The election is over, Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party has won with a majority of 80, exactly as Marcus Stead has been predicting on Twenty Minute Topic for many weeks!
In this week’s podcast, Marcus and Greg Lance-Watkins assess how quickly Brexit can now be implemented, now that the United Kingdom has a stable Government with a large majority.
They also discuss what went wrong for Labour, and conclude that the party’s sneering contempt for its heartlands is what led to the catastrophic defeat. Labour has spent the last few years telling them they were wrong about Brexit and didn’t know what they were doing when they voted Leave. They have patronised their voters, ignored their concerns and obsessed about niche ‘woke’ issues that only really resonate with the London bubble and middle class students.
The election result is a clear rejection of Jeremy Corbyn’s Marxist or close-to-Marxist agenda, and a rejection of the stench of toxic anti-Semitism that surrounds the Labour Party.
They discuss the extraordinary arrogance of Corbyn-supporting media pundits, who as the results came in decided NOT to reflect on where Labour went wrong, but chose to attack Labour heartland voters and give them a telling off for daring to vote for another party!
Is the Labour Party beyond saving? Is it now a party made up of hardline Marxists, and middle class students and academics, totally out of touch with working people? Does the country have a credible opposition that looks like a government in waiting? If not, where do we go from here, in the interests of democracy?
Have Nigel Farage and the Brexit Party done damage in this election by denying the Conservatives seats in constituencies where they split the anti-EU vote? The presence of a Brexit Party candidate also almost certainly cost honourable Labour MP Caroline Flint her seat.
And what about social media’s role in this election? It’s now beyond doubt that the Twitter mobs and the echo chambers bear absolutely no resemblance to how most people think and behave.
The podcast is available on the Talk Podcasts website, as well as on iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts and the TuneIn app.
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