尽管民调显示竞争激烈，鲍里斯·约翰逊和托利党在周四的英国选举中赢得了巨大的胜利。自撒切尔夫人以来最大的右翼胜利。
在未来的一段时间里，他们为什么这样做将会引起激烈的争论。
一些人将这一结果归因于约翰逊成功动员保守党和工党的脱欧者。在2016年6月英国退出欧盟公投通过后的三年议会无所作为后，他们感到沮丧，希望有所改变。但这并不能解释一切。
英国精英们在公投和周四选举之间的间歇期告诉每个人，最初的结果是侥幸的，它受到了亲左派的虚假信息的严重影响。他们自信地预测，如果举行第二次公投，将会证明这是真的，并以不同的方式结束。
他们错了。周四的选举是对英国退出欧盟的全民公决。约翰逊成功了。它再次获得通过，许多选区的投票率在70%到80%之间，这使得人们很难认为第一次投票是侥幸的。剩余者是一支耗尽的政治力量——也许一直如此。
结果是，正如我上周在这里写的，应该鼓励那些害怕人民的意志被专家、精英和官僚的暴政所掩盖的人。这并不支持民粹主义——埃德蒙·伯克正确地警告官员们，牺牲他们的判断力去迎合他们所代表的人民的意见将会背叛他们——但这是一个值得欢迎的提醒，即选票是有价值的。政治、经济、学术和媒体精英试图阻挠英国退出欧盟的努力似乎最终受挫。
至于如今在美国流行的反叙事，工党的激进主义导致了该党自20世纪30年代以来最糟糕的表现，目前还不清楚是否如此。根据阿什克罗夫特勋爵的选举后投票72%投保守党票的人说，需要“让英国退出欧盟完成”是他们投票的主要原因。只有25%的人说他们是受“正确领导”的欲望驱使的。
这有助于解释保守党在英格兰北部工党据点取得的巨大进展。约翰逊打破了“红墙”，利用了公投期间明显存在的强烈的亲左派情绪。杰里米·科尔宾承诺将宽带、铁路和邮政服务国有化，并扩大对国家医疗服务的支出(保守党也承诺了，尽管没有这么多)，这不足以让他的一些最忠诚的选民留在他的联盟中。
这表明，展望2020年，美国政界人士得到的教训不是即时分析所暗示的。民主党候选人提名的领先者、前副总统乔·拜登强烈认为，周五工党过于左倾，无法当选。他说，这就要求明年任命一位更温和的候选人担任旗手，他不会像科尔宾所说的那样放弃中间派。
也许吧。但是阿什克罗夫特勋爵发现“工党在18-24岁(57%)和25-34岁(55%)的人群中赢得了一半以上的选票，保守党在这两个群体中都位居第二。保守党在45-54岁(43%)、55-64岁(49%)和65岁以上(62%)的人群中领先。”科尔宾的激进宣言让他输掉了选举——也许在伦敦富人中比在全国工人阶级中更受欢迎——但在年轻选民中却是赢家。
对于拜登、马萨诸塞州参议员伊丽莎白·沃伦、佛蒙特州参议员伯尼·桑德斯和其他希望获得党内提名的人来说，这意味着一个两难的境地。靠左倾赢得提名，向激进分子群体呼吁，在各州代表团中分裂，因为“赢家通吃”的竞赛已经被废除？或者温和地吸引年长的选民，调查告诉我们，谁更有可能在大选中投票？
12月13日，在保守党赢得大选后，英国首相鲍里斯·约翰逊在伦敦市中心唐宁街10号发表讲话。
答案还不清楚，尤其是因为所谓的“超级代表”，头脑清醒的政党独唱者，通常在挑选民主党候选人时扮演着举足轻重的角色，无法参加密尔沃基大会的第一轮投票。通常情况下，只有当有经验的波兰人头脑比先投票的人冷静时，关于选举能力的争论才会压倒意识形态。
科尔宾的工党对现代英国来说过于极端。他要下台了，但不是不首先尝试领导选举后的尸检，以防止他的信息被怀疑。工党中可能有些人渴望托尼·布莱尔时代的回归，顺便提一下，托尼·布莱尔的选区在选举中变得保守，但他们并没有掌握权力。反对党对来自唐宁街的倡议的回应将来自激进的左派，而不是中间派，这给了首相比英国退出欧盟更大的空间去完成更多的事情。周四，他获得了投票。
BORIS JOHNSON'S WIN IS A WELCOME REMINDER THAT VOTES STILL MATTER | OPINION
Despite polls going in that showed the race was tight, Boris Johnson and the Tories won a smashing victory in Thursday's U.K. election. The biggest win for the right since Mrs. Thatcher.
