Dec 14, 2019 DISASTER has been averted. The nation has been saved from revolution. The grim possibility of a hard-Left Labour regime under Jeremy Corbyn was comprehensively rejected at the ballot box on Thursday. The country can now look forward to a period of solid, pragmatic governance under Boris Johnson, featuring the achievement of freedom through Brexit as well as the expansion of public services.
Although the opinion polls had consistently pointed to a comfortable win, the breadth of the Tory triumph still came as an uplifting surprise. This was a victory on a historic scale, by far their biggest majority since Margaret Thatcher’s landslide in 1987. No previous ruling party has ever won a fourth term while making gains. Just as tellingly, the election saw Labour’s most humiliating defeat since 1935.
At the heart of the remarkable Conservative advance was their unprecedented success in the traditional Labour heartlands of Wales, the North and the Midlands, the territory known as the Red Wall because of its supposed impregnability.
But the barrier proved all too fragile in the face of Boris’s onslaught.
In largely working-class towns, the Tories made gains that would have once been unthinkable.
Once the wall began to crumble, longstanding party loyalties disappeared and old political allegiances evaporated.
Held by Labour since 1922, the Lancashire seat of Leigh had a 14,000 majority as recently as 2015 and was only 125th on the Tory target list, yet it went blue.
In the carnage, there was a string of high-profile Labour casualties including the Wakefield MP Mary Creagh, a former leadership contender, and Don Valley’s Caroline Flint.
Even more dramatic in the mining town of Bolsover, the Left-wing firebrand Dennis Skinner lost after serving as an MP since 1970.
Labour’s collapse was fuelled partly by profound disillusion over the party’s ambivalent stance on Brexit.
Corbyn’s refusal to promise to honour the referendum result alienated many of the five million Labour voters who backed Leave.
Corbyn’s own leadership, which combined spectacular ineptitude with ideological extremism, provoked widespread despair among former Labour voters, as ex-Cabinet Minister Alan Johnson said ITV on Thursday night. “I live in Yorkshire in a working-class community. Corbyn was a disaster on the doorstep.”
On a deeper level, Labour’s politically-correct metropolitan culture is hopelessly out of touch with the values of traditional working-class areas.
The affluent virtue-signallers and middle-class social justice warriors wallow in diversity, obsess about identity politics, go soft on crime, celebrate welfare dependency and have contempt for Britain’s heritage.
Such an outlook is in stark contrast to the ethos of many decent voters in the North and Midlands who cherish patriotism, security, hard work, and social responsibility.
Labour has betrayed its own base and is now so London-centric.
It is telling that many of the top frontbenchers, like Emily Thornberry, John McDonnell, Sir Keir Starmer and Diane Abbott – as well as Corbyn himself – represent seats in the capital.
For the sneering, posturing metropolitan chatterers, the North is truly a foreign land.
A major realignment in British politics is underway.
Labour has shrivelled into a narrow, sectarian force, dominated by the urban middle-class, Left-wing activists and students.
In contrast, the Tories’ base is widening significantly.
They are becoming once more a truly national party.
Johnson deserves tremendous credit for the way he has reshaped the political landscape.
Just as he proved in two terms as London Mayor, his popularity is far deeper than his critics appreciate.
The irony is that he has a much stronger connection to the working class than all the Corbynistas with their Marxist rhetoric about class war.
His task now is to retain support among his northern converts by delivering on Brexit.
Then he has to tackle the urgent domestic problems of modern Britain, such as crime, affordable housing, transport infrastructure and reform of social care.
He now has the capacity to reinforce his party’s appeal – and push Labour further into the wilderness.
