British stay calm, carry on to get Boris’s Brexit done

Boris Johnson rolled the dice with a snap pre-Christmas election, but it took the mighty will of the British people to set a once-dithering political class on a bold path to national revival and unity. Mr Johnson pledged to “Get Brexit Done”, a no-frills pitch to be sure, but one that leaves no doubt about the nation’s short-term future. Onwards! The stunning electoral sweep by the Conservative Party — its best result since Margaret Thatcher’s landslide in 1987 — has broken the stalemate of June 2016 when Britons voted 52-48 per cent to leave the EU. The winning margin is likely to be close to 80 seats, a historic result that will amp up Mr Johnson’s palpable Churchillian sense of destiny. He has won the authority to match his confidence, to shape the Tories and remake the nation’s key institutions and foreign relationships.

It is also a personal triumph for a maverick politician, who famously — some believe cynically — changed his mind on Brexit, seized a chance to become Prime Minister in August after Theresa May’s wit expired, and struck a new deal with Brussels. Mr Johnson will take Britain out of the EU by the end of January, unshackling it from continental control; he aims to seek trade deals with countries such as the US, India and our own. Perhaps the key to his victory was narrowing the focus to Brexit, neutralising the extremists and splitting Leave adherents within Labour. Mr Johnson also offered an immigration program based on our own skills-based points system, taking some of the heat out of a divisive issue. The Tories also softened economic austerity and pinpointed practical social spending to appeal to the middle class. There will be more nurses for the National Health Service, extra school spending and increases in police on the beat to deal with rising crime rates.

The genius of quiet, fuss-free Brits was shown in the resounding rejection of Jeremy Corbyn, unfit to lead a mass party, let alone a proud nation; Labour’s extreme policies and ugliest impulses were repudiated at the ballot box as the party was handed its worst result since 1935. Make no mistake: this was a strike by a tolerant, successful, multi-faith society against Labour’s virulent anti-Semitism and Mr Corbyn’s sickening dalliances with terrorist outfits such as the IRA, Hamas and Hezbollah. More prosaically, by comparison to this barrenness of scruple and character, was a policy platform that would have taken Britain into a dark age of fiscal lunacy, state socialism and unreliability as a Western ally. Mr Corbyn pledged tax hikes, a wholesale renationalisation of utilities, railways and the postal services and a vast range of handouts, including free university education, free childcare, free dental treatment, free prescriptions and free broadband. Britain has dodged a fiscal catastrophe; Mr Corbyn’s political demise will be mourned, paradoxically, only by Tories. Britain deserves a viable, sensible, centrist and sane alternative.

The pound soared as the first results came through, suggesting a big Tory majority. The nation will get a shot of confidence, no doubt. But Britain will face huge challenges as it navigates its divorce from the trade bloc it joined in 1972. Mr Johnson has shied away from a bold economic agenda; the softer pitch no doubt helped Tories smash through the so-called “red wall’’ of the north and Midlands areas old Labour treated like fiefdoms for generations. But the emancipated nation will need to kickstart GDP growth. If he is to make the best of independence from the dead hand of Brussels, Mr Johnson must find a way to break down the regulatory and tax clamps holding Britain back. Otherwise he could face a voter backlash from soaring inequality and stagnant wages growth, a dynamic that is testing rich nations the world over and capitalism itself. Household incomes in Britain are, in real terms, below their levels of a decade ago.

With strength to his arm, Mr Johnson plans an immediate sitting of parliament to pass legislation before Christmas and a recall of the Lords before the new year to ensure Britain leaves the EU by his deadline. As Mr Johnson contemplated his victory on Friday morning, he claimed a “stonking mandate” for Brexit. “I think it turned out to be a historic election that gives us the chance to respect the will of the people and change the country for the better, and unleash the potential of the entire people of this country,” he said. In their inimitable way, Britons kept calm throughout the post-Brexit vote storm and carried on to election day. It’s now up to Mr Johnson to deliver their unifying wish for a new Britannia.