The GPM Global Forecast is a bi-weekly, members-only article series for 2016. It provides analysis and short-term forecasting on key military, political, and economic events around the globe. 

 

 

UK Political Landscape in Upheaval

The result of the Brexit vote has turned the world of UK politics upside down. Gone is David Cameron, a prime minister who will now go down in history as having bet his entire legacy on a vote that he assumed he could not lose. His effort to placate Conservative Party euroskeptics and unite his party behind him backfired in a monumental way. And now the history of the island he ruled will be altered for better or worse.

But it’s not just the prime minister falling on his sword that’s shaking up the political landscape. Labour too is in upheaval, as several members of Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet have resigned in protest against their leader’s apparent lack of enthusiasm in the Remain campaign (a lack of enthusiasm that was manifest in a series of leaked emails from the Corbyn camp that are making their rounds in the UK media). Here we now have the prospect of a ‘Jexit.’ The mutineers’ logic is that whoever the new Conservative leader is, they’re likely to call an election and snatch up another majority mandate from Labour while it’s still disorganized and headed by the ‘extreme’ figure of Corbyn. For his part, much like the original leadership campaign that installed him as the head of the party, Corbyn has pledged to stay on and fight the rebellion from his own MPs head-on.