Take Note, Democrats: The UK Election Was A Referendum On Progressivism

Last night, in a historic election, the UK Conservative Party celebrated its most sweeping victory since Margaret Thatcher, the original “Euroskeptic,” won the election for Prime Minister in 1987. The election had been regarded as particularly momentous, given the UK’s recent struggles to bring the much-debated Brexit to fruition. The Conservative Party won 364 seats in UK Parliament, compared to Labour’s 204, catapulting Conservative leader Boris Johnson to the position of Prime Minister. It was the worst defeat for Labour since 1935.

But in addition to Brexit woes, the election was also saddled with the baggage of the UK Labour Party and its controversial leader, Jeremy Corbyn. Over the past several years, Labour has been mired in accusations of anti-semitism, which seemed to plague both its members and leaders. The accusations culminated in nearly a dozen members of the party opting to defect in protest of Corbyn’s incapacity to deal with what many felt to be a rising culture of toxicity within Labour.

Just last week, a leaked memo written by Jewish Labour members to the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), the UK’s official regulatory body devoted to issues of discrimination, revealed the depths to which both the party and Corbyn had minimized, dismissed, or simply ignored accusations of anti-semitism within Labour, often identifying such criticisms to be a “right-wing smear.” Several times in an interview with BBC’s Andrew Neil last month, Corbyn failed to offer any sort of substantive apology, even when confronted with the statistic that nearly a half of British Jewsish people were “seriously considering” leaving the UK, should Corbyn win the election.

There were other problems with Corbyn, too. As documented here, the Labour leader has a long history of palling around with terrorists, attending their conferences, referring to them as “friends,” and laying wreaths on their graves. Corbyn’s behavior could only be regarded as the seediest form of anti-Westernism, not one that posits anti-Western sentiment within a philosophical framework, but one that finds manifestation in friendships with those who seek the West’s destruction.

[link to thefederalist.com (secure)]