RS

First of all, just to put it in perspective, the European elections have typically low turnouts. In this case, it was 37 percent, which was slightly higher than usual. It was a single-issue election; there was only one issue being addressed and that was the failure of Theresa May’s government to push through her Brexit deal.

That foundered on the divisions between the two wings of the Conservative Party. One wing is the traditional pro-capitalist business wing, which is straightforwardly pro-European. The other wing is the Tory right based in the petty bourgeoisie and a middling section of finance capital in London who want out of the whole European project.

The small business owners do not like the EU and some its regulations on workers’ rights and the environment. The middling section of capital regard the EU as restraining Britain’s imperial reach throughout the world. The Tory right, which represents these interests, are also very right wing on a host of social questions from immigration to Islam, women’s rights, and gay rights.

Theresa May tried to overcome this division by promising a “red, white, and blue” Brexit. That promise of a hard Brexit rallied the Tory rank and file, the scum roots as we call them in Salvage, driving up the Tories’ approval ratings to over 45 percent, its highest since the 1970s.

But May never intended to deliver a hard Brexit. That was clear from the moment she concretized her proposal, which aimed to preserve the status quo as much as possible without losing the support of the Tory right.

She might have been able to whip the Right in line if she’d won the 2017 general election, but she didn’t. She didn’t lose it, but she didn’t win it; she lost her majority and had to negotiate with Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to stay in office. That made her problem far worse.

The DUP campaigned for Brexit. Their éminence grise, the late Ian Paisley, used to call the EU the “whore of Babylon” and a seat of “popery.” They’d even be happy if Brexit resulted in a “hard border” between North and South, even if it violates the Good Friday peace deal — which the DUP never supported.

However, May was hardly going to sacrifice the last foreign policy success of the British state. She wanted out of the customs union, but she also negotiated a “backstop” where Northern Ireland would remain in its jurisdiction. Hence the DUP’s vehement opposition.

At that point, the only strategy that would have worked would have been to negotiate with Corbyn’s Labour Party. But she refused to even contemplate that until almost two years later, after her proposed deal had been serially defeated in the House of Commons. When she did finally accede to negotiations, her backbenchers denounced her for negotiating with a “Marxist.” Brexit activists called her a “traitor.”

May had gone into the Brexit negotiations with a catastrophically naive strategy. She had appointed ideologues who grossly overstated British power, claimed it could set the agenda, refuse to pay any divorce bill. They were wrong.

The UK is a dwindling power and, as we saw in Greece, the EU bosses are thugs. May ended up with a deal that, as Yanis Varoufakis would put it, would be signed only by a country defeated in war. Naturally, she was thrashed in parliamentary votes, repeatedly. And yet, bizarrely, refused to resign.

The Labour Party was the initial beneficiary of May’s meltdown back in March. But the very fact that May had failed so badly destroyed confidence in any possibility of a compromise. And Corbyn’s approach, faced with a party divided on Brexit, necessitated compromise. Since 2016, he had agreed to honor the referendum result, but keep Labour’s options open on how to limit the damage. This had worked thus far. In the 2017 general election, Labour was able to bypass the Brexit divide by focusing on class issues.

But with May’s disaster, that position looked less plausible. With Leavers bellowing about treason and Remainers increasingly terrified of what Brexit would mean, the polls shifted quickly. In the local council elections, for example, the Tories were mauled, but Labour also lost seats.

In the European elections, just a few weeks later, both Labour and the Tories were savaged. The top two parties, Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party and the Liberals, on 31 percent and 20 percent respectively, both campaigned exclusively on Europe. It was a culture war election. Labour was driven into fourth place with 14 percent, the Tories into sixth place with 9 percent.

Brexit has created a crisis not just for the Conservative Party, which might be finished as a natural party of government, but also for Labour. It is the generalized crisis of politics that has created an opening for the Brexit Party. However, one should be wary of asserting a parity of crisis in the two major parties.

Just after the European elections, Labour successfully defended a tiny majority in a swing constituency known as Peterborough. This was a contest that pundits unanimously thought the Brexit Party would win, as they had been the clear winner in that city in the European elections. They were wrong, and this shows that Labour can still turn out its vote.