Boris Johnson and the Conservative party emerged with a landslide victory over rivals on the left dogged by an anti-Semitism scandal that contributed to their undoing.

By Associated Press

Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party has won a thumping majority of seats in Britain’s Parliament — a decisive outcome to a Brexit-dominated election that should allow Johnson to fulfill his plan to take the U.K. out of the European Union next month.

With 648 of the 650 results declared on Friday, the Conservatives had 363 seats and the main opposition Labour Party 203.

“We did it — we pulled it off, didn’t we?” a jubilant Johnson told supporters. “We broke the gridlock, we ended the deadlock, we smashed the roadblock!”

The victory makes Johnson the most electorally successful Conservative leader since Margaret Thatcher, another politician who was loved and loathed in almost equal measure. It was a disaster for left-wing Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who faced calls for his resignation even as the results rolled in.

Defeat will likely spell the end for Corbyn, a radical socialist who moved his party sharply to the left after taking the helm in 2015, but who now looks to have led his left-of-center party to two electoral defeats since 2017. The 70-year-old left-winger also permitted anti-Semitism to spread like wildfire within the party, refising to apologize repeatedly and downplaying the extent to which Jew-hatred plagues the part.

“It’s Corbyn,” said former Labour Cabinet minister Alan Johnson, when asked about the poor result. “We knew he was incapable of leading, we knew he was worse than useless at all the qualities you need to lead a political party.”

U.S. President Donald Trump congratulated Johnson on Twitter, and said that “Britain and the United States will now be free to strike a massive new trade deal after Brexit.”

Corbyn called the result “very disappointing” for his party and said he would not lead Labour into another election, though he resisted calls to quit immediately.

Results poured in early Friday showing a substantial shift in support to the Conservatives from Labour. In the last election in 2017, the Conservatives won 318 seats and Labour 262.
The result this time delivered the biggest Tory majority since Thatcher’s 1980s heyday, and Labour’s lowest number of seats since 1935.

The Scottish National Party won almost 50 of Scotland’s 59 seats, up from 35 in 2017, a result that will embolden its demands for a new referendum on Scottish independence.

The centrist, pro-EU Liberal Democrats took only about a dozen seats. Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson stepped down after losing in her own Scottish constituency.

The Conservatives took a swath of seats in post-industrial northern England towns that were long Labour strongholds. Labour’s vote held up better in London, where the party managed to grab the Putney seat from the Conservatives.

Johnson vindicated?

The decisive Conservative showing vindicates Johnson’s decision to press for Thursday’s early election, which was held nearly two years ahead of schedule. He said that if the Conservatives won a majority, he would get Parliament to ratify his Brexit divorce deal and take the U.K. out of the EU by the current Jan. 31 deadline.

Speaking at the election count in his Uxbridge constituency in suburban London, Johnson said the “historic” election “gives us now, in this new government, the chance to respect the democratic will of the British people to change this country for the better and to unleash the potential of the entire people of this country.”

That message appears to have had strong appeal for Brexit-supporting voters, who turned away from Labour in the party’s traditional heartlands and embraced Johnson’s promise that the Conservatives would “get Brexit done.”

“I think Brexit has dominated, it has dominated everything by the looks of it,” said Labour economy spokesman John McDonnell. “We thought other issues could cut through and there would be a wider debate. From this evidence there clearly wasn’t.”

The prospect of Brexit finally happening more than three years after Britons narrowly voted to leave the EU marks a momentous shift for both the U.K. and the bloc. No country has ever left the union, which was created in the decades after World War II to bring unity to a shattered continent.

But a decisive Conservative victory would also provide some relief to the EU, which has grown tired of Britain’s Brexit indecision.

Britain’s departure will start a new phase of negotiations on future relations between Britain and the 27 remaining EU members.

EU Council President Charles Michel promised that EU leaders meeting Friday would send a “strong message” to the next British government and parliament about next steps.

