The usual over-reaction by both sides

I do tire of reactions after large and comfortable majority wins by one political party which hyperventilate along the lines of "this is a disaster for Party X and changes everything forever"; despite the fact that very often, within a decade, everything has reversed.

People might say "well with Brexit now happening, everything changing forever really is true for Britain", but I'm talking just about political control at the moment.

I mean, these are the figures for yesterday's election:

So the Labour, Liberal Democrat, Scottish Nationalist and Green combined vote was 50.4%, as against Conservative [Clown] Party at 43.6%.   I know you can't claim all Labour voters as remainers; but there is no doubt at least a smidgen of Conservative voters who are.   Hence, I doubt the election result really convincingly tells us much about how a second referendum would have gone, had the opportunity arisen. [For much more educated guessing about this by yours truly, see the update below.]

More broadly, see how first-past-the-post pans out?   43.6% of the vote gives the Conservatives 365/650 = 56.1% of the seats in parliament.   That...doesn't seem right.

Yet Imre Salusinszky, who I was thinking is a relatively sensible centre-right person, come out with this:

when asked why:

Yeah, not only win, but gain a 6% of the seats buffer, hey?    Imre's being saying a lot of things I don't agree with on Twitter lately, so I have to downgrade my opinion of him to "pretty stupid like most Conservatives these days."   I assume he is still a pal of Tim Blair, so what could I expect?

Anyway, the puzzle with Johnson is actually where his opportunistic brand of political views will take him.   What happens to Brexit now?  Is a soft one still the way forward, or is hard Brexit more likely?   No one seems to really know, but this BBC site explains that once it's started, it's still a process that has a long way to go.  What's the bet that the ageing Brexiteer in the high street has any clue about that?  

People say that his time as London's boss show Johnson as wanting to be a broad based populist:  he may be a lying, womanising, narcissist like Trump, but he is not going to let himself be beholden to the culture wars as are the American (and parts of the Australia) Right.    Or perhaps it's more a case that "culture war" means something different in Britain to what it does across the pond - with Brexit being Britain's culture war/identity issue -  but it doesn't seem to extend to things such as climate change denialism or gay marriage panic in the way American brand conservatism does.    And that, at least, is something to be grateful for.


[Update:  I've looking up some numbers to try to see what they suggest about what the election result means for Leave/Remain numbers if a second referendum was held.

I wasn't sure about the estimates for the number of Leave voters at the Brexit referendum who were Labour voters.  It seems the estimates are around 25 - 30%.  However, some of those at this election must have gone to the Conservatives already.  Also, it is a better informed electorate on what Brexit means, so presumably some former Labour Leave voters would have re-considered their position.   Hence, the proportion of those who voted Labour this time who would still want Leave remains very unclear.    Let's say 20% of Labour voters this time were still adamant Leavers.   That would put one fifth of the 32% Labour vote into the "leave parties" column - roughly 6% of the total vote.  So Tories and Brexit parties combined total of 45.6% of the vote would get boosted to 51.6% - almost identical to the Referendum outcome.   But it doesn't take account of several things if a second Referendum were held:

*  a leakage  of Conservative voters to Leave - this interesting article argues that 13% of "strong Remain" identified as Conservative in 2017, but at this election, they remained loyal to Conservatives because they would prefer to leave the EU than see a socialist Corbyn government.  That sounds pretty plausible to me, and suggests that (say) 5 to 10% of the Conservative vote yesterday could have moved to the Remain column on a second referendum - that's 2 to 4% of the total vote, and even at the lower estimate, could be decisive;

*  a likely greater turnout of Remainers, some of whom were presumably swayed by polling that they didn't really need to go and vote at the original referendum.  The turnout at the referendum was 72%; at this election 67% - it appears that the high 60's is now common for turnout at their general elections in recent decades, but it did hit 80% in the 1950's.   Thus a higher than 72% turnout in a second referendum would not have been out of the question, and I think there is every reason to expect it would have favoured Remain;

*  it's even been argued that demographic decline (that is, oldies dying off) amongst the original Leave voters might even have been influential in favour of a Leave win.

I think, therefore, that there is a pretty convincing argument that the election result is not the overwhelming endorsement of the will of the people on Brexit, at all.   Of course, Johnson would claim it as such, but anyone who factors in the British first past the post system and its inflation of seat numbers, as well as looking at the evidence listed above, should not make such claims.  Brexit got through its referendum on a 1.9% majority on a turnout that was big, but no where near a record for past elections.   There is reason to think that on a re-run, even despite yesterday's outcome, it could have lost.

Feel free to point out the error in my arguments, anyone, because I'm giving myself a pat on the back for this post.]