West European Politics

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The end of the EU affair: the UK general election of

2019

Christopher Prosser

To cite this article: Christopher Prosser (2021) The end of the EU affair: the UK general election of
2019, West European Politics, 44:2, 450-461, DOI: 10.1080/01402382.2020.1773640

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WEST EUROPEAN POLITICS
2021, VOL. 44, NO. 2, 450–461
https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2020.1773640

ELECTIONS IN CONTEXT

The end of the EU affair: the UK general

election of 2019
Christopher Prosser
Department of Politics, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

ABSTRACT
The UK election of 12th December 2019 – the third election in five years and
the second snap election in a row – returned a Conservative majority govern-
ment led by Boris Johnson and the lowest number of Labour MPs since 1935.
Three-and-a-half years after the 2016 referendum, the government finally had
sufficient parliamentary support for Brexit, and at the end of January 2020
the UK left the European Union. The result of the election can largely be
explained by the continuing importance of Brexit. The previous election, held
in 2017, had seen an increase in party sorting along Brexit lines – Leavers
had shifted towards the Conservatives, whilst Remainers shifted towards
Labour. The 2019 election saw a continuation of that process on the Leave
side, as the Conservatives continued to win over Leavers, but a slight reversal
on the Remain side, with some Remainers abandoning Labour for more
avowedly pro-EU parties such as the Liberal Democrats.

KEYWORDS United Kingdom; Conservative Party; Labour Party; parliamentary election; Brexit

After three elections in a row that failed to deliver a stable majority, the
UK General Election of 12th December 2019 saw a return to the ‘normal’
functioning of British democracy, with one party – in this case, the
Conservatives – winning a clear majority of seats.1 An election had not
been due until 2022, but three months after becoming Prime Minister –
and faced with intractable divisions in parliament over Brexit – Boris
Johnson called an early election, the third British election in five years
and the second ‘snap’ election in a row.
The Conservative victory, when it arrived, was even more decisive in
terms of seats than had been anticipated, with the Conservatives winning
365 seats – a majority of 80. The political consequences of this outcome
were immediately apparent: the government had sufficient support in

CONTACT Christopher Prosser chris.prosser@manchester.ac.uk

This article has been republished with a minor change. This change does not impact the academic
content of the article.
ß 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
 WEST EUROPEAN POLITICS 451

parliament to pursue its Brexit policy. On 31st January 2020 – 50 days

after the election – the UK left the European Union.

Background to the election

Three years after the 2016 referendum that had resulted in a vote to leave the
EU, Brexit continued to dominate British politics. After failing in her bid to
secure a Conservative majority at the June 2017 General Election (see Prosser
2018), Theresa May continued in government thanks to a confidence and
supply agreement with the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party
(DUP), and set about trying to secure support for her Brexit policy.
After much political wrangling and a landmark judicial decision about
the role of parliament in the Brexit process (R (Miller) v Secretary of State
for Exiting the European Union), the government conceded some control
over Brexit to parliament, promising them a ‘meaningful vote’ on the
withdrawal agreement, and establishing what would happen in the event
parliament voted against the government’s deal (see Caird et al. 2019 for
an overview). That parliament would vote against the withdrawal agree-
ment seemed increasingly likely. The opposition parties were opposed to
Brexit, or at least, to the form of Brexit offered by the government, and
the Conservatives were split on how to proceed. Amongst Eurosceptic
Conservatives the main points of contention were proposals that the UK
would continue to accept EU rules and pay into the EU budget during
the transition period, and provisions related to the ‘Irish backstop’.
The negotiations between the UK and the EU concluded in November
2018, and the government’s showdown with parliament began. The first mean-
ingful vote was held on 15th January 2019 and the government was defeated by
432 votes to 202 – the largest House of Commons loss of any British govern-
ment in modern history (Edington 2019) – with 196 Conservative MPs voting
with the government and 118 voting against. After further political manoeu-
vring and a second failed meaningful vote, the government was forced to seek
an extension to Article 50, which the EU granted, either to 12th April if a no
deal Brexit was agreed by the UK or 22nd May if a deal was agreed.
Parliament then held a series of ‘indicative votes’ on how to proceed.
The options on the table ranged from a second referendum, to member-
ship of the European Free Trade Association or various forms of no deal
Brexit. All of these proposals failed. The government then tried – and
failed – a third time to get its withdrawal agreement through parliament,
and was then forced to seek a further extension to Article 50, this time
until 31st October 2019. As a consequence of this extension, the UK
would have to hold European Parliament (EP) elections, which were
scheduled to take place on 23rd May.
452 C. PROSSER