“We are ready to negotiate,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said.

Johnson has been confronted with past broken promises, untruths and offensive statements, from calling the children of single mothers “ignorant, aggressive and illegitimate” to comparing Muslim women who wear face-covering veils to “letter boxes.”

Yet, his energy and determination proved persuasive to many voters.

“It’s a big relief, looking at the exit polls as they are now, we’ve finally got that majority a working majority that we have not had for 3 1/2 years,” said Conservative-supporting writer Jack Rydeheard. “We’ve got the opportunity to get Brexit done and get everything else that we promised as well. That’s investment in the NHS, schools, hospitals you name it — it’s finally a chance to break that deadlock in Parliament.”

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“I believe that Jeremy Corbyn is not fit to serve as our prime minister,” said Liverpool Riverside MP Louise Ellman.

By JNS

A Jewish lawmaker on Wednesday quit the British Labour Party that she had been a member of for 55 years and condemned its leader, Jeremy Corbyn, for allowing anti-Semitism to spread under his leadership.

Liverpool Riverside MP Louise Ellman, 73, announced her resignation in a letter that she also shared on Twitter. A vocal critic of Corbyn and the Labour Party’s handling of anti-Semitic accusations, she said with the “looming general election” in the United Kingdom, she could no longer support voting Labour when it risks Corbyn being becoming prime minister.

“I believe that Jeremy Corbyn is not fit to serve as our prime minister,” she said.

Ellman noted that under Corbyn’s leadership anti-Semitism “has become mainstream in the Labour Party. Jewish members have been bullied, abused and driven out. Anti-Semites have felt comfortable, and vile conspiracy theories have been propagated.”

She noted that “a party that permits anti-Jewish racism to flourish cannot be called an anti-racist party.”

She also condemned Corbyn for spending three decades “on the back-benches consorting with, and never confronting, anti-Semites, Holocaust deniers and terrorists,” saying he has “attracted the support of too many anti-Semites.”

Ellman said “the Labour Party is no longer a safe place for Jews, and Jeremy Corbyn must bear the responsibility for this. We cannot allow him to do to the country what he has done to the Labour Party.”

She added that she would not join another party, but rather return to Labour when it has a different leader.

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Israel’s Ambassador to the U.N. Danny Danon warned Parliament that Corbyn “embrac[es] his terrorist friends and encourag[es] the activities of BDS.”

By: JNS.org and World Israel News Staff

In his address to British lawmakers, Danon said that opposition and Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn is “an anti-Semite who wants to return Britain to darker periods in its history.”

The ambassador added that “in his actions and statements, Corbyn gives oxygen to incidents of racism by embracing his terrorist friends and encouraging the activities of BDS. Israel stands by the Jewish community in England.”

Corbyn, whose Labour Party’s popularity in the United Kingdom has surged in recent months amid the ongoing uncertainty regarding Brexit, has come under intense criticism for a number of scandals involving anti-Semitism and support for Palestinian terrorist organizations. Anti-Semitism watchdog groups have called on Corbyn to resign.

The Labour leader also vowed recently to recognize Palestinian statehood if his party were to win in the next general election.

Danon’s position reflects the feelings of the overwhelming majority of U.K. Jews, according to a recent poll conducted by The Jewish Chronicle, which revealed that 85.9% of British Jews believe Corbyn is an anti-Semite.

In addition, British Jews expressed an abysmally low opinion of the Labour Party in general, with 85.6% of those surveyed believing Labour suffers from “very high” levels of anti-Semitism.

Corbyn’s high-profile anti-Semitism scandal includes incidents such as his participation in a wreath-laying ceremony in honor of the terrorists who committed the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre of Israeli athletes.

Other incidents include a video in which Corbyn says “Zionists” do not understand “English irony” despite “having lived in this country for a very long time.

Former U.K. Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks blasted Corbyn recently and lamented the Labour party’s approach to anti-Semitism.

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