In Britain’s clash of radicals, there’s nowhere to hide

Bloomberg

In the week Boris Johnson became British PM, two men in northeast England were jailed for throwing bricks through the office windows of their local member of parliament in a politically motivated attack.
The lawmaker, Helen Goodman, voted to stay in the European Union. People in her district of Bishop Auckland voted overwhelmingly to leave and she says she regularly receives a torrent of abuse online over her Brexit stance. Her seat, held by the Labour Party for the past 84 years, is now a prime target of Johnson’s Conservatives.
The problem for Goodman
is that she wants a compromise—a version of Brexit that keeps close ties with the continent—but compromise isn’t on offer. “What’s happened since the referendum is there’s been quite a lot of polarisation,”
she said. “So people who were very ‘Brexity’ before are even more ‘Brexity’ now and people who voted remain are even more ‘Remainy.’”
To suggest that Britain’s election campaign will be the most vitriolic in living memory is an understatement as parties dig in over if, when and how to leave the European Union. But the danger is that the radicalisation of the country’s political system also looks entrenched.
Europe has seen its fair share of populists over the past five years, though whether it be Syriza in Greece or the Five Star Movement in Italy, they pitted themselves against the establishment before being brought to heel by the realpolitik of an integrated continent. What makes Britain different also makes its politics all the more febrile: it’s radical versus radical, with both cajoling an angry electorate.
Goodman, 61 and a parliamentarian since 2005, is defiant and is campaigning to retain her seat, but many others in Westminster aren’t. The list of electoral casualties is lengthening as more moderate members of Parliament quit or are pushed out.
Culture Minister Nicky Morgan announced she wouldn’t stand while former cabinet colleague Amber Rudd was barred from running for a seat as a Conservative as the party blamed her for disrupting Brexit. Morgan, along with former Conservative Heidi Allen, cited abuse for doing their job when announcing they would not contest the election.
“If you’re a politician who stands in the center ground on Brexit, you’re just going to be losing to more extreme parties on either side of you,” said Jonathan Mellon, a research fellow in politics at the University of Manchester.
Both Johnson and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn accuse the other of representing the worn-out establishment, saying only they are championing people left behind by globalisation.