Strong win for Britain’s May could plunge opposition into disorder

It comes as the British parliament on Wednesday voted overwhelmingly – 522 to 13 – in favour of an early national election, surpassing the two-thirds majority of the 650 lawmakers needed to hold early polls.

Jeremy Corbyn, leader of Britain's opposition Labour Party, right, passes a group of photographers as he leaves home in London on Wednesday, April 19, 2017. Chris Ratcliffe / Bloomberg

A decisive win for British prime minister Theresa May’s Conservative Party in the snap election on June 8 will endorse her strategy for Brexit. It will likely also plunge the opposition Labour party into disorder, paving the way for the exit of its radical and embattled leader, Jeremy Corbyn.

The British parliament on Wednesday voted overwhelmingly – 522 to 13 – in favour of an early national election, surpassing the two-thirds majority of the 650 lawmakers needed to hold early polls.

A day earlier, Mrs May surprised the British public by calling for fresh parliamentary polls, Mr Corbyn said he supported the decision “to give the British people the chance to vote for a government that will put the interests of the majority first”.

“Labour will be offering the country an effective alternative to a government that has failed to rebuild the economy, delivered falling living standards and damaging cuts to our schools and [the National Health Service],” he said. “We look forward to showing how Labour will stand up for the people of Britain.”

But current opinion polls suggest that Mrs May will lead her party to a position of greater strength in parliament, and that Labour will suffer deep losses.

Polling site Electoral Calculus, which surveyed more than 10,000 people last month, predicts that the Conservatives will increase their seats in parliament from 330 to 381, and that Labour will drop from 229 seats to 182.

The same analysis projects a 76 per cent chance of a Conservative parliamentary majority, and just a 5 per cent chance of a Labour majority.

In a separate YouGov poll last month, only 15 per cent of 1,608 British voters surveyed said they thought Mr Corbyn would be the best prime minister of their country. In contrast, 49 per cent opted for Mrs May. The numbers are thus stacked against Mr Corbyn, who has successfully styled himself as a man of the masses but who also struggles against factions with his own party.

The Financial Times reported on Wednesday that Mrs May scheduled the election for as early as June because she was afraid Mr Corbyn might resign, making way for a potentially more popular leader who would invigorate Labour.

“People don’t think he’s a credible, strong leader, and his personal ratings are absolutely abysmal,” said Craig McAngus, a political scientist and a lecturer at the University of Aberdeen. “Unfortunately, a strong leader is what wins elections these days. You can’t go into an election with a weak leader, whom the public thinks is incompetent.”

Mr Corbyn has led Labour since September 2015, and he was re-elected last September, winning the votes of nearly 62 per cent of the party’s membership.

The rank-and-file of the membership base strongly supports Mr Corbyn.

His proposed policies – including more investment in the National Health Service, more social housing, and nationalisation of the railways – resonate strongly, particularly among younger, more left-wing members of the party.

Under his leadership, the party membership has swelled to more than half a million – about four times that of the Conservatives. About 100,000 new members joined the party in the two weeks following last June’s Brexit referendum.

But these members still form a very small percentage of the voting public. Further, an ideological schism has long festered between the staunchly left-wing Mr Corbyn and a rival section of the Labour leadership, which is more centrist.

“It’s also a cultural schism. Corbyn believes the party should drive fundamental social change, just as an activist would think. He’s an activist, he’s not really a public leader,” Dr McAngus said. “His opponents see Labour as a political party which is only in the business of winning elections, and using the levers of government to implement policy.”

Despite these challenges, however, Dr McAngus said a Labour loss in the election might not guarantee Mr Corbyn’s exit.

For one, his critics within the party have not been able to find an alternative prospective leader to rally behind.

“Owen Smith, who stood against him in the last party leader election, did OK, but the sense was: ‘Here’s a man who’s doing it because there’s no one else’,” Dr McAngus said. “There’s no one at all now whom I can put my finger on — no member of parliament who stands out as a leader.”

It will also be difficult to unseat Mr Corbyn in an internal election for party leadership if he continues to enjoy widespread support among the membership.

“But he would probably step down,” Dr McAngus said. “He seems to be an honourable man. No one seems to question his integrity. It’s just that he’s an activist, he’s not a political party leader.”