U.K. Elections: Tories Will Lose, Labour Will Be Worse

We’re all familiar with the nightmare in which some terrible threat is chasing us but our legs, encased in heavy lead boots, move only very slowly onward as our pursuer gains on us. This election is the opposite of that nightmare: We seem to be moving toward a terrible threat — namely, the election of a Labour government with a majority of about 200 seats over all other parties — but our legs refuse to obey our commands to turn around, and we march relentlessly on to the gates that bear the ominous sign: Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here.

Sure, there is a large unexploded nuclear bomb of an issue lying in full view of the voters, there between the campaign trenches (as we shall see later), but because it doesn’t fit neatly into the conventional partisan division of issues — indeed it divides the parties internally — it’s not discussed as an election issue or at all. We are thinking of almost anything else but that. And the politicians assist our forgetting with a series of distractions.

About the Author

John O’Sullivan

John O’Sullivan is a senior fellow at National Review Institute and a contributing editor of National Review.

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We’re all familiar with the nightmare in which some terrible threat is chasing us but our legs, encased in heavy lead boots, move only very slowly onward as our pursuer gains on us. This election is the opposite of that nightmare: We seem to be moving toward a terrible threat — namely, the election of a Labour government with a majority of about 200 seats over all other parties — but our legs refuse to obey our commands to turn around, and we march relentlessly on to the gates that bear the ominous sign: Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here.

Sure, there is a large unexploded nuclear bomb of an issue lying in full view of the voters, there between the campaign trenches (as we shall see later), but because it doesn’t fit neatly into the conventional partisan division of issues — indeed it divides the parties internally — it’s not discussed as an election issue or at all. We are thinking of almost anything else but that. And the politicians assist our forgetting with a series of distractions.