Search This Blog

Friday, February 24, 2017

Coping With Copeland

There was a by-election in Britain yesterday, and the results were astonishing.  The Tories won the seat in Copeland while Labour held a second seat.  I say "astonishing" because Copeland is an English seat which has been held by the Labour party continuously since the mid 1930s.  That's over 80 years of Labour victories broken by this Conservative win.  It's also astonishing because it means that the government of prime minister May picked up a seat in a by-election, an accomplishment which no other British government has managed for 50 years.

It's hard to imagine how big a shock this result is for British politics.  All those Brits who are still hoping to reverse Brexit just got told that the people are backing Brexit, perhaps more now than before the vote.  After all, the big argument made against Brexit was that it would lead to a recession and economic decline.  Instead, since the vote the British economy has outperformed the economies of most of the other nations in Europe.  Brexit seems to have given a positive jolt to the British economy, and there have been no real negative consequences yet from Brexit.

The victory strengthens the government of prime minister May in a major way.  It's good to see it happen.

No comments: