British election: Scott Morrison hails the ‘quiet Britons’ after Conservative win

Scott Morrison has likened Boris Johnson’s British election victory to his own on May 18.

Scott Morrison and Boris Johnson meet at the G7 Summit in Biarritz, France, in August. Picture: Adam Taylor/PMO

Scott Morrison has likened Boris Johnson’s British election victory to his own on May 18, attributing the result to the “quiet Britons”.

The Prime Minister said Mr Johnson’s thumping defeat of British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn would restore political stability to the UK and pave the way for a new free-trade deal between the two countries.

Mr Morrison, who built his election campaign around an appeal to the “Quiet Australians”, lauded his fellow conservative, who was on track for a landslide victory amid a voter backlash over Labour’s extreme left agenda.

Congratulations @BorisJohnson on a resounding victory and being returned as UK PM. Looking forward to the stability this brings and a new deal for Oz with the UK. Say g’day to the quiet Britons for us. pic.twitter.com/1SDQPIhNFZ

— Scott Morrison (@ScottMorrisonMP) December 13, 2019

“Congratulations @BorisJohnson on a resounding victory and being returned as UK PM,” Mr Morrison tweeted on Friday.

“Looking forward to the stability this brings and a new deal for Oz with the UK. Say g’day to the quiet Britons for us.”

As the scale of the Tory victory became apparent, some in the ALP compared the result with Mr Morrison’s defeat of Bill Shorten, who took Labor to the left with a radical tax-and-spend and climate change agenda.

Mr Corbyn saw his party’s vote plunge from 40 per cent in 2017 to 32.2 per cent on Friday, a similar result to the 33.3 per cent Mr ­Shorten’s Labor Party received at the May election.

Labor frontbencher Joel ­Fitzgibbon, a right faction leader, said there were “eerie parallels with May 18”.

“The clear messages are that the vast majority want the major parties near the political centre and working-class people won’t cop being treated as the equivalent of Hillary Clinton’s deplorables,” Mr Fitzgibbon said.

Left-wing Labor MP Andrew Giles said the Corbyn defeat was devastating.

“(It) will be felt acutely by working-class people in the UK, and everyone there who needs a government on their side,” he said.

“For us in Australian Labor, we need to carefully analyse the result and learn from it.

“Clearly there were factors at play that are specific to the UK, predominantly Brexit, but we face similar challenges and have to do better to connect with the full range of potential Labor supporters.”

Just as Shorten Labor was ­battered in mining electorates such as Capricornia and Dawson in Queensland and Hunter in NSW, Corbyn Labour lost the constituency of Blyth Valley in north Eng­land, a former mining area that had never returned a Conservative MP.

Another seat to fall was in ­another former mining area, ­Workington, held by Labour for all but three of the past 101 years and home to working-class voters who had no time for metropolitan leftist policies.

Mr Giles said the ALP’s election review and Anthony Albanese’s leadership of the party “show that we are well under way in this process”, with a focus on jobs and growth, and aspiration.

Mr Albanese, who is also from the party’s left and paid regular ­visits to Mr Corbyn in Britain, was reluctant to comment on the ­defeat of his friend, who had vowed to implement a sweeping socialist manifesto if he became prime minister.

Mr Albanese, who caught up with Mr Corbyn in March last year “talking politics and progress”, declared on Friday that “UK elections are a matter for the United Kingdom”.

“I do know that they have had a difficult time, and they will have a difficult time going ahead with Brexit, with talk of a break up of the union,” the federal Opposition Leader said.

“These are challenging times but it’s up to the people of the UK to determine what form their government takes.”

Liberal senator James McGrath, who worked for Mr Johnson on his 2008 London mayoral campaign, said the Conservative victory was good for international order “in that you have a sensible person as Prime Minister of the UK rather than an unreconstructed Marxist”.

“This election reinforces the message of Australia’s May 18 result – that Labor should stop listening to Twitter and start listening to those who quietly mumble about what is happening in Australia and in politics,” Senator McGrath said.

“Voters don’t want politicians going around focusing on minority issues at the expense of issues that impact on all of us — like what’s happening to the roads? What’s happening to our schools and hospitals? Where are we with national security?

“What happened in the UK was the choice between a pragmatic centre right party and an extreme left-wing party.”

Mr Johnson’s re-election means Britain is now poised to leave the EU by January 31 or ­earlier, ­thereby allowing talks to officially get under way on a new Australia-Britain free-trade deal.

Trade Minister Simon Birmingham has said “the ­second Britain is ready, Australia stands ready to shift into formal negoti­ations” and he would look to conclude a deal as quickly as ­possible.

British Trade Secretary Liz Truss has described an Australia-UK trade agreement as “an absolute priority”, and she expects a deal to be reached within months of Brexit.

An agreement can’t come into effect before the conclusion of Britain’s Brexit transition period with the EU, which looks like being a year from the date it leaves the EU.