2019 United Kingdom general election

We would be damaging the fabric of the union with regulatory checks and even customs controls between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, on top of those extra regulatory checks down the Irish Sea, that are already envisaged in the Withdrawal Agreement... now I have to tell you, no British Conservative government could or should sign up to any such arrangement. The funny side of the No 10 claim they have got rid of the backstop is that they have in fact transformed it from a fallback into the definitive future arrangement for NI with the province remaining in the Single Market and Customs Union.

The 2019 United Kingdom general election was unsurprisingly called by Boris Johnson, Prime Minister and National Embarrassment of the United Kingdom, after Members of Parliament just wouldn't let him shove the poor off a cliff. After both the surprise aftermath of the last election thanks to Jeremy Corbyn, and Tory MPs continuously jumping ship after that, (climaxing in Boris himself ordering the whip to give 21 Conservative MPs the boot) Boris Johnson found himself unable to incompetently do what he was forced in to incompetently do, thanks to an unlikely alliance of Labour, the SNP, other smaller parties including the DUP, and, most hilariously, ex-members of the Conservatives. So now we're at a pivotal crossroads in the United Kingdom's history, again, for the third time in three years. Guess who's won.

Not-So-Unelectable
Despite hearing repeatedly, over and over again, from the same people, how undeniably unelectable the Court Jezzter was during the 2017 United Kingdom general election, the Labour Party came to a knife's edge of leaving the Conservatives in the dust, and forcing them into an unholy alliance with DUP to stay afloat. Unfortunately for everyone, a knife's edge wasn't good enough when Mad May was running the show, and we got such hits as the Grenfell disaster, the Windrush scandal, and a Brexit deal so bad not even Theresa's own party would support it. Austerity continued in all the many forms it took, and the Tories built literally 0 of the 200,000 promised council homes. Labour were a little above where they were during the 2017 general election last time in the polls, for whatever that meant this early into the campaign.

Conservative Party
Any smidgen of favour the Tories may have gleaned with centrists utterly evaporated when Boris Johnson took over, both as party leader, and Prime Minister of the fucking country. Through David Cameron and Theresa May's neo-liberalist cocoon, Boris Johnson tore up and revealed the Conservative Party's new form as a neo-conservative to neo-fascist butterfly, depending on where Johnson's nightmare cabinet is feeling that morning.

Labour Party
Corbyn had only become more of a rising star since the 2017 election, winning more decisive victories in parliament than Margaret Thatcher did as Leader of the Opposition, in even less time. Continuing to, ahem, inspire young people and a previously apathetic electorate, the man every paper and party leader angrily insisted was unelectable has proven himself to be, unfortunately for the Tories, electable. But the man has, er, some issues.

Scottish National Party
The SNP rode a significant pro-Remain wave in Scotland - the Scots largely wanted to Remain, and the SNP supports this.

UKIP 2: Die Harder
GOD FUCK NOOOOOOOOOOOO

After a state of hilarious undeath and irrelevance, Nigel Farage has returned from his migration to America, upon the realisation that a Brexit bad enough to please his rich friends might not happen. They did psychologically horrifyingly well in the European Parliament election, scoring 29 MEPs, and arguably is the reason Theresa fell on her own sword in order to allow the forcing in of Boris Johnson, since they didn't want lose a flood of voters to Nigel Farage. Because it's impossible for anything good to ever happen in this fucking world, we have to take Nigel Farage seriously, again.

They're not a major party, and they're not a small party since they don't have any seats, but they'll almost definitely snatch a few in the general election at the rate we're going uh, they're a special party that has influenced this election regardless, so they have their own special section.

Liberal Democrats
to be fair to the lib dems it isn't like they have a proven track record of abandoning whatever they were pretending their principles were and supporting the opposite of the thing they said they supported yesterday, maybe this is an anomaly The Lib Dems, despite getting a grand total of 12 MPs after the 2017 election, somehow fell into getting 9 more MPs from the Conservative and Labour Party in the two years afterwards; the Tories that couldn't stay with Boris Johnson dragging them into the right, and the Labour MPs from the Third Way years that Corbyn couldn't quiet down. They used this newfound power very responsibly, by abstaining or voting against the anti-Tory 'alliance' in key votes.

Democratic Unionist Party
The Democratic Unionist Party, after previously considering Boris Johnson their Tory darling, have discovered what everyone else already knew about him after being utterly betrayed by the Tories, resulting in the DUP siding with the Labour Party in parliament both out of principle and spite. Blood only runs so deep, and by some horrific twist of fate the fucking DUP have come out of this looking sympathetic, humiliated in Westminster and back in Northern Ireland too.

