We like it or hate it, with its messy false look, its contempt for details and especially for its slogan "Get Brexit done" ("Let's make Brexit"), simplistic, repeated ad nauseam throughout the general election campaign in the UK. However, Boris Johnson has masterfully succeeded in his bet. His conservative camp won a historic victory, Thursday, December 12, with 365 seats in the Houses of Commons (according to the final results), or 39 seats beyond the absolute majority (326), an advance never seen since 1987, when of the party's third consecutive victory under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher.
The outgoing Prime Minister will be able to stay in Downing Street for five years, and above all to achieve Brexit as promised on January 31, 2020: the election completely renewed a Parliament hitherto deadlocked, without a majority for (or against) the divorce with the European Union (EU). New MEPs will enter Westminster on Tuesday 17 December and may have to vote on the Withdrawal Bill, the legislative act to withdraw from the EU before Christmas. "We have been given a strong mandate to unite this country and achieve Brexit", hammered Boris Johnson around 3:45 a.m. from his riding of Uxbridge in north-west London.
Labor Party debacle
The Labor Party, the country's second largest political force, however, suffered a real debacle, with 32.2% of the vote against 40% in 2017, obtaining only 203 seats, against 262 in the outgoing Parliament. He pays heavily for the vagueness of his Brexit message – the party promised to renegotiate the divorce agreement and then to organize a referendum – a very radical program (more than £ 400 billion in additional public spending, around 482 billion euros) and above all, the very degraded image of its leader, Jeremy Corbyn, accused of not having fought enough against rampant anti-Semitism.
At 3.30 a.m., just after learning of his re-election in Islington in north London, Mr Corbyn announced that he would give up running other electoral campaigns and that he would leave the head of the party , but "After a period of reflection" within the latter. This is the fourth consecutive general election lost by the Labor Party.
The Liberal Democrats (LibDem), who hoped to capture most of the remainder at the start of the campaign, completely failed, with only eleven elected. Their promise to outright cancel Brexit has proven to be a major tactical error. Cruel symbol: Jo Swinson, their young leader, who claimed to want to become Prime Minister at the start of the campaign, lost its seat in Dunbartonshire East, in the south-west of Scotland, by 150 votes, to the benefit of a very young candidate for the SNP, the Scottish independence party.
