In Focus: Brexit and the UK General Election
| Date | 01 September 2017 |
| Published date | 01 September 2017 |
| DOI | 10.1177/2041905817726902 |
24 POLITICAL INSIGHT • SEPTEMBER 2017
In Focus
Brexit and the UK
General Election
The introductory words by Prime
Minister Theresa May in the
Conservative manifesto 2017
outlined the main focus for the
government’s General Election campaign:
‘Brexit will dene us: our place in the world, our
economic security and our future prosperity’.
But when it came to Brexit, the campaign itself
featured little of political substance from either
of the two main parties, and the impact of the
EU-debate on the (quite unexpected) election
outcome is very complex, with the anticipated
Conservative gains in Leave-voting Labour
seats failing to materialise.
Indeed, the putative ‘Brexit election’ saw
Ukip, the party that forced the EU referendum
onto the political agenda, decimated. Ukip did
not secure a single seat and their vote share
went from 12.6 per cent in 2015 to 1.8 per
cent. In general, the election was considerably
inuenced by tactical voting decisions
which went at the cost of the smaller parties,
according to post vote surveys such as the one
conducted by Lord Ashcroft. The Green Party
went from 3.8 per cent to 1.6 per cent and the
Liberal Democrats lost slightly, going down
to 7.4 per cent (from 7.9 per cent), despite
managing to gain four more seats.
What has been described by some as a
‘return to two-party politics’ in Britain, might
have been a mere pragmatic decision by the
electorate to try to make their vote count
more, rather than sacricing it for a smaller
party with little chance to get elected in a
rst-past-the-post system. A certain degree
of (often informal) collaboration between
so-called progressive forces, seemed to have
played a considerable role in these tactical
voting patterns, which helped the Liberal
Democrats win seats, but aided Labour even
Benjamin D. Hennig plots the 2017 General Election results
more in gaining and regaining seats from
the Conservatives. But two party-politics
is far from being a reality. The results are
rather a conrmation of the divided (or even
confused) electorate, while the two main
parties themselves appear equally divided (or
confused) in their own approaches to Brexit.
This looks very dierent in Scotland. Scottish
support of European Union membership
in 2016 did not result in an overwhelming
support of parties that are in favour of EU
membership. The Conservatives, which lost
13 seats overall, were able to gain that same
number in Scotland. A closer look at the vote
shares suggests that the Tories beneted
from a divisive debate about a possible new
independence referendum that contributed
to a split in the ‘progressive’ vote in Scotland
between the SNP, Labour and the Liberal
Democrats.
These dynamics must also be seen from
the perspective of voter turnout, which had
Political Insight Sept2017.indd 24 21/07/2017 11:57
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