Meanwhile, the Labour Party was having problems of its own. As they
had been since the referendum, Labour was pulled in multiple directions
over Brexit. Amongst Labour’s traditional base and in many seats with
Labour MPs there was strong support for Brexit. However, the vast
majority of people who had actually voted Labour in recent elections sup-
ported Remain. In response to this dilemma Labour maintained an
ambiguous position – criticising the government’s withdrawal deal and
trying to push for another election (and not ruling out a second referen-
dum if they could not get an election) but doing their best to avoid saying
whether they thought Britain should actually stay in the EU.
On top of this, after a brief pause in hostilities following the 2017 elec-
tion, the internal conflict that had dogged the Labour Party during
Corbyn’s leadership resumed, in particular over the issue of antisemitism.
Many of those on the left of the Labour Party – including Corbyn himself
– have long faced accusations of antisemitism, with critics arguing that
their hostility to the state of Israel veered into antipathy towards Jewish
people themselves. The furore over these problems reached a high point
in 2018 over criticisms of Labour’s internal disciplinary procedures that
dealt with accusations of antisemitism and the decision to remove several
portions of the the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance
(IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism related to Israel from the
Labour code of conduct.
Dissatisfaction with Corbyn’s leadership, particularly over the issues of
Brexit and antisemitism, led to the resignation of eight Labour MPs in
February 2019. They were joined shortly thereafter by three pro-EU
Conservative MPs to form the ill-fated new party ‘Change UK – The
Independent Group’ (later ‘The Independent Group for Change’). After
an initial flurry of excitement, the group struggled for attention and sup-
port, and fell into internal conflict. Six of the party’s 11 MPs would later
leave the party, with three joining the Liberal Democrats.
Things were not going smoothly on the other side of the Brexit divide
either. After the 2016 EU referendum, and with their central issue
adopted by the Conservative Party, the UK Independence Party (UKIP)
struggled for electoral air and was riven by infighting. In 2018 dissatisfac-
tion with the leadership of Gerard Batten, who had pushed UKIP towards
the far right, led to the resignation of UKIP’s former leader Nigel Farage
and many other MEPs and party officials. By April 2019, 20 of the 24
UKIP MEPs elected in 2014 had left the party.
In January 2019 the formation of the Brexit Party was announced, with
many of those who had left UKIP – including Farage himself – joining
the new party. Initially led by the relatively unknown Catherine Blaiklock,
the party was re-launched in April, following the further extension to
 WEST EUROPEAN POLITICS 453

