Britain has been rocked by eight major electoral contests in the last nine years. Four general elections, two referendums on Scotland’s independence and European Union membership and two sets of European Parliament elections have pushed one of the world’s oldest and historically most stable democracies into a period of churn and change. …
Britons’ anxieties about the pace and scale of immigration, something that Mr. Johnson pledged to restrict, lie at the heart of Britain’s political realignment; many voters are now putting their cultural preferences ahead of their once-tribal party political identities. CONT.
Matthew Goodwin (U. of Kent) & Eric Kaufmann (Birkbeck U.), New York Times