 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we are going to talk about the results of the UK general election. The elections were held yesterday, that is the 12th of December and the results came out at night. And the Conservative Party has achieved a massive victory, winning 364 seats. The number of seats required for the majority is 326. The Labour Party on the other hand has shrunk to 203 seats, which is one of its worst defeats in decades. The Scottish National Party has also achieved a massive victory in Scotland. To talk more about these trends and their implications, we have with us Prabir Pulkaistha. Hello Prabir. Prabir, so this election was held, it was a very contentious election because Boris Johnson has been trying for a long time to call for an election. The parliament was in complete anarchy and collapse over the issue of Brexit. Two governments fell after 2015, two prime ministers resigned at least. So we have a situation where despite all this, despite all the chaos, despite the complete bankruptcy of Conservative politics, they seem to have returned with one of their most historic victories. So what do you attribute as a reason for it? Well, I think this has been much more of a Brexit victory and a part of it was that the Brexit was something that people had voted for, though it was a narrow victory at that point of time. But having voted for Brexit, it was really the disarray of the Conservative Party in which a strong section opposed Brexit and that they couldn't carry that forward. And this was really the reason that the Labour Party and the section of the Conservative Party, which objected to the Brexit in the form that Boris Johnson wanted, which led finally to the elections that we have had, is very clear that Boris Johnson within the Conservative Party came out clearly as a Brexiter. And if you see the last election that took place in the European Parliament, it's a Brexit as the Brexit Party, which had major vote share. In fact, they beat the two other parties, Labour Party and the Conservative Party and emerged as the strongest voice, largest bloc in the United Kingdom. So given this, it's clear that the Brexit has gained ground from the last referendum that took place. And this, if you look at the map, it's very clear that this map mapped on the Brexit elections would show that this has really strengthened. What does it mean when I say it strengthened? You will see the Scottish National Party has won a larger share of seats and in fact has swept Scotland, as you said, and they have been opposing the leaving Brexit and therefore, they have also gained seats. So what we have discussed earlier in news click, the Brexit has been a polarizing issue in the United Kingdom and has made it much more of a disunited Kingdom in which it's not the political divisions alone, but the ethnic and identity divisions which have widened in the United Kingdom. And therefore, the core English areas have voted one way, the Scottish areas have voted different way and in Ireland, Northern Ireland, if you see, the Irish voice has also been split and you can see the Sinn Féin seats have remained in a particular area and you can see that the Unionists, the Democratic Union Unionist Party has again got a concentrated area with which it has got the seats. So you will see a much more division of the United Kingdom which is based on rather the ethnic identities of the people and within it, the English areas, that's where the Labour and Conservative Party have contested each other and in this, the area that has gone against Labour which has been a considerably, for a considerable period, their stronghold, are the old industrial areas in which the older working class population feels that the benefit of the European Union did not come to them. In fact, they have been successfully turned against therefore, the European Union project, but not in the terms of working class solidarity, but in terms of essentially a kind of, what shall we say, English identity, if you will, which is anti-immigrant and therefore, they have instead of blaming those who have made the city of London really a huge financial empire, who have really have got the benefits of the last 20, 30 years of European Union developments, they have in fact been turned against the immigrants and this is the core of the Brexit issue, the turn the issue of crisis of capitalism, which is what the United Kingdom is seeing as an immigrant issue, make it a wide versus immigrant of different hues issue and this is what the Brexiters have been, Nicholas Farage was really the key voice in that, but let us face it, a key section of the Conservative Party has not drifted farward to the right and Boris Johnson is a Trump-like figure, which has, who have, who is neither the gravitas that you expect out of a major political party in a major country, but has shall we say the ability to divide the people and that is what he has successfully done, so the demagoguery that you see today of Nicholas Farage, Boris Johnson are essentially similar to what Trump represents, the white supremist voice trying to turn everything against immigrants, not therefore addressing the fundamental policies that have led to the poor becoming poorer and the sharpening of the rift between the bulk of the population and the rich. And as you pointed out, so a lot of Labour strongholds have turned conservative especially in the former industrialised towns and these are towns where over the past 30 to 40 years austerity policies, what is called neoliberalism has completely almost destroyed the social infrastructure and the social fabric. On the other hand, we do see the Labour did campaign on quite a progressive platform, they had a lot of interesting ideas and proposals, they even the foreign policy platform was remarkably progressive for a European party, but nonetheless they seem to have really failed in taking the message across to many of these sections and people seem to not have even the issue of the NHS which came up recently and which put front and centre the issue of privatisation. While that was a concern, it didn't seem to have convinced enough people to vote Labour. You know the Labour Party has been hamstrung by the fact that while Jeremy Corbyn has been able to carry the bulk of the young people who have joined the Labour Party, the expansion that it has seen and therefore been able to influence the policies of the Labour Party itself, among the Labour voters there has been this image that Jeremy Corbyn is somehow an extremist and this is the media this is the image that part of the Labour media or what usually used to be regarded as a pro-Labor media that has played because this section of the Labour Party is what I would call the Blair rights section which has been a part of the UK's financial project in which the city of London becomes in fact the centre of what is called the treasure island economy, economy which is centred on 40-45 tax havens, most of them in the ex-British colonies, supposedly independent but really controlled by