Article 50 and the likely participation of the UK in the EP elections, and

Farage took over as leader.
The results of the EP elections sent a shockwave through British polit-
ics. The launch of the Brexit Party created an obvious outlet for increas-
ing public frustration with the government’s handling of Brexit amongst
Leave supporters, and the Brexit Party finished in first place, with 30.5%
of the vote. On the Remain side, the avowedly pro-EU Liberal Democrats
suddenly surged as Remain supporters defected from other parties and
they finished in second with 19.6% if the vote. Labour finished in third
place, with 13.6% of the vote – their lowest share of the vote in a UK
wide election since 1910. The Greens finished in fourth place, with 11.8%
of the vote, more than double their 2014 share. The Conservatives fin-
ished in fifth place on 8.8% – the worst performance in a UK wide elec-
tion in the entire history of the Conservative Party, and 14.3 points worse
than their previous low (23.1% in the 2014 EP elections).
The day after the election Theresa May announced her resignation as
leader of the Conservative Party. The subsequent leadership election was
won by Boris Johnson, the former Mayor of London and Foreign
Secretary, and a key figure in the Vote Leave campaign during the refer-
endum, who became Prime Minister on 24th July.
In his first speech as Prime Minister, Johnson promised that the UK
would leave the EU on 31st October, with or without a deal, and adopted a
more confrontational approach to getting Brexit through parliament,
announcing a few weeks later that he had asked the Queen to prorogue par-
liament for five weeks from 10th September, a move that was widely inter-
preted as a means of circumventing parliamentary opposition to Brexit.
However, parliament still had time to frustrate Johnson’s plans. The
Labour MP Hilary Benn presented a Bill that would require the govern-
ment to get parliamentary approval for either its withdrawal agreement or
a no-deal Brexit, and if it did not, to seek a further extension to Article
50. Twenty-one Conservative MPs voted against the government on a
motion for an emergency debate on the Bill, and as result, were stripped
of the Conservative whip and de-selected as Conservative candidates. The
Benn Bill then passed 329 to 300.
The Conservative had now lost their working majority in the House of
Commons, and Johnson announced his intention to seek an early elec-
tion. However, the opposition parties declared that they would not sup-
port an early election until a no-deal Brexit on 31st October had been
avoided, and the government failed to reach the two-thirds majority
required under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act. On 9th September the
Benn Bill received royal assent, and a further attempt to call an early elec-
tion failed to reach a two-thirds majority.
454 C. PROSSER

Parliament was then prorogued, but this would not last for long. The
prorogation of parliament faced legal challenge (R (Miller) v The Prime
Minister and Cherry v Advocate General for Scotland) and on September
24th the Supreme Court ruled that the prorogation was unlawful, and par-
liament resumed sitting.
On 17th October, the UK and the EU finished negotiations on a revised
withdrawal agreement. The revised agreement was largely the same as
that previously negotiated by Theresa May, but included alternative provi-
sions relating to the Northern Ireland and minor alterations to the polit-
ical declaration. The government again faced opposition from parliament,
losing a vote that forced them to seek a further extension to Article 50,
which was granted until 31st January 2020. A third bid to call an election
under the fixed-term parliament act also failed before the government
finally achieved this aim on 29th October by circumventing the two-thirds
majority requirement though the passage of a new piece of legislation.
The election was set for 12th December 2019, the first winter election in
the UK since 1974 and first December election since 1923.

The campaign
In many ways, the election campaign was simply a continuation of the
previous two years of Brexit politics. The Conservatives made Brexit
the central issue of their agenda, promising to ‘Get Brexit Done’, whilst
the Liberal Democrats wanted to ‘Stop Brexit’. Labour meanwhile contin-
ued to try and fight a different battle, downplaying Brexit and arguing
instead that it was ‘Time for Real Change’. Brexit dominated voters’ con-
cerns, with 53% of respondents in the pre-campaign wave of the British
Election Study Internet Panel mentioning the word ‘Brexit’ as part of
their responses to a question about the most important issue facing the
country (Fieldhouse et al. 2020b).
As the campaign got underway the Conservatives had a commanding
lead in the polls over Labour (an average lead of 10 points in the polls
published in the first week of the campaign). The polls also suggested
that Britain might return to a more fragmented party system, with the
Liberal Democrats polling between 15 and 17 points in the first week, the
Brexit Party polling between 6 and 11 points, and the Greens reaching as
high as 7 points in one poll.
As the campaign progressed, however, the realities of Britain’s first-
past-the-post electoral system began to bite. Support for the Brexit Party
had already begun to erode after Johnson became Prime Minister, but
during the campaign the Brexit Party’s support plummeted as it dawned
on voters that splitting the Leave vote would increase the chance of a
 WEST EUROPEAN POLITICS 455

pro-EU candidate winning their constituency. The Brexit Party soon

reached the same conclusion, unilaterally deciding that it would not field
candidates against incumbent Conservative MPs.
On the Remain side, support for the Liberal Democrats began to drop,
as voters realised that in many constituencies the Liberal Democrats had
little chance of winning. In an attempt to shore up the Remain vote, the
Liberal Democrats, the Green Party, and Plaid Cymru announced a ‘Unite
to Remain’ electoral pact, with each party agreeing to stand aside in 60
constituencies where one of the other parties was best placed to win.
As the Brexit Party and the Liberal Democrats began to slide in the
polls, the Conservatives and Labour both steadily increased their support
in parallel to one anther – with each finishing about ten points higher
than they had started the campaign.

