Zombie Reborn

I must say it came as a shock when the results of the exit polls were released yesterday showing a landslide victory for Boris Johnson's Tories. During the day at work I was following #YouthQuake on Twitter and became seduced by the idea that Labour could triumph thanks to a Hong Kongesque student surge at the voting booth; that, and polls leading up to election day showed a diminishing lead for Boris Johnson, not to mention even Reuters was reporting that the Conservative Party would likely fail to achieve a majority.

But a Tory landslide it was. The Conservative Party won 364 seats, or a majority of 38 seats, an outcome not seen since Margaret Thatcher's salad days. Labour won 203, down 59 seats from 2017, a performance so poor it has also not been seen since the salad days of Margaret Thatcher.

On the bright side, the Scottish National Party picked up 13 seats in Scotland, and another independence referendum will now be front and center.

For the takeaways on this election, consult Craig Murray's "Resolution." Both Murray and Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism (see "Tories Rout Labour; Corbyn to Depart; SNP Also Wins Big, Setting Up Long-Term Dissolution Struggle") believe Johnson will be unable to deliver his campaign slogan "Get Brexit Done." Remember, the Brexit deal that Johnson promises to place before parliament in the next week is just a transition agreement. The real trade deal with the European Union has yet to be bargained. The deadline for that agreement is December of 2020. Most likely Johnson will have to seek an extension before he can finalize that deal.

The main takeaway for those of us in the United States who are hopeful that Bernie Sanders has a chance to wrest the Democratic Party from its corporate overlords is think again.

The non-stop blanket vilification in the mainstream media of Jeremy Corbyn will be applied to Bernie Sanders if he appears likely to upset the Democratic establishment heading into Super Tuesday.

Johnson's landslide (though the Tory vote total of 13.9 million was largely the same as two years ago, 13.6 million) has to be labeled the second great electoral achievement of zombie peak neoliberalism, right up there with Emmanuel Macron's capture of the French presidency in 2017.

The zombie is reborn!