ABSTRACT
‘The 2019 election will be presented by future historians as the most consequential since the second world war’, so wrote professor Matthew Goodwin; few would deny his analysis. This election was made necessary by the failure of the 2017 election to provide Theresa May with the majority she craved. The Conservative campaign started badly but Labour’s decision not to target marginal seats in favour of wins nationwide faced internal criticism given the superior resources of the Tories. Tory critics added that, if Labour triumphed, another Union sundering referendum on independence would be granted the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) as shadow chancellor John McDonnell had already hinted. Tory Party members favoured Johnson because they loved his entertaining larger than life personality but, more especially, they thought he could ‘sort’ Brexit: ‘put Farage back in his box’ and defeat Corbyn electorally.
