Politics

Boris Johnson Re-Elected as British Prime Minister, With Brexit in the Balance

The third general election in Britain in four years has returned former London mayor Boris Johnson as prime minister and given his Conservative Party a sizable majority in Parliament. Johnson campaigned on a promise to finally pull the U.K. out of the European Union after three-and-a-half years of political infighting since Britons voted to leave in a June 2016 referendum.

Semi-official results showed the Conservatives (also known as Tories) winning 346 seats so far in the 650-member House of Commons, with further seats still to be called. The threshold to win parliament is 326 seats. The opposition Labour Party, led by Jeremy Corbyn, has taken 202 seats, with 77 spread among smaller parties such as the Liberal Democrats and Greens.

Pre-election polls had projected a healthy win for Johnson’s Tories, but such surveys have been notoriously unreliable in recent years, starting with the Brexit referendum, whose outcome shocked many.

Johnson has pledged to finally get an E.U. withdrawal bill through Parliament, which both he and his predecessor as prime minister, Theresa May, have repeatedly failed to do despite several attempts. Johnson stands a strong chance of delivering on that promise now that his party’s majority has replaced the previously deadlocked Parliament.

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If he succeeds in persuading the House of Commons to approve his withdrawal bill, Britain would formally exit the 28-nation E.U. on Jan. 31, 2020 – the first member state to call it quits from the world’s largest trading bloc. However, almost nothing would change immediately: The U.K. would continue to operate on the same terms with the E.U. as it does now during a transition period set to run till the end of the year, when a new trade deal between the two sides would supposedly kick in. Many observers are doubtful that such a complex and far-reaching trade agreement can be struck in such a short space of time.

Britain’s entertainment industry is overwhelmingly against Brexit and, like other sectors, has been chafing at the uncertainty over what kind of relationship the U.K. will eventually have with the E.U.

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