Sinn Féin
 (NOTE: Not a terrorist organisation) 

Sinn Féin continues to be highly popular in Northern Ireland, and their stance of abstention is still popular amongst Irish voters, if problematic to their own interests. (R.I.P Martin McGuinness)

The Independent Group For Change
TIGFC (formerly Change UK (formerly Change UK-The Independent Group (formerly The Independent Group))) would be the remain equivalent of the Brexit Party, if the Brexit Party died immediately.

Dreamed up by previously mentioned Chuka Umunna (the ChUK Party, get it?), its fate was sealed as soon as it failed miserably in the European Parliament elections, in strong contrast to the Brexit Party's success, which cemented them as a nightmare for years to come. Umunna quit being high on his own supply and split off to the Lib Dems, abandoning the party he created to interim leader Heidi Allen, who then abandoned it to interim leader Anna Soubry. They still, somehow, had 5 MPs left before the general election. They will be "proudly" fielding three parliamentary candidates who are still there somehow, according to their website.

Plaid Cymru
CYMRU AM BYTH!

Green Party of England and Wales
Wait, they're doing the Lib Dem pact too? Huh. Go Greens!

Social Democratic and Labour Party
They suffered a humiliating defeat in the last election, losing all 3 of their seats in parliament to the DUP, although they only dropped in the Northern Ireland vote share by -2.2%. That's first-past-the-post for you, I suppose.

Ulster Unionist Party
Unsurprisingly, the UUP are no longer doing their pact to not contest certain seats with the DUP. This is as a direct result of the UUP losing all their seats - one to Sinn Féin, and one, more painfully for them, to the DUP, as well the utter embarrassment the DUP suffered at the hand of Boris Johnson, being indirectly responsible for almost putting a border in the Irish sea, a unionist's worst nightmare.

UK Independence Party
Even less support in the polls than their normal tiny share. The most pointless party standing in the election. The only party they're beating is The Independent Group.

Renew UK
Renew was founded in 2017 by Sandra Khadhouri, Chris Coghlan, James Clarke, and James Torrance, and stood 3 candidates, all in London constituencies, in the 2017 general election. It claims to be centrist and pro-EU. It got 3.7% of the vote in the West Central by-election on 4 April 2019. On 31 October 2019 it announced it would stand 51 candidates, but less than 2 weeks later reduced that figure to just 4: Bromley &amp; Chislehurst and Hackney North &amp; Stoke Newington in London, Sefton Central in Merseyside, and Edinburgh North and Leith. But the field of centrist pro-EU parties is cluttered, with Change UK, the SNP, and the Lib Dems challenging for votes.

Campaign
The strategy of the ultra-Leave Conservative Party and the "ultra-Remain" Liberal Democrats began to unravel during the campaign. General elections aren't just about one issue, and never will be. The NHS is on people's mind, austerity is on people's mind, global warming is on people's mind. Brexit hasn't gone away, but Conservative attempts to twist the narrative back to Brexit and only Brexit have been an effort in futility. Or so everyone thought.

Production Errors, or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Boris
While general elections have always had parties accuse media organisations of political bias, something is... off, more than normal. Starting with "accidentally" having their hand slip all the way into the archive footage from 2016 and "Accidentally" splicing it between footage from 2019, where Boris Johnson didn't put the wreath at the Cenotaph down wrong, these mysterious 'production errors' have been repeating themselves, with the BBC editing the audience laughing at him during Question Time out of a BBC broadcast, and even allegedly lying to the Labour and Scottish National Party that they had already booked an interview with Boris Johnson, (they hadn't)  these mistakes indicate that either everyone in BBC is incompetent at their jobs, or something... strange is going on.

The BBC has been accused of not reporting on statements only recently emerged about racist and sexist reporting by Johnson, while Labour has been fairly questioned for their record on antisemitism - a situation not helped by BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg literally saying islamophobia matters less than antisemitism. The BBC themselves have asked the Conservatives to remove political advertising containing Kuenssberg, believing the footage of her could "damage perceptions of our impartiality". Yikes. However, when Boris Johnson refused to do the Andrew Neil interview, the BBC finally stood up for journalistic integrity. They recognised how it would make them appear biased, so they refused to let Johnson appear on their flagship programme the Marr Show, until he finally agreed to be interviewed by Neil... hahaimjustkiddinghahaha They changed their mind 24 hours later. A day later. They agreed to host Johnson on Marr. But no, it's not bias! They're not thin-skinned! They had to abandon their principles because of, uh... the terrorist attack on Tower Bridge! So it's fine. No blemishes on their record.

A study by the University of Loughborough indicates that press attacks on Corbyn and the Labour Party are more numerous than last time, and that's saying something.

