Could Theresa May Actually Lose to This Guy?

The Weekly Standard, June 7, 2017

When British Prime Minister Theresa May called a snap general election back in April (the vote will be held this Thursday) the governing Conservatives were seen as a shoo-in. They were roughly 20 points ahead in the polls, May was liked and the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn—seen as dangerous, dimwitted, or both—was not.

That was then. It was to be expected that the gap between the two parties would narrow. It was not to be expected that the most notable feature in the Conservative Party's manifesto would be an idea—the now-deservedly notorious " dementia tax"—that for all intents and purposes took aim at people over the age of 65, a group that leans fairly heavily Tory and votes in large numbers. Coupled with a scheme to reduce spending on free school meals for young children, it did a lot to revive the caricature of the Tories as the "nasty party," a caricature that Brits are all too willing to believe.

May partially backtracked on the dementia tax. The retreat was not quite enough to reassure the nervous, but it was enough to undermine her already weakened reputation as a strong leader. (There had been a reversal over taxes some months before.) This was a harsh blow to a campaign which revolves to a remarkable degree around the person of May, who is a politician with neither the record nor the personality capable of sustaining a cult.

These Tory missteps were bad in themselves, but they also drew the public's attention away from where it belonged—on the extremism of a Labour leadership that at times (most notably—but not only— when it came to its association with Irish Republican terror) was strikingly at odds with much of Labour tradition. The result was that the election's inevitable tribal pull looks stronger than had been anticipated. Disaffected Labour voters appear to be returning to the fold, their ranks swollen by young voters, many of whom are either unaware, indifferent, or willfully ignorant of Corbyn's poisonous past.

In England, at least (Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland play by different rules) the political battle has returned to a traditional two party contest, Labour versus Conservative—of a sort not seen for some time. Earlier talk of a fragmented left now looks overdone. The center-left Liberal Democrats, (the standard-bearers of the E.U. cause) may be boosted by Tory defectors still pining for Brussels. But they are not luring over enough Labour Party voters appalled by their party's hard left turn to make a difference. Meanwhile the collapse of support for the euroskeptic UKIP, a party widely regarded as having fulfilled its purpose, is seeing its voters returning from whence they came. Those on UKIP's right are going back to the Conservatives, those on its left to Labour. Tory hopes of gains in the Midlands and the North were based partly on the expectation that many of those 'patriotic old Labour' voters (as UKIP liked to describe them) would be marching their way. That migration doesn't seem to be going as planned.

The sense, fed by the Tories' shrinking lead in the polls, is that momentum has been moving in Labour's direction. This has led John McDonnell, Corbyn's closest ally, to boast of "a subterranean shift" in the electorate's mood, much of it due, he argues, to younger voters. There was indeed an impressive last-minute surge in voter registrations among the under-25s, although their turnout (traditionally underwhelming) remains uncertain.

After Brexit, few are prepared to rule out how far subterranean shifts might go, and worried Conservatives will have noted that betting on the election is following the pattern witnessed ahead of the E.U. referendum. The amount being wagered is encouraging for the Tories, as it was for those who wanted to stick with Brussels, but the volume of bets (typically in much smaller amounts) favors Labour, just as it did Brexit. On the other hand, the well-chronicled phenomenon of " shy Tories" means that, despite pollsters' best efforts, the likely Conservative vote is probably being undercounted. Perhaps even more so in a year when many previously loyal Labour voters may be contemplating a switch to the old enemy, thanks to Corbyn.

And then there is the wild card introduced by the horrific terrorist mass-murders in Manchester and London. Will those killings rally voters around May, particularly given Corbyn's past artful equivocation on terrorist violence—not to mention his former opposition to the shoot-to-kill policy that allowed the police to deal with the London Bridge terrorists in only eight minutes? Or will May be blamed for the attacks taking place on her watch, a theme which Labour has played up by emphasizing the substantial cuts in police numbers presided over by May while she was Home secretary.

So who's going to win? That Labour has closed much of the initial gap seems beyond dispute, despite anecdotal evidence " on the doorstep" that the party's recovery has been overestimated. Beyond that, pollsters are divided, with some raising the possibility of a "hung" parliament in which the Tories would, at best, be able to struggle on as a minority government. Others suggest that the Conservatives will obtain a decent, even relatively comfortable majority. For my part, I can report that two Tory friends have told me that they have had nightmares about a Corbyn win. So there's that.

If I had to guess (full disclosure: I was wrong about Trump, Brexit and the UK's 2015 general election) May will secure an overall majority of 20 to 30 seats. That's more than David Cameron managed, but not enough to restore the damage done to her prestige by a badly bungled campaign. To achieve that, she would (and calculating this is not a precise science) need a majority of 80 or more. It's worth adding that the lower May's majority, the more difficult her already treacherous path to a Brexit that works will be, and if she fails to land an overall majority . . .

Which brings us to the possibility of a "coalition of chaos" created by Labour winning sufficient seats to form a government with the Scottish National Party (tacitly backed maybe by the Liberal Democrats and other minor parties). If that's the outcome, jump to one side as the pound plummets past you.

Voting will end at 10:00 p.m. London time (5:00 p.m. EST) after which the exit polls will be released. The first concrete result will be announced about an hour later, probably from Houghton and Sunderland South in the industrial northeast. Labour will retain this safe seat, but this is Brexit country (UKIP came in second here in 2015) and the numbers may give some useful clues as to where UKIP votes are going.

Two to three hours after that, the results will start to pile up. If May improves her position in the North and the Midlands, then she's well on her way to a comfortable victory. By 11:00 p.m. EST it ought to be pretty clear who will form the next government. If it's still up in the air at that point, that will be bad news for May.

Six-hundred and fifty parliamentary seats are being contested on Thursday. The Conservatives held 330 at the time the election was called. Of the other major parties, Labour held 229 and the SNP 54. To secure the sort of majority that would repair her reputation, May needs the Tory haul to be into the 360s. As for the coalition of chaos, if Labour's total goes much beyond 260, pour yourself a very stiff drink.