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THIS MORNING, UK Prime Minister Theresa May made the shock announcement that a snap general election will be held on 8 June.
With the Brexit negotiations set to get underway in earnest after May triggered Article 50, the Conservative party leader is clearly seeking a mandate from the people for the kind of “hard Brexit” she has previously indicated.
Speaking to Taoiseach Enda Kenny on the phone today, May reiterated commitments regarding Ireland and Brexit, and said that these remained unchanged.
Kenny emphasised that the upcoming election should also not mean that a return to direct Westminster rule in Northern Ireland should be contemplated, according to a spokesperson for the Irish government.
The UK has traditionally seen one party holding the power in government, with the Conservatives winning a clear majority in the last election.
But, recent history shows us that coalition rule isn’t entirely out of the question in Britain, with the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats working together in the previous government.
Already, May’s rhetoric has shown that this general election will hinge on Brexit and the main parties’ approach to it.
The smaller parties, such as Plaid Cymru in Wales and the DUP and Sinn Féin in the North, will likely win a few seats, but nowhere near enough to play a huge role in the upcoming election.
The Labour party had a disastrous general election in 2015. They failed to convince voters that they would be better in government after five years of Con/Lib Dem rule and lost 26 seats in Westminster.
When leader Ed Miliband stood aside, veteran left-wing backbencher Jeremy Corbyn swept to a surprise victory to become the new leader.
The party has been dogged with infighting ever since, with other leading Labour MPs refusing to back Corbyn.
That came to a head following the Brexit vote last year. Many senior Labour MPs felt that Corbyn only put a half-hearted effort into campaigning for a “remain” vote, given his long-standing eurosceptic views.
He managed to survive the attempted coup, with a large support among the grassroots of the party.
This will be his first general election as leader of the party, but recent poll figures do not paint a pretty picture for Labour.
According to the latest poll from YouGov, conducted last week, Labour was a full 21 points behind the Conservatives, with only 23% of people saying that they’d vote Labour if there was a general election tomorrow.
Islington MP Corbyn clearly has a lot to do to convince the British electorate that he can lead the country going forward. He has indicated that the party would press ahead with Brexit, but only his government could secure the best deal for Britain.
In his initial statement, he also declared a wider pledge on a number of issues that the Labour party would address.
Chances?
Even though the pollsters did get it wrong predicting the results of the 2015 UK general election, and last year’s Brexit vote, it is clear that Labour has a mountain to climb to reverse the 100+ seat difference that the Conservatives won in the last election.
If the 2015 general election was bad for Labour, it was an utter catastrophe for the Liberal Democrats.
The party won 57 seats in 2010. In 2015, it only won eight.
The electorate punished the Lib Dems, and its leader Nick Clegg, for its coalition with the Conservatives and the breaking of a number of campaign pledges, including a commitment not to raise the price of going to university.
This time around, the party and its new leader Tim Farron are hopeful for a return to the front bench of British politics.
They’ve been quick off the mark today, positioning itself as the party of the “soft Brexit” which would see Britain remain in the single market and offer a “change of direction” for the country.
It has campaigned on an anti-Brexit ticket in recent by-elections, and its membership has apparently swelled since Theresa May’s announcement this morning.
In a statement, Farron said that, with the Labour party flailing, only voting Lib Dem could prevent a Conservative majority.
Chances?
In that YouGov poll, the Liberal Democrats polled at 12%. Since the UK doesn’t operate its elections with proportional representation, like we do here, that may not necessarily translate to the party winning 12% of the seats on offer.
Again, they’ll have a mountain to climb given their current low number of seats but running with their anti-Brexit stance may win over a portion of the electorate that voted to remain in the EU last year.
If Theresa May has signalled that this election will focus solely on the issue of Brexit, then the SNP’s leader Nicola Sturgeon will relish the battle.
The party won almost every seat in Scotland – winning 56 in all – at the last election, and may increase that a bit further in the upcoming election.
The party failed in its bid for Scotland to cede from the United Kingdom in the 2014 independence referendum, but Scotland’s vote to remain in the EU has seen the issue flare up again.
