2019: How the ‘Brexit election’ was won

In what was often termed the second referendum on Brexit, the Conservatives delivered a substantial majority, but how did they do it? Robert Ford, Tim Bale, Will Jennings and Paula Surridge explain

The voters wanted Boris to ‘get Brexit done’ (Getty)

The 2019 general election delivered the first substantial Conservative majority since 1987. Boris Johnson joins the select group of half a dozen postwar prime ministers to have secured majorities of 75 seats or more at general elections. Only Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher in their pomp have won larger majorities in the past 50 years. A lot was at stake in the 2019 election, making this decisive outcome historically significant. The contest concluded three years of fraught argument over Britain’s withdrawal from the EU and provided a final opportunity for the British public to confirm or reject the referendum mandate delivered three years earlier.

By returning the first sizeable parliamentary majority for the Conservative Party in a generation, Britain’s voters ensured that their prime minister would indeed “get Brexit done” and thus set the country on a new path. But the election’s implications stretched beyond the high politics of Brexit negotiations. The Conservatives’ new majority was the culmination of an unprecedented two-decade advance, one which had reshaped the party’s electoral coalition. The Conservative Party has increased its vote in every election since 1997, including three elections in a row as the incumbent government, a feat unmatched in modern political history.

By the time Johnson entered Downing Street in July 2019, Brexit had already ended the political careers of two prime ministers. Defeat in the 2016 referendum was the end of David Cameron, who tried and failed to reform and renew the status quo. The process of finding the exit overwhelmed Cameron’s successor, Theresa May, who first failed to secure the large Commons majority she deemed necessary to complete the Brexit process, then failed to adapt to the resulting more constrained political context.