Why they did will be hotly debated—here and there—for some time to come.
Some attribute the outcome to Johnson's successful mobilization of Brexiteers in both the Conservative and Labour parties. Frustrated after three years of parliamentary inaction following passage of the June 2016 referendum to pull the U.K. out of the EU, they wanted change. But that doesn't explain everything.
The British elites spent the interregnum between the referendum and the Thursday's election telling everyone the original result, influenced heavily by disinformation from the pro-Leave side, was a fluke. They predicted confidently a second referendum, if one were held, would show this to be true and end differently.
They were wrong. Thursday's election was a referendum on Brexit. Johnson made it one. It passed again, with turnout between 70 and 80 percent in many constituencies, making it hard to argue the first vote was a fluke. The Remainers are a spent political force—and may always have been so.
The outcome, as I wrote here last week, should encourage those who feared the people's will is eclipsed by a tyranny of experts, elites and bureaucrats. This does not argue for populism—Edmund Burke correctly warned officeholders that sacrificing their judgment to the opinion of the people they represent would betray them—but it is a welcome reminder that votes count for something. The efforts of the political, economic, academic and media elites to put their thumb on the scale to block Brexit finally appear to have been thwarted.
As to the counter-narrative popular today in the United States, that Labour's radicalism led to the party's worst showing since the 1930s, it's not clear that's so. According to Lord Ashcroft's post-election poll, 72 percent of those who voted Conservative said the need to "get Brexit done" was their primary reason for voting as they did. Only 25 percent said they were motivated by a desire for "the right leadership."
This helps explain the tremendous inroads the Tories made in Labour strongholds in the North of England. Johnson breached the "red wall" by tapping into the strong pro-Leave sentiment evident in there during the referendum. Jeremy Corbyn's promise to nationalize broadband, rail and postal services, as well as expand spending on the National Health Service (which the Conservatives also promised, though by not as much), was not enough to keep some of his most loyal voters inside his coalition.
This suggests the lesson for U.S. politicians looking ahead to 2020 is not what the instant analysis suggests. Former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic frontrunner for his party's nomination, argued strongly Friday Labour moved too far to the left to be electable. That, he said, argues for a more moderate candidate to be named standard-bearer next year, one who would not abandon the middle, as Corbyn is said to have done.
Perhaps. But Lord Ashcroft found "Labour won more than half the vote among those turning out aged 18-24 (57 percent) and 25-34 (55 percent), with the Conservatives second in both groups. The Conservatives were ahead among those aged 45-54 (with 43 percent), 55-64 (with 49 percent) and 65+ (with 62 percent)." Corbyn's radical manifesto helped cost him the election—being more popular perhaps with the rich around London than among the nation's working class—but it was a winner with younger voters.
For Biden, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and the others who want their party's nomination, it suggests a quandary. Stay to the left to win the nomination with appeals to the activist base, split up among state delegations because "winner take all" contests have been abolished? Or moderate to appeal to older voters, who, surveys tell us, are more likely to vote in the general election?
Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson delivers a speech outside 10 Downing Street in central London on December 13, following his Conservative Party's general election victory.
The answer is not clear, especially since the so-called "superdelegates," the sober-minded party solons who typically play an outsized role in picking the Democratic nominee, are unable to participate in the first-round balloting at the convention in Milwaukee. All too often, arguments about electability prevail over ideology only when made to experienced pols with cooler heads than those voting first.
Corbyn's Labour Party was too extreme for modern Britain. He's stepping down, but not without trying first to lead the post-election autopsy to prevent his message from being discredited. There may be those in Labour who long for the return of the days of Tony Blair, whose constituency, incidentally, went Conservative in the election, but they don't hold the reins of power. The opposition response to the initiatives coming out of Downing Street will come from the radical left, not the center, giving the prime minister more room to accomplish more than Brexit. And on Thursday, he got the votes to do it.