The results
Once again, when the results arrived on election night, they came as a
shock – the Conservatives had won a large majority in parliament.
Although the final election polls had been fairly accurate in terms of vote
shares, most forecasts had drastically underestimated the scale of the
Conservative victory in terms of seats. The Conservatives won 43.6% of the
vote (an increase of 1.3 points) and 365 seats (an increase of 48), giving
them a majority of 80 seats in the House of Commons. 2019 was the sixth
election in a row at which the Conservatives increased their share of the
vote and the third time they had done so as the incumbent government.
Labour received 32.1% of the vote, 7.9 points down on their 2017
share, and 202 seats, 60 fewer than 2017. In terms of vote share, Labour’s
performance was better than their performances at the 2010 and 2015
elections (29.1% and 30.5% respectively). In terms of seats, however, 2019
was the worst Labour performance since 1935 (when they had won 154).
Particularly notable were the loss of a large number of so-called ‘red wall’
Labour seats in former industrial areas in the Midlands and Northern
England that had previously returned Labour MPs for many decades. The
day after the election, Jeremy Corbyn announced his resignation. The
subsequent Labour leadership election was won by Keir Starmer in what
was widely interpreted as a repudiation of the Corbyn project.
The Liberal Democrats increased their share of the vote by 4.2 points
to 11.6% but only won 11 seats, down one on their 2017 total, but down
ten from the 21 seats they had held when the election was called because
of defections from other parties. These losses included the party leader, Jo
Swinson, and all of the MPs who had defected to the party since the pre-
vious election.
456 C. PROSSER

The Green Party won 2.7% of the vote, up 1.1 point from 2017 and
retained their single MP, Caroline Lucas.
The Brexit Party won 2% of the vote and no seats.
In Scotland, the Scottish National Party won 45% of the Scottish vote
(3.9% of the UK vote) and 48 of the 59 Scottish seats, up 8.1 points and
13 seats from 2017. Scotland also saw a different pattern of Conservative
support to England and Wales, with the Conservatives share of the vote
dropping by 3.5 points.
In Wales, Plaid Cymru won 9.9% of the Welsh vote (0.5% of the UK
vote), down 0.5 on 2017 but retaining their four seats.
In Northern Ireland, the DUP received 30.6% of the Northern Irish
vote and eight seats, down 5.4 points and two seats on 2017. Sinn Fein,
who do not take their seats at Westminster, won 22.8% of the vote, down
6.7 points but retaining their claim to seven seats. The Social Democratic
and Labour Party (SDLP) won 14.9% of the vote and two seats, up 3.1%
and two seats from 2017. Alliance won 16.8% of the vote and one seat,
up 8.8 points and one seat from 2017. The Ulster Unionist Party won
11.7% of the vote (up 1.4 points) and no seats.
The 2019 election was unusual for the number of incumbent MPs (18)
standing as independents after having left (or been kicked out of) their
parties or standing for different parties (and sometimes in different con-
stituencies) to that which they had been elected in 2017. Ultimately how-
ever, none of these candidates were successful.
The official turnout was 67.3%, down 1.4 points from 2017, but con-
siderably higher than the calamitous drop that many had predicted would
happen because of a winter election and Brexit fatigue.2
The 2019 election saw a slight uptick in party system fragmentation,
with the effective number of electoral parties up 0.3 to 3.2 – considerably
lower than the peak levels of fragmentation that took place in 2015 (3.9),
but in line with levels that occurred in 1997 (3.2) and 2001 (3.3).
The results are shown in full in Table 1.
In substantive terms, the result of the election meant that the
Conservatives were returned to government with a secure majority for
their Brexit policy. After three and half years of political wrangling, the
government was finally in position to enact its Brexit policy, and its
Withdrawal Bill passed 359 to 234. The UK left the EU on 31st
January 2020.

