'Mayhem' in Britain

Poll results spell more turmoil for Brexiting UK

Mayhem, the one-word headline on the front page of the Conservative-leaning tabloid Sun, neatly captured the implications of the hung verdict that British voters returned after the snap election called by British Prime Minister Theresa May on June 8. The fall of the pound sterling against the dollar and euro in the wake of the results only accentuated the crisis. The chaotic implications of Ms May’s April 18 decision go well beyond the narrow concerns of her party’s disastrous performance, from a comfortable majority after the 2015 elections to eight short of it in the 650-seat House of Commons.
 

In normal times, the negotiations on UK’s pull-out from the European Union (EU), popularly known as Brexit, with the little-known Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), with its base exclusively in Northern Ireland, would have been entertaining fodder for the poll pundits. Now, those have added an element of complexity to the already intricate process involved in Brexit, negotiations for which begin on June 19. In contrast to the vocal “hard Brexit” lobby in the Conservative Party —which posits, principally, a hard-line immigration policy and a clean break from the EU and a relationship based on WTO rules — the DUP has a position that shades into “soft” Brexit — or some form of EU membership with greater freedoms. Specifically, the DUP favours easier border rules with its southern neighbour, the Republic of Ireland, an EU member.

 
Ironically, buffeted by hard and soft Brexiteers within her own party, Ms May gambled on early elections — her party was 20 points ahead of its rivals in the opinion polls — to gain some clarity and strengthen her hand in negotiating Britain’s greatest geopolitical shift since the dissolution of its empire. Now, she heads a minority government in a Parliament in which she will have to contend with the equivocal outside support of the DUP and fresh challenges from a resurgent Labour Party which gained 31 seats.
 

Even if voter fatigue is discounted —two elections and two referendums between 2014 and 2017 — Ms May’s missteps were glaring early on in the campaign. From the embarrassing reversal of a tax imposed on medical care for the elderly to her refusal to attend TV debates. Her inability to clarify her party’s stand on what Brexit would actually mean in terms of jobs, healthcare and so on did not help.

 
This tone-deafness came at a time when Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who was energetically engaging with voters and registered stories of the hardships caused by the prospect of Brexit — accelerating inflation (a result of the weakening pound), shrinking jobs (as investors await the outcome of Brexit talks) and a broken welfare system. His Bernie Sanders-style election manifesto may have appalled any conventional economist with a clarion call for nationalisation and free education but it resonated with the many young people who came out to vote this time — many of the same youngsters who, significantly, stayed away from the narrow Brexit referendum last year.

Serial terror attacks in London and Manchester only served to enfeeble Ms May’s position further, when sharp cuts to police budgets during her term as home secretary came to light. Business lobbies have already termed this election outcome “a serious moment” for the UK economy.
 
As Ms May begins her fresh term, the signals for Indian IT and drug companies have never been stronger. Caught between the rock of tightening work-visa regulations in the US and the hard place of lasting uncertainty in the UK, the search for newer markets urgently needs to accelerate.