About Last Night

Our Chief Executive Officer, Patrick Sullivan reports on the new landscape of British politics.

After hearing his calls to “Get Breakfast Done” most Conservative campaign staff will have done just that. At time of writing they will no doubt be sleeping the sleep of the just; proud that they delivered Boris Johnson the largest majority for the Conservatives since the 1980s.

Those at Labour HQ can be forgiven if they decided to skip breakfast altogether and go straight to bed; safe in the knowledge that their dreams could not be any worse than the nightmare of a campaign they had just been through.

After three years of political paralysis, British politics changed overnight. Boris Johnson, with his new majority, has a government which is to borrow a phrase strong and stable.

Having started the campaign with high hopes of becoming Prime Minister, Liberal Democrat Jo Swinson lost her seat of Dunbartonshire East and in doing so lost the leadership of her party in the process.

Her decision to move her party away from one calling for a second referendum and into one that supported the unilateral withdrawal of Article 50 is likely to receive the lion’s share of the blame for her party’s failure to make any headway in this election.

Once Britain leaves the EU, it is likely that the Liberal Democrats will accept the result instead of becoming the party of rejoin. They have found the Europe issue was only a winner for them in a European Parliamentary election.

Which brings me to the Brexit Party. Having succeeded in forcing Theresa May out of No. 10 by driving the Conservative Party into fifth place in the European Parliamentary elections; Nigel Farage became a victim of his own success.

What need was there for a Brexit Party when you had a Prime Minister intent on delivering Brexit? None was the answer the electorate replied yesterday.

And what of those who found themselves as newly elected MPs in the early hours of this morning. They will have the weekend off, but Boris Johnson seeks to put them to work as early as Tuesday.

With MPs come staff. The change in the composition of the Commons will also change the composition of those who staff them. The Westminster Village is about to become a Tory Town.

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