Discussion and conclusion: the second Brexit election

The 2016 EU referendum was a profound shock to electoral competition
in Britain (Fieldhouse et al. 2020a). ‘Second dimension’ issues such as
 WEST EUROPEAN POLITICS 457

Table 1. Elections to the UK’s House of Commons on 12 December 2019.

2019 2017
Seats Votes Votes (%) Seats Votes Votes (%)
Conservatives 365 13,966,454 43.6 317 13,636,684 42.3
Labour 202 10,269,051 32.1 262 12,877,858 40
Liberal Democrats 11 3,696,419 11.6 12 2,371,861 7.4
Scottish National Partya 48 1,242,380 3.9 35 977,568 3
Green Party 1 865,715 2.7 1 525,655 1.6
Brexit Party – 644,257 2
Democratic Unionist Partyb 8 244,128 0.8 10 292,316 0.9
Sinn Feinb 7 181,853 0.6 7 238,915 0.7
Plaid Cymruc 4 153,265 0.5 4 164,466 0.5
Allianceb 1 134,115 0.4
Social Democratic & Labour Partyb 2 118,737 0.4 – 95,419 0.3
Ulster Unionist Partyb – 93,123 0.3 – 83,280 0.3
Othersd 1 404,613 1.3 2 346,034 1.1
Total 650 32,014,110 100 650 32,204,124 100
Turnout 67.3 68.7
Notes: aOnly contested seats in Scotland.
b
Only contested seats in Northern Ireland.
c
Only contested seats in Wales.
d
Includes the Speaker of the House of Commons.
Sources: House of Commons Library (2017, 2019).

European integration have long played an important role in determining

vote choice in Britain. Before the referendum the effect of these issues
was to drive party system fragmentation, whilst vote choice between the
Conservatives and Labour remained largely driven by traditional eco-
nomic left–right concerns. After the referendum this changed. With
European integration now the central issue of British politics, it drove
voters back to the two major parties, and structured vote choice
between them.
Between 2015 and 2017 voters on both sides of the Brexit divide began
to sort themselves into the two major parties. According to the British
Election Study Internet Panel (BESIP) data shown in Figure 1, 44% of
Leave voters had voted Conservative in 2015. In 2017, this proportion
increased to 64%. Amongst Remainers, 41% had voted Labour in 2015,
whilst 55% did so in 2017.
The 2019 election can be understood as a continuation of this sorting
process on the Leave side, and a reversal on the Remain side, as shown in
Figure 1. Amongst Leave voters, 73% supported the Conservatives in
2019, with the bulk of these new recruits coming from Labour. On the
Remain side, support for Labour dropped to 50%, with the main benefi-
ciaries being the Liberal Democrats, who increased their share of Remain
voters from 12% in 2017 to 21% in 2019.
Although Brexit was clearly important to vote choice, two related fac-
tors do not seem to have been. First, it is difficult to square a valence
reward-punishment model of elections with voters’ assessment of the
458 C. PROSSER

Figure 1. Proportion of leave and remain voters in the 2016 EU Referendum voting
Conservative (CON), Labour (LAB), Liberal Democrat (LD), or some other party in 2015,
2017, and 2019 amongst those who voted in both the referendum and each election.
Source: Fieldhouse et al. (2020b).
Note: colour online.

government’s handling of Brexit. Before the 2017 election, 35% of BESIP

respondents thought the government was handling to process of leaving
the EU fairly or very well, whilst 38% though they were handling it fairly
or very badly. In 2019, only 10% thought the government was handling
things well, whilst 78% thought the government was handling things
badly.3 Second, although electoral pacts received a great deal of media
attention during the campaign, preliminary analysis suggests that neither
the Brexit Party’s decision to stand aside in Conservative-held seats, nor
the Unite to Remain pact had a noticeable impact on the results
(Mellon 2020).
Of course, Brexit was not the whole story of the 2019 election. As it
had in 2017, leadership – in particular the relative unpopularity of
Corbyn – also played an important role. Leadership ratings bundle a
whole range of considerations – from issue positions, to valence judg-
ments and more intangible qualities like charisma – and so it is difficult
to say exactly why Corbyn was so much less popular in 2019 than 2017,
but it is abundantly clear that he was, and that this had deleterious conse-
quences for Labour’s vote.4 In 2017, Corbyn had been an asset for the
Labour party, bringing in voters from both sides of the Brexit divide
(Mellon et al. 2018). In 2019, the opposite was true, with dislike for
Corbyn driving Leave voters towards the Conservatives and Remain vot-
ers towards the Liberal Democrats and Greens. In the media, much was
 WEST EUROPEAN POLITICS 459

