James Johnson, former adviser to Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May, talked to N1 Television's Domagoj Novokmet in London to explain how British political parties are positioning themselves for the snap election on December 12.
Speaking on Wednesday, October 30, when UK lawmakers voted to hold a new snap election, Johnson explained what had changed from earlier votes in Parliament in which Prime Minister Boris Johnson had so far been unable to get the majority to agree to an election.
“The key thing that changed were the liberal Democrats and the SNP, two smaller parties in Parliament, basically decided that they wanted an election after all, that thus was going to be to their advantage. So the key thing that happened is they swung behind Boris Johnson and said ‘We’ll back the bill.’ Labour, who until then had opposed an election, basically realised ‘Oh dear, we have to back this, because otherwise we’ll be in a position where we are saying No and it’s going to happen anyway.’ So you saw Labour switch as those political plates shifted,” Johnson said.
Prime Minister Johnson is likely to portray himself as the leader who will finally get Brexit done and allow the British public to focus on other domestic issues, as the fatigue of debating Brexit seems to have taken a toll on the general public, more than three years after the momentous referendum in June 2016. The latest Brexit delay, which Johnson was forced to ask from the European Union, set a new deadline for the UK to leave the bloc, moving it to January 31, 2020.
“Boris Johnson and the Conservatives will have a very clear message in this campaign, which will be ‘Vote for us to get Brexit done, so we can get on to these other issues like public services, like crime, like NHS. And that’s quite a compelling message because basically he’ll be saying ‘ You know, to get onto these issues…’ – and the British public, by the way, are very bored of Brexit, they are very keen to get beyond it, he’ll be able to say ‘The way you deal with these issues is by voting for me, getting Brexit done, and getting a deal through parliament by January 31st,'” Johnson told N1.
Johnson was also asked to comment whether the Conservatives’ campaign would be affected by analyses and predictions warning about the economic damage of Brexit, which some estimates put at £70 billion by 2029?
“Those arguments will certainly be coming up in the campaign, and I expect that the opposition parties will be hoping to make Boris Johnson’s deal less popular. When you ask about Boris Johnson’s deal, quite a lot of people, about 40 percent of voters, say they don’t know what they think about it. So the opposition parties will be hoping to change that into negative numbers. I would make one note of caution though, about the £70 billion and about stories about the economic consequences of the deal: We’ve seen this kind of attack lines before in the referendum campaign in the UK, and they have increasingly fallen flat with the voters. They see big numbers, they quite frankly don’t believe them, and think that perhaps they are being made up or over-exaggerated. So the opposition parties and people supporting Remain in another referendum will have to be very careful about the impact of those messages, so that they don’t backfire,” Johnson said.
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