Sturgeon recently announced plans to hold another referendum on whether Scotland should leave the UK, and any more seats won in Westminster by the SNP would legitimise and embolden that movement.
The SNP were used as a tool to beat Labour with in the run-up to the last election, with the Conservatives claiming that the Scots would dictate policy at the cabinet table.
Times have changed, however, and the SNP has the potential to be the kingmaker in the upcoming election if it maintains its seat base and the Conservatives fail to win a clear majority.
Chances?
The SNP will almost certainly maintain its current level of seats, with the potential to win more from the few isolated Conservative and Labour constituencies in Scotland.
Labour politicians ruled out a coalition in the past and, while unlikely now, that could become a very interesting topic of debate if the Conservatives do not win a majority.
The Conservatives won a clear, if narrow, majority at the last election. It won 330 of the 650 available seats.
That, however, was when David Cameron led the party. Since then, he has been replaced by Theresa May and the country has voted to leave the EU.
Although officially an advocate of remain, May easily beat off her rivals to become prime minister and has since set out to placate the members of the party who’d advocated for a hard Brexit.
However, May’s repeated insistence that she wouldn’t call an election, and the lack of clarity over what Brexit deal the UK will secure are just two of the main points of criticism she will have to face in the upcoming campaign.
She has repeatedly insisted that a Conservative majority would be the best thing for Britain, and securing this will give her a clear mandate to conduct the Brexit negotiations as her government sees fit.
Choosing this time to call an election, also, signals a confidence from May and her party that they believe they can win a majority in the House of Commons.
Chances?
The pollsters put them way ahead on 44%, and the bookies have them at 1/7 to win a majority, so it appears that this election is “the Conservatives to lose”.
However, with two party heads going into their first general election as leader, it’s not completely cut and dry. Yet.
The first, and only, hurdle to holding a general election will be overcome in parliament tomorrow.
For an election to be held before the five-year term has elapsed, two-thirds of parliament must vote to hold a fresh ballot.
With both the Conservatives and Labour indicating that they want to go to the polls, this vote should easily pass.
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This opinion piece is a little disingenuous in leading with “China is going carbon neutral” which is an alleged aspiration for 2060, rather than the present reality, that it is that now and up until 2030 they are intending to reach peak emmisions, in other words pump ever more emmisions into the atmosphere, up to the maximum they can produce.
It’s a little like an alcoholic claiming to be going sober, while in reality intending to not only continue drinking, but to increase their intake of alcohol to as much as they can possibly drink for the next twenty years…..
I think the US has way more than just carbon neutral targets to think of when it comes to China. That seems like the smallest issue when compared to the human rights issues, aggressive territorial expansion and lest we forget the initial Covid cover up that made the world as bleak as it is today.
But you know what? Great. If the worlds biggest polluter thinks it can get a handle of things in 40 years, then that’s one less thing the world needs to be concerned about. They disproportionately pollute the world by land (the dams to influence countries downstream), sea (200 million cubic tonnes of waste was dumped from them into the water in 2018) and air (28% of global emissions) and this needs to stop.
@Paul Cunningham: let’s not forget that they produce all that waste and CO2 making things we buy. We have outsourced manufacturing pollution to China so we can pretend to be cleaner.
@Ivan Connolly: your right added to that is greed by the west of the wealthy % 70 years ago Ireland had a few manufacturers now considerably less the same with Europe
@Paul Cunningham: Until China became the power it is now , the U.S. as the major industrialised nation on earth had no problem in being the worst polluter in the world. As for territorial expansion think you would want to look at the U.S. interference in South America and the Middle East. The fact that China is near matching the industrial might of the U.S. has America rattled..The fact the U.S. backed the wrong horse and lost China still rankles them.
