What Happened in the UK Election? with Sarah Jaffe

Why Is This Happening? The Chris Hayes Podcast

MS NOW, Chris Hayes

News, Versant Media, Versant, Ms Now, Nbcnews, Why Is This Happening?, The Chris Hayes Podcast, Chris Hayes, Politics, Government, Society & Culture, Msnbc, Withpod

4.6 • 8.9K Ratings

🗓️ 31 December 2019

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s hard not to make comparisons between the political landscapes of the US and the UK. In 2016 when the UK shocked the world with the Brexit vote, a lot of folks saw it as a bellwether for the coming presidential election. If it could happen there, why couldn’t it happen here? And sure enough it did, kicking off three years of political turmoil. Now, as we prepare for the 2020 presidential election, has the UK provided us with another premonition? Earlier this month, voters turned out to deliver Boris Johnson and the Conservative Party a resounding victory while rejecting Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party. So what happened and how closely should the US be reading into those results? Journalist Sarah Jaffe was embedded on the ground in the lead up to the election and joins to tell us what exactly went down. RELATED READING: Necessary Trouble: Americans in Revolt by Sarah Jaffe YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE: Trump, Brexit, and Racial Grievance with Mehdi Hasan (Aug 28, 2018)

Transcript

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0:00.0	This activist, he's saying to me, you know, he's like people like my parents.
0:04.1	They voted for a radical project already.
0:06.7	Brexit is their radical project.
0:08.5	And Jeremy Corbyn ultimately becomes one more person who is holding up their radical
0:13.2	project.
0:14.2	And they didn't want to hear about another one.
0:17.3	Hello, and welcome to Wise is Happening with me, your host, Chris Hayes.
0:24.9	You know, ever since 2016 when the UK voted on Brexit in a referendum, and a lot of
0:31.1	people I think in the UK and here in the US who observers didn't think the referendum
0:35.8	would go the way it did, which was to vote to leave the EU.
0:39.0	And then it did, and it was this kind of shocking moment.
0:41.3	And I remember at the time Donald Trump was running for president in the US.
0:44.8	He was about to, I think about to be the nominee or was the nominee.
0:47.9	And there was a kind of palpable sense of like, oh, it could happen here.
0:52.6	There has always seemed, I mean, the US and the UK have always had, as we'll talk about
0:57.5	in this show, there's always been a kind of connection between their politics in many
1:00.8	ways.
1:01.8	But that moment felt like a kind of wake up call.
1:05.9	It felt like it was channeling certain forces that are very powerful in both the US
1:10.8	UK and across a lot of the Western democracies.
1:13.9	And then Donald Trump did win.
1:16.0	And in fact, on election night, like Nigel Farage, one of the masterminds behind Brexit was
	...

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