Image copyright AFP As British voters prepare to head to the polls for a defining general election – the third In four years – they face a difficult choice, involving two unpopular leaders.
Or as Nick Boles, a former Conservative MP, views it, an “appalling choice” between a “compulsive liar” and a “totalitarian”.
The former –in Boles’ opinion– is Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson. The latter is Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn.
It’s as if the
US presidential election, where both major candidates were deemed flawed and untrustworthy, is playing itself out again three years later, on the other side of the Atlantic.
“People are cynical and saying that they’re fed up on the doorstep,” Mary Roberts, a Labor candidate in the north Wales constituency of Ynys Mon, told supporters at a rally on Sunday. “That makes it difficult sometimes.”
Canvassers and activists in the crowd echoed that sentiment. Voters want all of this – Brexit, the election, the nonstop drumbeat of political chaos – to be over and done with.
Welcome to the 2019 general election, a pre-Christmas present few British voters seem anxious to unwrap.
Johnson’s trust issue
This is Johnson’s first chance to stand before the British voters as the nation’s prime minister. It’s an election he asked for, yet the campaign hasn’t been without its bumps in the road.
Critics have raised doubts about his trustworthiness – an important question, given that Johnson is trying to assure voters that he can get the UK out of the European Union by the end of January and then follow that up with successful negotiation for a new trade relationship.
They cite a string of broken promises or misleading statements, including on healthcare and his Brexit plan for Northern Ireland. He has also been criticized for refusing to discuss the number of children he has,an issue that was even picked up in the US media.
“The theme running through our questions is trust,” BBC broadcaster Andrew. Neil said of an interview he had hoped to conduct with Johnson. “And why, so many times in his career in politics and journalism, critics and sometimes even those close to him have deemed him to be untrustworthy.”
Johnson declined an election interview on Neil’s program – the only candidate to do so in recent elections. He also declined to appear at a climate debate, and instead was represented by a melting block of ice.
Even Nigel Farage, the leader of the Brexit Party, has not hesitated to employ. his dagger.
“I’ve known Boris on and off for****************************** years, and he is a likeable, entertaining personality, he said. “Would you absolutely trust him? No. “
A viral moment
Perhaps most damaging to Johnson in the final days of the campaign was the publication on Monday of a photograph of an ill four-year-old boy, admitted to a Leeds hospital emergency room, lying on a pile of coats because there were no available cots.
The image, which went viral on social media, has put the Conservatives on their heels, as they apologise for the child’s ordeal and defend themselves against charges that the incident was indicative of an underfunded health system.
Johnson responded with a halting interview with an ITV reporter. He initially refused to look at a photo of the child on the reporter’s phone, taking the device away and putting it in his own pocket, saying he would “study it later”.
His behavior could reinforce the perception that the prime minister is not always well equipped to handle criticism and sometimes struggles to display empathy.
Corbyn pounced, saying the Conservatives have had “nine years in office, and whilst they are now claim they are funding the NHS, they are not; they’re not even beginning to make up the shortfall it’s had over the past nine years. “
Corbyn’s credibility and ideology
The Labor Party leader is not free from his own personal criticisms, however. His mixed and contradictory messages on Brexit – refusing to make labor an avowedly Remain party – have undermined his credibility.
Given the party’s delicate position of trying to represent constituencies that voted strongly to Leave and others that were vehemently Remain, Corbyn has tried to straddle the line between the two sides – but seems to have angered some on both sides.
However, following him in North Wales this week, he rarely brought up the subject, preferring to talk about his promise to invest in the health service.
He has also been accused of inadequately addressing anti-Semitism with his party’s ranks, of pushing out moderate voices within the party and of previously harboring sympathies for the IRA.(Johnson was quick to bring this last point up in the final leader debate on Friday, as a means of deflecting Corbyn’s criticisms of Johnson’s proposed solution to the seemingly intractable problem of withdrawing the UK from the EU while keeping the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic seamless.
The Laborer manifesto revers Corbyn’s socialist sympathies – and has opened him up to attack from moderates, as well. He has called for higher taxes, a nationalization of industries like mail, water and energy and a four-day work week, among other other proposals.
A Brexit election
History books will probably remember this as the Brexit election.
Johnson himself took over the top job earlier this year only after his predecessor, Theresa May, repeatedly failed in her efforts to pass a withdrawal deal. Because of this, the Conservatives are campaigning on a “Get Brexit Done” slogan – an effort to pry away dozens of longtime labor constituencies that voted Leave.
More than that, however, Johnson’s campaign is centred on his desire to win a working Conservative majority in Parliament for the first time since 2017. Everything, he says, hinges on that – Brexit, new trade deals with the EU and US, a tax cut and increased spending on the National Health Service and education.
UK-US relations are a precarious matter for Johnson – a “special relationship” fraught with potential and peril.
US President Donald Trump is largely unpopular in the UK. His feud with London Mayor Sadiq Khan, intemperate tweets about UK politics and vitriolic treatment of a British ambassador to the US have helped make him persona non grata for many Britons.
Jeremy Corbyn and his Labor Party have sought to exploit Johnson’s perceived closeness to the US president, suggesting that US access to the British health system was “on the table” in trade talks.
At the very least this suggests that a US-UK relationship with Corbyn in London and Trump still in Washington will be strained, at best.
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