#JohnsonTheCoward
Boris Johnson has decided that, after one debate with Jeremy Corbyn and one Question Time, he's all tuckered out from all that scrutiny. He ducked out of a debate on CLIMATE CHANGE on Channel 4, is ignoring calls to do an interview with Andrew Neil like every other party leader invited, and will not attend the BBC Election Debate. While the BBC has replaced him in the Election Debate and won't hold an Andrew Neil interview at all without him present, Channel 4 hilariously empty-chaired him... with a block of ice. Not accepting definitely-not-Leader Michael Gove at the last second has had the Conservatives threaten Channel 4 for a "provocative partisan stunt", and only accepting the leader of a political party an "arbitrary requirement". At least their dads aren't trying to help... But not to worry, folks! Johnson isn't dodging interviews - in fact, he did one with Nick Ferrari, notorious racist who has held interviews with Johnson for years. In it, he said he would do the unpopular TTIP, (the American-European TTP) said his racist and misogynistic articles were actually the opposite of that, (anti-racist and feminist articles, presumably?) and refused to answer questions about how many children he fathered. Even when he cherry-picks his interviews to be easy rides, they still end up being a car crash. It's almost impressive.

London Bridge Stabbing
A terrorist attack on London bridge on the 29th of November was capitalised by Johnson (predictably) blaming the Labour party and pushing for harsher sentences, despite the fact the victims were criminal rehabilitation workers and the direct rebuttals/complaints from the family members. Conservative justification clung to the idea that had he been in jail for another two years (as per Tory sentencing changes) he would have been magically rehabilitated. Though as usual, nothing sticks. Two days later most of media was back with laser focus on Corbyns innumerable evils, like (allegedly) not watching the queens speech, though lying directly to the queen is fine.

Polls
An MRP poll released by YouGov on Nov 27 predicted Conservative 359, Labour 211, Liberal Democrats 13, Brexit Party 0, Green 1, SNP 43, Plaid Cymru 4, Other 1, Northern Ireland 18. This poll is held in higher regard than normal polls, as it accurately predicted the hung parliament in the 2017 general election. On the other hand YouGov are clear that this is not a prediction of the election result, just a snapshot of voting intention weeks before the election. Whether the 2017 result was a fluke or MRP really is an unparalleled miracle method of predicting an election outcome was yet to be seen: it was probably better than traditional polling because of the difficulties of mapping national polling figures onto multi-party constituency contests, but Patrick Sturgis, a poll expert at LSE, said "as with any statistical model, MRP is prone to a range of errors, and there seems to be an unrealistically high level of confidence in it." You'll see in a moment how that comment turned out.

Early December polls predicted a Conservative majority, with a lead over Labour of 7-12%. Concreting the notion that the Tories could chop the legs of their voters and they would still crawl to the booth to vote for them. There was a bump for Labour at the apparent expense of LD, but the Brexit vote still tumbling made the nature of the swings unclear. And finally...

The End
Despite it all, despite everything the Tories had going against them, despite the trackable unpopularity of Boris Johnson, despite their pamphlet of a manifesto, despite their lurch to the right-wing... they made a clean sweep, with an 80+ seat majority, in no small part thanks to the Brexit Party completely giving way. In the end, the Labour Party was just not trusted on Brexit, and Jeremy Corbyn outstayed his welcome to the electorate. In retrospect, 2017 should have been taken as a warning sign; a sign that even with the Conservative Party in its worst shambles ever under May, Labour still could not win. With the power of hindsight, perhaps Corbyn should have fallen on his own sword in early 2019 as Theresa did - however, the past is the past, and the future under a Tory supermajority is very bleak. However, it bears noting that the Conservative share of the vote only actually increased by +1% - and their platform of 'do Brexit' and 'fuck Jeremy Corbyn' will be old news by 2024. If the Labour Party actually manages to get its shit together by the next general election, the Tories could actually be in trouble.

Some small solace can be taken in that centrist politicians were fucking eviscerated: the Liberal Democrats lost not only every single one of their 9 newfound MPs, but also their joke of a leader, Jo Swinson, who was forced to resign as leader with immediate effect after just over 4 months. Change UK, who were polling so low they weren't even in most polls, lost every one of its MPs too, not that they had actually been elected to their new position properly anyway. In the old days, the LibDems should have swept - they were the only centrist party as Labour and Tories both moved to political extremes. That they collapsed likely reflects how times have changed in Britain, and that centrism, and by extension neoliberalism, has little future here.

The SNP, however, absolutely cleaned up in Scotland, gaining 13 seats and managing a huge +8.1% swing in Scotland, benefitting from a noticable increase in support for Scottish independence and the humiliation of Scottish Labour, who got their lowest share of the Scottish vote since 1910, only managing a single seat. The Scottish Conservatives, who didn't even have a leader during the election, had their seat total cut in half, although that still makes them the strongest unionist party in Scotland. In truth, it was the SNP that were the true victors of GE2019 - although Boris Johnson will never give them the Indyref2 they so desperately want.

Oh yeah, and the Brexit Party got 0 seats. So that's nice.