Prime Minister May pushed for a snap election in June 2017 to strengthen her hand in the impending Brexit talks. In practice, she has weakened UK’s bargaining power at the EU’s expense, while the latest London Bridge incident introduces new uncertainty and volatility into the EU/UK divorce proceedings.
Like too many times before, British police declared a “major incident” on London Bridge after a van reportedly hit multiple pedestrians.
The terrorist incident took place only days before a critical “snap election” that May was supposed to win with a landslide victory; but in which her Conservative Party’s lead has dropped to a new low of just one or more percentage points.
While British pollsters predict May will win most seats in Thursday’s election, some expect a landslide victory, but others believe that the Conservative majority is under threat. Not only have UK polls been highly volatile amid election campaigns and fairly inaccurate, but the most recent ones do not yet reflect the potential effects from the London Bridge incident.
Collapse of neoliberalism, path to uncertainty
About a year ago, the UK had its referendum on the European Union (EU).At the end, the “Leave” camp triumphed, by focusing on costly EU bureaucracies, over-inflated security concerns and immigration’s negative tradeoffs. While the campaign had less to do with facts than flawed perceptions, it proved effective.
Unfortunately, the adverse impact of the Brexit decision is still ahead.
If the UK’s neoliberal economic policies peaked in the Thatcher years, they were sustained by labor governments led by Tony Blair (1997-2007) and Gordon Brown (2007-2010). As they got the blame for the global crisis, Conservatives’ David Cameron won a mandate to govern in a coalition with Liberal Democrats.
Cameron championed fashionable social causes, including same-sex marriage and the UN target for aid spending, but cut down government’s large deficits through harsh austerity measures, including large-scale changes to welfare, immigration policy, education and health services. Nevertheless, prior to the referendum, government debt peaked at 90 percent of the GDP, which led to an IMF warning.
