It was dubbed the “Brexit election” and keenly watched by the insurance industry – and now arguably the most historic General Election in decades has seen the Conservative Party win a commanding majority in the House of Commons – a stunning outcome which Prime Minister Boris Johnson said gives him a mandate to “get Brexit done.”
With just two seats left to declare at the time of publication, the Tories had won 363 seats against Labour’s 203 – the largest Conservative majority since Margaret Thatcher’s landslide election victory in 1987.
“It does look as though this One Nation Conservative government has been given a powerful new mandate to get Brexit done,” Johnson said. “Above all I want to thank the people of this country for turning out to vote in a December election that we didn’t want to call but which I think has turned out to be a historic election that gives us now, in this new government, the chance to respect the democratic will of the British people to change this country for the better and to unleash the potential of the entire people of this country.”
“Boris Johnson can now start the process of Brexit,” Tony Travers, professor of politics at the London School of Economics, told the New York Times. “There will be stability of a kind in British politics and in Britain’s approach to Brexit, although not a single aspect of Brexit will have been sorted out.”
The result is a devastating blow to the Labour Party and its leader Jeremy Corbyn, who announced that he “will not lead the party in any future general election campaign.”
“I will discuss with our party to ensure there is a process now of reflection on this result and on the policies that the party will take going forward,” he said. “And I will lead the party during that period to ensure that discussion takes place and we move on into the future.”
The election result also saw Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson lose her East Dunbartonshire constituency to the SNP. Swinson has consequently stepped down as the party’s leader, with Ed Davey and Sal Brinton set to jointly take the reins in the interim.
