. Yet he is so power hungry he was willing to lead the Labour party to a crushing defeat and even after that, he didn't have the decency to simply resign as leader and letting an interim leader take over, but is clinging onto his position as the leader of the Labour party for as long as possible. If he was genuinely concerned about helping the poor as he professed, then the easiest way for him to ensure that Boris Johnson would be booted out of office would have been to gallantly step aside and allow someone else take over as the leader of the Labour party - someone else who would have had far more of a fighting chance against Boris Johnson in the election. I am hugely disappointed because I don't like Boris Johnson at all, yet when I realized it would be Johnson vs Corbyn at the elections, the results were a foregone conclusion and the country deserved better than this. Corbyn had no chance whatsoever at all, but he clung onto power shamelessly putting his own selfish personal ambitions before the good of the country. I find that utterly despicable and view him with utter contempt - heck, I am not even a right wing Tory voter. I am just someone who doesn't want Boris Johnson leading this country: we need a better prime minister and I have little faith in Johnson. 

What is the future for Labour in the UK?

They are doomed and I am saying that not based on my personal opinion, but statistics. When Labour last had a government in power under Blair and then Brown, they held not just many seats in the Midlands and the north of England, but also in Scotland. The SNP was a fringe party in the past, their won zero, absolutely no seats for the first 31 years of their existence. Then their best result was 11 seats in October 1974 elections, but that fell to an average of 2 to 6 seats from 1979 to 2010. Then under the charismatic leader Nicola Sturgeon, they had a massive breakthrough in 2015, winning 56 out of the 59 Scottish seats and they did reasonably well this time, holding on to a majority of 48 out of 59 seats, consolidating their position as the third biggest party in British politics after the Tories and Labour. Before the rise of the SNP, many of these seats in Scotland voted for Labour and without their solid base in Scotland, well Labour just cannot make up the numbers to ever win a majority in any general election. Nicola Sturgeon is still relatively young as a leader at 49 years old and she is extremely popular, so there's no doubt that she is going to continue leading SNP on their winning streak for a long time to come. In the meantime, Labour is looking for a new leader to replace Corbyn further to their car crash of a defeat in this election and there are no obvious candidates that stand out as a particular strong leader who can take on the might of Nicola Sturgeon in Scotland to win back their former Scottish supporters. Labour's catastrophic performance this time round was largely due to them having a leader with very limited appeal - if they can select a replacement who is as dynamic as Nicola Sturgeon, then they can get back into government again. This is politics - you need to have a leader with wide enough appeal and Corbyn was simply the wrong man for the job. 

What will happen next?

Well, there's a lot of 'I told you so' going around right now - we all had a very good idea what the results would be according to the opinion polls before the elections. The opinion polls did get it wrong on two issues in the past: Brexit and Trump so people have become cynical about such opinion polls but on this occasion, they were quite accurate. Boris Johnson will make Brexit happen in the near future - either with his current deal or with no deal, then there will be a period of rebuilding and transition when the country will be scrambling around for the trade deals with anyone and everyone. Those who are anticipating some kind of economic miracle post-Brexit are not going to get that - certainly not in the short run. Everything does boil down to the economy: the geese that lays the golden eggs are in banking and IT, those are the sectors that will generate a lot of revenue and the government would be compelled to focus on the sectors that will perform the best in a post-Brexit Britain and that means neglecting those impoverished areas in the Midlands and the North and focusing mostly on London. This government is going to want to prove that a post-Brexit British economy will thrive and be successful, so those impoverished areas are going to be ignored and neglected as a result. In short, the rich will get richer, the poor will get poorer and little would really change after Brexit. But really, what were you expecting with a Conservative prime minister like Boris Johnson? You really think he cares about the poor in this country? Yeah, right. They are fucked either way. It doesn't matter who they vote for, Labour or Tory, they're all so fucked.

In conclusion: my plans for 2020

I have seen plenty of my friends who are still venting their anger and frustration on social media because they didn't get the election results they wanted. Never mind this election, I have one friend who is still posting stuff about the Brexit referendum results three years later. I'm far more pragmatic - no I didn't get the results I wanted from either the Brexit referendum nor this election, but no amount of bitching and complaining on social media is going to change the outcome, so I will avoid what my friends are doing because it is pointless. Instead, I will focus a lot more on the things that I do have control over such as my work. When I was in Tallinn, I had a chat with a local Estonian who had read many good things about Singapore in social media and so he asked me where life was better: Singapore or London? I shall share with you my answer to him. "It depends on just one thing: do you have money? Because if you're fabulously rich, you can have a good life no matter where you are: Tallinn, Singapore or London. But if you're poor, then life is going to be awful for you no matter where you are. So I think you're asking the wrong question. Don't talk about the country, let's look at how much you can earn instead. Money and wealth matters far more than politics in the real world." So by that token, I am putting aside issues like politics I have no control over and focusing on the things that I do have more control over - such as how productive and successful I am at work because I know the outcome of that will depend on how my actions.

So that's my take on the 2019 elections here in the UK. What do you think? What will Brexit mean for the UK when it happens? Do you think we will leave with Johnson's deal or crash out without a deal? What kind of PM will Johnson be? What will happen to the British economy in 2020? What are the long term prospects for the Labour party? Will Scotland get their referendum and leave the UK rather soon then? Leave a comment below please and many thanks for reading.