Opinion Matrix: Mixed verdict on Boris Johnson's election gamble

The prime minister is trying to force a Christmas poll just as he was starting to make headway in parliament. Why? Look for the ulterior motives, Robert Shrimsley suggests.

An election push helps “distract attention” from his failure to meet his Brexit deadline, he says. It puts Labour in an uncomfortable position. The strategy is not without pitfalls. However “he prefers to risk everything on an election rather than slug it out in parliament to get his deal.”

And a pre-Brexit election does hold considerable risk, writes Shrimsley. “He will lose seats in Scotland and to the Liberal Democrats in the south. But clearly his campaign chiefs have run the numbers and concluded that it is the better bet.”

“Election defeat would hugely jeopardise Brexit and see him reduced to one of the shortest serving premiers ever,” Shrimsley points out. “Weighed against these risks, the ploy seems perverse. But this is not really about Brexit. This is about the Conservative Party’s assessment of risks and opportunities in an election.”

The Scotsman

Ayesha Hazarika reports an unnamed former Conservative minister tells her there is anxiety that the party will lose pretty much every seat in Scotland and London. But beyond that there are many unknowns. The Brexit party is foremost among them. “ Nigel Farage will be a powerful voice... and leave voters are likely to take their lead from him as to whether the Prime Minister has delivered Brexit properly, in name only, or anything at all.”

But that party might also take the votes of instinctive Labour supporters. “While many Labour leave voters may have fallen out of love with their party... putting their cross next to a Tory would make them feel like heretics... but voting for the Brexit party may not.”

Both parties should be nervous about a general election, and no-one knows how it will pan out, Hazarika concludes. “But one thing is clear. The choice is Corbyn or Johnson. True red socialism versus true blue old-fashioned conservatism. At least no-one can say ‘ they’re all the same’.”

The Times

I hope Johnson knows what he is doing,” says Iain Martin, who also questions whether an election is a good idea in the light of parliament’s support for the Withdrawal Agreement Bill. “[Johnson] is determined to focus on an election and hope that he can get Brexit done along the way.” There is a logic to this, with campaigning likely to be based around the simple message ‘kick out the wreckers,” Martin claims.

“But there are enormous risks in a strategy that could see voters delivering their verdict on a government that may not have got Brexit done by December.” The best option is to keep calm and carry on, he says. “At last, there is a fair compromise on the table that would deliver Brexit and the focus should be on that and that alone.”

In the same paper, Philip Collins pleads for fairer treatment of Labour MPs who, like Collins himself, now support a deal having opposed ‘Leave’. “It is not stupid, it is not ignoble. They believe as I do that the referendum result should be enacted.” They all might be wrong, he says. But it is a valid position, “It ‘s galling .. to be told that my judgment is not an error but an example of moral failure.”

The Guardian

Simon Jenkins argues against an election but also says it is time for those who oppose Brexit to concede. “Jeremy Corbyn and his disjointed band of remainers, half-leavers, soft-Brexiters and second coming referendum-ers, have been wrong-footed at every turn.”

The responsible tactic, he argues, is to soften the impact of Brexit. “They should now concentrate on one thing, minimising the cost of Brexit to the economy... to stand in its way would see them massacred at the polls.”

Conceding Brexit still allows for measures such as a customs union or a ‘Norway option’ to be kept on the table. “Everything will then be to play for next year,” he says.

For Mr Johnson, he says, there is much to gain from allowing at least the possibility of such compromises. “He knows an election could liberate him from the bondage of a hung parliament. But that is why he has everything to gain from getting his bill, however bastardised through the present commons.”