John Keiger John Keiger

How might a big Boris victory change Britain?

If Boris Johnson wins a clear majority on 12 December, it could mark a big turning point in British history. The brakes will be off for the United Kingdom to formally leave the European Union by 31 January 2020. Then the new Tory government will decide how radical its future relationship with the European Union and the rest of the world should be. Make no mistake: this election matters and will be talked about in years to come.

World war one and two both wrought significant change to Britain. So, too, did the 1956 Suez debacle, which drained British self-confidence to such an extent that the country lurched into over-reliance on the USA and then the European communities. It led ultimately to 1973’s European Communities Act that sealed British EEC membership. But far from being a panacea, this sequence of events gradually fractured Britain’s politics and eventually its society. The 1982 Falklands war primed Margaret Thatcher for radical transformation of Britain. While the 2003 Iraq war tarnished Blairism, radicalised the Labour party and eventually denied Britain a viable political opposition. So how might a big Boris victory change the United Kingdom?

Historians, of course, continually disagree about what constitutes turning points in history. They are also even less reliable in predicting them than economists are at forecasting recessions. But there is a good reason why they are hard to anticipate: not all ‘turning points’ lead to lasting change. The great English historian AJP Taylor famously remarked of Germany in the 1848 liberal revolutions that spread across the European continent: ‘German history reached its turning point, and failed to turn’. ‘This was the fateful essence of 1848,’ he concluded. 

No matter how much the Prime Minister repeats his ‘get Brexit done’ slogan – and whether or not Boris wins a big majority – post-Brexit Britain will still be a country of two camps, between those praying that, in 2020, the country fails to turn (and stays put in the EU) and those willing a radical turn away from the EU.

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