@Donal Desmond: we get it dude you hate America ffs the funny thing is your probably American and if you are I can gurrentee 100% that you are democrat
So is the issue that the USA doesn’t offer any “climate ambitions”? Because their actual climate results are quite impressive. In the last 15 yrs they’ve seen the largest drop in emissions of any nation on earth, just slightly below the reduction seen for the whole EU. Meanwhile China and India have seen unprecedented rise in theirs. While the USA dismantles coal plants, these other nations build them. It’s all fine for China to claim it will reach some imaginary target in 40 yrs (including 10 more yrs of record breaking growth) but I have more confidence in nations that show results. Trump may be a dud with regards to climate change but his nation isn’t. And fortunately, unlike Xi, Trump isn’t a dictator and therefore states that don’t agree with his laissez faire approach to the environment are free to pursue a different path. And some of those states are enormous. If we broke the USA into 50 countries then California, if it was a country, would still be the 4th largest economy in the world, just behind Germany. And like Germany, California is a global leader in green policies and changes. I get that some people prefer it when nations make popular climate promises (without any actual plan or political will to see through to fruition) but I prefer results and I think many within the USA has done this.
“introduction of a robust state security law in Hong Kong.”
The introduction of a police state you mean.
Quite a few euphemisms used in this article.
He mentions the economic miracle from 1978 but no mention of the millions murdered before 1978 during the ‘Great Leap Forward’.
It’s sad that so many on the left, due to their hatred for Trump, are now extolling the ‘virtues’ of the Chinese police state and it’s one party dictatorship.
China is the worst human rights abuser and the biggest polluter on earth bar none.
@Will: You realize the miracle or 1978 involved the wet outsourcing all of its manufacturing emissions to China.
How about china go eating bats neutral first and we’ll go from there…
@Darren Byrne: i d i o t
China has nearly 250 gigawatts (GW) of coal-fired power now under development, more than the entire coal power capacity of the United States
@Owen: When you’re the workshop of the world that tends to happen. 18,000 kms of high speed rail built between 2008 and 2020
The Journal heard Joe Biden say it on last debate so must be true
Trump declaring to open back up the coal mines and let the good times role back to his numpty supporters.china has the resources and man power to completely dominate the electric vehicle market.something Europe Russia and America will struggle with
@snotser: go see your Doctor ASAP tell him you have Trump Derangement Syndrome TDS for short.. best of luck in your recovery
Anyone bashing American while defending China have to be paid to do so.
Per head of population the US is probably still the worlds largest polluter. If the Chinese do go renewable they will be such a big player that they will dictate the terms of trade on use of fossil fuels by other nations. We will all be forced to end fossil fuel use quickly. The chinese will be more secure as they will no longer depend on foreign energy supply imports (oil.) This is why Ireland should go for green energy now – its cheaper, its produced locally, doesn’t require taxpayer subsidies of about 300 million euros a year to oil companies and its use will, along with similar policies worldwide, give our children a fighting chance of handing on a habitable planet to our grandchildren.
Per head of population the US is still the worlds largest polluter. If the Chinese do go renewable they will be such a big player that they will dictate the terms of trade on use of fossil fuels by other nations. We will all be forced to end fossil fuel use quickly. The chinese will be more secure as they will no longer depend on foreign energy supply imports (oil.) This is why Ireland should go for green energy now – its cheaper, its produced locally, doesn’t require taxpayer subsidies of 300 million euros a year to foreign oil companies and its use will, along with similar policies worldwide, give our children a fighting chance of handing on a habitable planet to our grandchildren and avoid human extinction.
Per head of population the US is probably still the worlds largest polluter. If the Chinese do go renewable they will be such a big player that they will dictate the terms of trade on use of fossil fuels by other nations. We will all be forced to end fossil fuel use quickly. The chinese will be more secure as they will no longer depend on foreign energy supply imports (oil.) This is why Ireland should go for green energy now – its cheaper, its produced locally, doesn’t require taxpayer subsidies of 300 million euros a year to foreign oil companies and its use will, along with similar policies worldwide, give our children a fighting chance of handing on a habitable planet to our grandchildren and avoid human extinction.
But there’s no votes in carbon neutral. In America is a moot point.
One true utterance from Trump has been that wind and solar power are just scams. Every KW they generate has to be backed up by something else. Follow the money. Who are the big, big pushers of renewables.? Answer, the big fossil fuel corporates. They know they will have us all over the metaphorical oil barrel, for filling in the big gaps.
There is only one power source that has any chance of saving us from run away climate catastrophe and that is a mass move into Gen 4 nuclear. www. bene.ie
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