Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn
The results from the general election in the United Kingdom are in.
Conservatives: 318 seats (-12 seats)
Labour: 261 seats (+31 seats)
Scottish National Party: 35 seats (-19 seats)
Liberal Democrats: 12 seats (+3 seats)
Democratic Unionist Party: 10 seats (+2 seats)
Sinn Fein: 7 seats (+3 seats)
Plaid Cymru: 4 seats (+1 seat)
Green Party: 1 seat (no change)
When Conservative prime minister Theresa May called the snap election, her party held 330 seats in the 650 seat British Parliament. Given 326 seats are needed to form a majority government, she has lost the Conservative majority and there are already calls – including within her own party – for her to resign.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn says, “She wanted a mandate. Well, the mandate she’s got is lost Conservative seats, lost votes, lost support and lost confidence. I would have thought that is enough for her to go.”
Furthermore, Labour MP John McDonnell says, “If we can form a minority government, I think we can have a stable government. We would be able to produce a Queen’s speech and budget based upon our manifesto, which I think could command majority support in parliament, not through deals or coalitions but policy by policy.”
This hour, The Guardian now reports, “May has struck a deal with the Democratic Unionists that will allow her to form a government, sources have confirmed.” The Mirror bluntly says, “The Democratic Unionist Party [based in Northern Ireland] are the anti-abortion pro Brexit party of climate change deniers who don’t believe in LGBT rights who May needs to prop up her failing government.”
The fallout from this arrangement remains to be seen, but what is clear is the ascendancy of the Labour Party under Corbyn.
Owen Jones comments in The Guardian, “Labour is now permanently transformed. Its policy programme is unchallengeable. It is now the party’s consensus. It cannot and will not be taken away. Those who claimed it could not win the support of millions were simply wrong. No: Labour didn’t win, but from where it started from, that was never going to happen: that policy programme enabled the party to achieve one of the biggest shifts in support in British history – yes, eclipsing Tony Blair’s swing in 1997.”
And Bhaskar Sunkara notes in The Jacobin, “The Labour left remembered that you don’t win by tacking to an imaginary center — you win by letting people know you feel their anger and giving them a constructive end to channel it towards.”
Notable in the Labour Party Manifesto are these two promises:
1- “Across the world, countries are taking public utilities back into public ownership. Labour will learn from these experiences and bring key utilities back into public ownership to deliver lower prices, more accountability and a more sustainable economy. We will replace our dysfunctional water system with a network of regional publicly-owned water companies.” The Council of Canadians has called on the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan (OTPP) and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) to divest from privatized, for-profit water services in the United Kingdom.
2- “Labour will review our historic investment treaties with other countries, ensuring they are fit for purpose for the 21st century. Labour opposes parallel investor-state dispute systems for multinational corporations and we will open a dialogue with trading partners on alternative options that provide investor protection whilst guaranteeing equality before the law.” The Council of Canadians also rejects the investment court system (ICS), a variant of the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) provision, in the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA).
Stay tuned!