the city of London. So this Blair rights section is the one also which has been extremely divisive within the Labour Party and has continuously tagged Jeremy Corbyn and most of the media outlets which were favourable to Labour Party earlier has actually gone over to what I would call the Blair rights section. So Labour voice while its agenda, its policies came out clearly as you were saying is a progressive voice in identifying not the that this is an ethnic issue of Brexit but really if we want to leave Brexit what we do there should be a positive agenda for that that didn't emerge clearly and in fact if you look at it there is a lexate opinion within the Labour Party which is there is a left position of leaving the European Union that never could come out because Jeremy Corbyn had to unite the entire Labour Party and therefore could not have taken a position against the European Union the way Boris Johnson did. Therefore while I think Jeremy Corbyn himself is a reluctant remainder because otherwise if asked if he sees his past positions he would have said European Union under the control of big capital big finance capital particularly the German banks or the major European financial institutions is not something in the interest of the working class but that position could never come out in the Labour Party. So I think of the key issue if we regard this as a Brexit vote that the Labour Party trying to avoid the Brexit issue and trying to pitch only a social agenda did not have the kind of resonance that Boris Johnson shall we say making the crisis entirely one of ethnic white dumb or shall we say the English dumb as it were and this didn't really this didn't really work and you can see looking at the map of United Kingdom you can see that how much more sharply the ethnic divisions have come about you can see what the Scotland again Ireland the divisions between the Sinn Féin and the Unionist Party all of it shows that you are seeing increasingly a fragmentation of these societies and that is one of the reasons that unless we are able to bring to the forefront what are the larger issues instead of making it an ethnic immigrant issue I think this is a problem we are going to get in different elections European Union and that you know it might turn more towards ethnicity and not towards social issues social and economic issues and this is what you can see the United States you can see here and honestly speaking if you see Latin America the race issue has been muted but nevertheless if we look at Venezuela you look at Brazil you look at Bolivia there is a clear race underlying the issue of what appears to be left versus right politics and it is only that the race issue is not so obvious the outsiders in Latin America but the coded words are very very similar so I think there is this whole larger ethnic shift that shall we say the global capitalist forces would like to make so that people don't raise the issue of capital versus labour working people versus the rich but try to make an ethnic divide the everywhere you line up behind the right of the issue that only the outsiders are the problem as you know in India this is also what is happening today that you are trying to divide the country on the basis of minority majority and therefore shift the focus from the real issues facing the people into issues which are non issues otherwise but divide the people and therefore raise emotional and other temperatures high right so and finally it looks like Boris Johnson is going to get his version of the Brexit will pass and while there is a waiting period of a couple of years it is very likely that this is also going to mark a phase of renewed austerity politics as well as a renewed neoliberal offensive as far as the UK is concerned so how do you see the Europe what do you see the implications on the so-called European project which like you said is already in crisis I think you're going to say two things emerge you're going to see the United Kingdom if it remains a United Kingdom you can have a Scottish referendum come up again you will probably see the United Kingdom in order to shelter itself from the Brexit implications leaving the European Union is going to get much closer to the United States already discussions were on between the Boris Johnson's government and Trump government they have their apart from the colour of the head the colour of the politics also is very similar and they have been discussing how post-Brexit the United States and the United Kingdom will work together now these two also under really underpin the global financial architecture which is not France it is not Germany it's really city of London and the York this is the really the underpinning of the global financial structure as it exists today and what is called the Washington consensus I think these are the issues which is going to emerge on on the financial architecture and that's one part of the equation other part of the equation you have raised which is what happens to the project of European Union it's very clear the European Union project now is in a crisis of different kinds you have the north versus south essentially what happens to countries in the Mediterranean as it were the what is regarded as a poorer countries as opposed to Germany and France that's one fracture but the bigger issue for the European Union is do they go with the United States and therefore try to create a Europe which is against Russia do they make Russia and China the main enemy or does European Union try to play a role by which it has its connections with both the United States and also a certain kind of relationship with Russia and also China I think that is the bigger existential question the European Union faces and honestly speaking at the moment they are trying to articulate for themselves what is European Union's role in global affairs it was very clear earlier they saw themselves as a part of the greater Europe the greater western civilization which meant Western Europe and North America and this was underpinned by NATO and the Washington consensus this is fracturing so will that European Union project which became a part of a larger project of western imperialism and underpinned by NATO and the financial architecture will that hold that is the question that I think European Union needs to face and I think the biggest issues that you are going to see is the emergence of white nationalism which is what you see different parts of Europe again particularly now also quite sharply in Eastern Europe so I think all of this we'll have to see these are all attempts at finally trying to avoid the crisis but the price you pay is internal fractures and external fractures and European Union the fractures will be then ethnic divisions which as we know has led to how many world wars to world wars how many hundreds of years almost at least three to four hundred years of war are you going to get a say go back to that that's something that we have to watch thank you so much for me that's all we have time for today keep watching yes click