Hedge Clippings | Friday 13 December, 2019

As Hedge Clippings figuratively gets put to bed (if not to sleep) by around 2 PM on Friday afternoons it is too early to announce the winner of the UK election just yet, however we'll stick by our call from a few weeks ago - actually referencing our friends at Longview Economics in the UK - that Boris would win comfortably by 80-90 seats.

Based on the estimates of last night's exit polls - although notoriously unreliable as we know - the Sydney Morning Herald is reporting the Conservatives will increase their majority by 50 seats, whilst Labour, under 70's left-wing hangover, Jeremy Corbyn, are predicted to lose 71. The other winner, who could also affect the direction of UK politics going forward, is the Scottish Nationalist Party, expected to end up with 55 seats, a gain of 20.

Although they've yet to rival Australia's recent turnover of Prime Ministers, the British must be heartily sick of elections (3 in less than 3 years), Brexit, and politicians. Based on our own anecdotal evidence while visiting London recently, most of those we spoke with just wanted the endless arguments to end and to get on with it. However, elections in the UK are a lot simpler than ours.

Firstly, voting is voluntary and, for some historical reason we're not aware of, UK elections take place on a Thursday, so if you're busy, the weather's bad (as normal) or you're simply not interested, you don't have to bother. Secondly, you have a single choice to make on a single ballot paper and you can't vote for the upper house even if you wanted to, and you don't have State elections where you have to go through it all over again.

All jest aside, this is one of the more important elections simply because so much rests on it. There is clearly a fork in the road as Britain exits the EU after what many considered was a poor decision to join the then Common Market way back on January 1, 1973 under then PM Edward Heath. It is not often remembered there was an earlier referendum in June 1975 under Harold Wilson, when the "remain" vote was 67% - albeit on a national turnout of only 64%, but significantly higher than the leave vote of 52% under the most recent one.

One assumes that the UK won't be holding another referendum any time soon, given the chaos and division over the past 2 and a half years since David Cameron's ill-judged decision to hold the 2016 referendum which, as a "remainer", also lost him his job as PM.

The last word goes to Dianne Abbott, opposition frontbencher and Corbyn ally who said "It could be much worse.". One supposes that much worse must mean losing ALL their seats?