You might not expect the 2015 British national election to offer many useful lessons for our next presidential race. But editors of The New York Post believe at least one candidate ought to pay attention to the results across the pond.
For weeks, as the UK’s general election approached, polls had the Conservative and Labor parties in a too-close-to-call race, even headed to a “hung Parliament” where neither had enough votes to form a government.
Yet, when all the votes were counted Thursday night, the Conservatives had a clear (if narrow) majority — better than they’d done last time out.
Labor — after a hard left turn that repudiated its mid-’90s resurgence under then-Prime Minister Tony Blair — lost 26 seats and was virtually wiped out in Scotland.
This should be a warning for Clinton, who has herself shifted left on crime, immigration and even “income inequality” — i.e., class warfare.
Clinton has been reinventing herself to please the polls for decades. Now her pollsters have plainly told her the voters want something well to the left of the New Democrats Bill Clinton led two decades ago (which, in fact, inspired Blair’s New Labor).
Beware, Hillary. Polling has been overinflating the left’s strength in recent contests around the globe, from last year’s US midterms to this year’s Israeli voting to, now, the UK general election.
Indeed, the right’s been on the rise across the English-speaking world, from Australia to Canada to India and now Britain.
The class-warfare stuff, in particular, seems a hard sell.
Nor did Labor’s leader have a history of scandal.
