Jeremy Corbyn’s Shot

Yascha Mounk wrote for Slate about how the results of the early election in Britain will factor into Brexit negotiations: 

It’s a measure of just how mad the world has gone that the craziest British election in decades is competing for room on Friday’s front pages. But the outcome is no less important for all that: The British left has been handed an unexpected opportunity to stop Brexit from turning into an unmitigated disaster. Sadly, it is unlikely to take advantage of it.

Six weeks ago, Theresa May enjoyed so commanding a lead in the polls that she gambled her political future on an early election in the expectation of winning a landslide victory. Asking for a clear mandate in Britain’s upcoming divorce negotiations with the European Union, she promised to provide “strong and stable leadership.”

Instead, May has suffered a humiliating setback. The Labour Party—led by Jeremy Corbyn, a leftist whose open admiration for Hamas and Hugo Chávez makes him a more natural ally to Jill Stein than to Bernie Sanders—did much better than expected. And while May will likely be able to stay in office thanks to some arrangement with the Democratic Unionist Party, or DUP, a small Northern Irish party, her Conservative Party no longer has a parliamentary majority of its own. With just 10 days to go until Brexit negotiations start, Britain has a deeply unstable government with no mandate. This throws the country into even greater confusion and uncertainty than it has faced over the past confusing and uncertain year.