U.S. Leftists Ignore UK Elections

The recent landslide election triumph of Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson may prove to be an accurate predictor of what is likely to happen in U.S. elections come 2020.

The same hatred that has held Democrats in its bitter grip since President Donald Trump first took to the political stage is the same rage that is likely to blind them to the lesson that is there in the UK election results.

Prime Minister Johnson’s electoral victory resulted in the largest majority in the British Parliament since Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher held office.

Conversely, Johnson’s adversary, Jeremy Corbyn, managed to drag his Labour Party to its lowest levels since the 1930s. The conservative Tories won 365 seats in Parliament’s lower chamber, with Labour gaining a mere 203.

Labour was left shell-shocked after a night that saw once safe seats in working class areas jump to the conservative side of the spectrum. Such a profound change to the political landscape would have been unthinkable just a few short years ago.

Interestingly, the place with which we share a common language, culture, and history currently has a political climate that is remarkably similar to the one that is occurring in the U.S. In both places, there is a seemingly perpetual struggle that exists between globalist elites who embrace trans-national institutions and national populism that is aligned with working class citizens who are trying to navigate the waters of the current economic reality.

Political occurrences in the U.S. and across the pond appear to run jointly at times. In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Thatcher strove together in fierce opposition to communism. The 1990s saw President Bill Clinton and Prime Minister Tony Blair hike the “Third Way” road together of supposed middle ground politics. And in 2016, the political earthquake election of President Trump caused comparable seismic waves to that of Britain’s prior Brexit vote.

It then comes as little surprise to the politically and culturally astute that the right in both countries seeks border integrity, individual empowerment, fewer regulations, lower taxes, and innovative approaches to international trade, thereby favoring the nation state.

The left in both countries, on the other hand, has a preference for multilateral international organizations, embraces ever-expanding government, elevates open borders, is expert in crafting draconian regulations, and is endlessly preaching about the supposed environmental doomsday that is to come.

Corbyn campaigned on a set of extreme left-wing policies that sound eerily similar to the current crop of Democrats that are seeking the presidential nomination. Corbyn would have increased government spending to gargantuan amounts, ballooning the public sector. During his first 100 days in office, Corbyn promised to nationalize utilities, give 10 percent of corporate stock in companies to workers, and implement a 32-hour work week.

His planned policy solutions were almost in lockstep with the so-called democratic socialism offered by Democrat presidential wannabes Senators Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).

A couple of their fellow Democrat opponents attempted to capitalize on the UK results. At a fundraiser, former Vice President Joe Biden referenced Johnson’s victory, saying, “Look what happens when the Labour Party moves so, so far to the left. It comes up with ideas that are not able to be contained within a rational basis quickly.”

And former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg used his Twitter account to declare that “Jeremy Corbyn’s catastrophic showing in the U.K. is a clear warning: We need a Democratic nominee who can defeat Donald Trump by running a campaign that appeals to Americans across our divides.”

Much like their denial after President Trump’s watershed victory, the left in America cannot accept the results of the UK election either. Leftists are already following the same pattern of rationalization, falsification, and resistance that was exhibited in 2016 and thereafter.

Michael Tomasky of the Daily Beast characterizes Corbyn as someone who was “never suited to be a national leader of a major political party in a major industrial democracy,” adding that he “was an ineffectual backbencher and should have remained so.”

Others such as Kate Aronoff, a senior fellow at Data for Progress, which is a progressive U.S. think tank, dismiss Johnson’s massive win by claiming that it was only about Brexit. Aronoff used the Guardian to explain that, in her assessment, “the UK election was ultimately an election about Brexit, and Brexit won. There’s no clean analogue to that in the US.”

Eric Levitz of the New Yorker Magazine rationalizes that Sanders’s “political vision is less radical than Corbyn’s, particularly on foreign policy.”

Another Guardian writer, Cas Mudde, posits, “Centrists say this is proof Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren can’t win. They are wrong.”

Two infamous names, Fusion GPS’s Glen Simpson and “dossier” author Christopher Steele recently surfaced to precondition the UK public in a virtual re-run of the debunked narrative of 2016.

Even before the electorate in the UK had cast a single vote, Simpson and Peter Fritsch wrote in an editorial that appeared in the Guardian that Russia was the reason Prime Minister Johnson won.

The article actually urged the British government to launch a Mueller-style investigation into Russian interference in the UK elections, claiming, “The British political system has become thoroughly compromised by Russian influence.”

Weeks earlier the Guardian had drudged up yet another so-called dossier derived from an “analysis from Britain’s intelligence agencies, as well as third-party experts such as the former MI6 officer Christopher Steele…”

It seems as though the American left, lost in its impeachment obsession, is calloused to the growing disgust and anger on the part of the public on both sides of the Atlantic.