made of Johnson’s apparent popularity, but on average BESIP respondents

actually rated May more favourably than Johnson. This overall average
conceals, however, that opinions about Johnson largely aligned with the
Brexit divide rather than cut across it – amongst Remainers May was
more popular than Johnson, whilst amongst Leavers Johnson was more
popular than May.5
Brexit fundamentally reshaped the nature of electoral competition at
the last two British elections. Whether, and how, Brexit will continue to
shape voting behaviour in the UK now that Britain has officially left the
EU is impossible to say. One possibility is that, with Brexit receding into
the background, British politics will revert to previous patterns of elect-
oral competition. Another is that social identities related to Brexit will
continue to structure political attitudes, and future elections will see the
same battle fought all over again. A third is that economic and social
changes brought about because of Brexit will push new divides to the
fore. The nature of the UK’s relationship with the EU once the transition
period ends is still unknown, and how any future costs and benefits of
Brexit will map onto party competition is unclear.
At the time of writing, Britain and the world are being ravaged by the
COVID-19 pandemic. The ultimate cost of the pandemic, both in terms
of human lives and economic downturn, remain to be seen. The scale of
these costs, and how voters perceive the government’s handling of the
pandemic, and the economic downturn that is likely to follow, are all
likely to feature in political debate. Exactly how the pandemic will affect
voting behaviour is uncertain, but the lesson we should take from the last
three elections in the UK is that political shocks can fundamentally alter
the nature electoral competition.

Notes
1. Other recent reports in the Elections in Context series include Kosiara-Pedersen
(2020), Fernandes and Magalhaes (2020) and Rodon (2020). The 2010 election
resulted in the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government (see Quinn
2011), the 2015 election resulted in a small Conservative majority of 12 seats
(see Green and Prosser 2016), whilst the 2017 election resulted in a minority
Conservative government (see Prosser 2018).
2. The denominator used in official UK turnout measures is the number of
entries on the electoral register, which has several problems: not everyone
who is eligible to vote is on the electoral register, some people are legally
allowed to register in more than one place (but are only eligible to vote in
one of the places they are registered), and there are a large number of
inaccurate entries on the register (Mellon et al. 2020).
3. Although there was still a Leave and Remain gradient to these views, this was
one of the few things that the majority of Leavers and Remainers seemed to
460 C. PROSSER

agree on, with 68% of Leavers saying the government was handling things
badly and 87% of Remainers saying the same thing.
4. In the final week of the 2017 campaign, the mean rating of Corbyn on a
0–10 like scale was 4.4 (5.6 amongst Remainers and 3 amongst Leavers). In
the final week of the 2019 campaign, Corbyn’s mean rating was 3.1 (4.5
amongst Remainers and 1.6 amongst Leavers).
5. In the final week of the 2017 campaign, the mean rating of May on a 0–10
like was 4.4 (3.3 amongst Remainers and 5.7 amongst Leavers). In the final
week of the 2019 campaign, Johnson’s mean rating was 4 (2 amongst
Remainers and 6.2 amongst Leavers).

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor
Dr Christopher Prosser is Presidential Fellow in the Department of Politics,
University of Manchester and co-investigator of the British Election Study (BES).
His research focuses on political behaviour and party competition in Britain and
Europe, EU referendums, and survey research methodology. Together with his
BES colleagues, he recently published Electoral shocks: the volatile voter in a tur-
bulent world (Oxford University Press, 2020), which examines voting behaviour at
recent British elections. His research is published or forthcoming in Journal of
Politics, Electoral Studies, European Union Politics, Parliamentary Affairs, Political
Studies, Public Opinion Quarterly, Research and Politics, and West European
Politics. [chris.prosser@manchester.ac.uk]

ORCID
Christopher Prosser http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2992-8190

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