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Indian
Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi, India, on May 23. (Atul
Loke/Getty Images)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his party won a landslide victory in the world’s
largest election as voters endorsed his vision of a muscular, assertive and
fundamentally Hindu India. The result represents a stunning vote of
confidence in Modi, a charismatic and polarizing politician who is part
of a crop of right-leaning populist leaders around the globe.
Official results showed Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP,
on track to win more seats than the 272 needed to form a majority. No Indian
prime minister has returned to power with a similar mandate in nearly five
decades. The size of Modi’s victory was unexpected, surpassing his party’s
winning performance in 2014.
Modi first swept to power five years ago on a desire for
change and a belief that he could transform this country of more than 1.3
billion people, unshackling the economy and creating millions of jobs. Such
expectations remain unfulfilled, and in this election, Modi instead pushed a
message of nationalist pride, telling voters that was the only candidate who
would safeguard the country’s security and fight terrorism.
Modi’s win is a victory for a form of religious nationalism
that views India — home to a diversity of faiths — as essentially a Hindu
nation and seeks to jettison the secularism promoted by the country’s
founders. The Post has continuing coverage of
the results' aftermath. Now on with the rest of the newsletter...
The farce of Britain’s European election
(Ben
Stansall/AFP/Getty)
The world’s second-largest exercise
in democracy — after India’s general election — got underway in Europe on
Thursday and will conclude by the end of the weekend. In
Britain, things were particularly
surreal. Voters there participated in an election that, in theory, they
were never supposed to have. But three years of unfinished, tortuous
wrangling over the terms of departure from the European Union meant Britain
had to once more go through the ritual of electing representatives for the
country in the European Parliament.
Because of this generally dysfunctional
state of affairs, the party expected to sweep the vote is the faction
hellbent on ensuring Britain never again elects European parliamentarians.
That would be the Brexit Party, formed this year and led by
Nigel Farage, an inveterate Euroskpetic, chum of President Trump and controversial beneficiary of
secret donations. Farage is a divisive figure — he was famously barracked by milkshake-lobbing
protesters ahead of the polls — who has harnessed popular disaffection
and fury at British Parliament’s inability to settle terms of divorce with
Brussels. His supporters, knitted together almost entirely by their desire to
quit Europe and end the political impasse over Brexit, may view Thursday’s
election as a chance to reassert their
demands. The Brexit Party is slated to secure a sizable victory,
potentially beating the combined vote for the Conservatives and Labour,
Britain’s two traditional heavyweights.
To be sure, European elections tend to be low-turnout affairs
in Britain that often boost parties on the ideological fringes. Smaller
parties that are explicitly against leaving the European Union may pick up a
solid number of votes, too. It’s also unclear what Farage may seek to achieve
on the back of his new party’s success. But it all adds to the mounting woes
of the Conservatives and their politically battered Prime Minister Theresa
May.
“For lifelong Tories, the idea of voting for another party is
anathema,” wrote John O’Sullivan,
editor-at-large at the right-wing National Review. “Most people who think
about it never actually get around to doing it. But the Tories have certainly
given their traditional supporters and those new supporters who voted
for them in order to achieve Brexit good reason to leave them on this
occasion. Many will do so this week. And as with adultery, betraying your
party for another is much easier the second time around.”
May’s departure from office is now a
matter of when, not if. Like a pantomime Sisyphus, she has
repeatedly attempted to get her Brexit agreement passed through Parliament,
subjecting her public and European officials to protracted rounds of
negotiations and fitful debates over “backstops” and customs unions. But she
has failed — on occasion, spectacularly so
— to win the necessary parliamentary support; and with each failure, she and
her dwindling group of allies kicked the can further down the road in the
hopes of scoring an illusory goal at a later date.
The latest — and possibly last — blow came this week after May
was compelled to shelve a new vote amid a cabinet backlash against her plans.
She may confirm a timeline for her departure as early as Friday. Reports on
Thursday indicated the prime minister would agree to a leadership contest
to pick her new successor within the Conservative Party beginning June
10. According to local news media,
May would be allowed to host President Trump during a state visit in the
first week of June before stepping aside.
As my colleagues report,
Farage’s success in the European elections may influence who seizes May’s
mantle next month. Marcus Roberts, international projects director at polling
firm YouGov, told The Washington Post that it could be good news in
particular for Boris Johnson, the former foreign secretary and prominent
Brexiteer. (Here’s a rundown of the top candidates
from my colleagues.)
“The longer [the Conservatives] fail to deliver Brexit, the
greater their need for self-flagellation becomes,” Roberts said, adding that
the party’s calculation going forward could be to say, “yes, we failed to
deliver Brexit, but to make up for that, we’re going to pick the most
Brexity-Brexiteer we can find.”
That presents its own
perils. Johnson, a buffoonish former London
mayor who has morphed into a figure almost as polarizing as Farage, could
revive the push to take Britain out of the European Union without a
transition deal with Brussels in place. The renewed prospect of a “no-deal”
Brexit, taking place by Oct. 31, would raise the same panic about
economic chaos and logistical havoc at Britain’s ports we saw earlier this
year.
There’s also the likelihood that Johnson or any other putative
successor to May will be inclined to call for fresh
elections to strengthen their hand. That may backfire — as the 2017 general election
did on May — and lead to a government led by the Labour Party whose
members are mostly opposed to Brexit and, in part, intent on staging a second
referendum. That’s an outcome that, whatever one’s view of Brexit, would only
add fuel to the fire of campaigners like Farage and deepen the political
polarization that’s already set in place.
Weary commentators argue that this is all a consequence of
Britain drinking from the poisoned chalice of the Brexit referendum. The
Leave camp sold voters on a bag of goods it could never actually deliver once
Britain locked itself in negotiations with the E.U.’s 27 other states over
the terms of its divorce. May, the steward of an ill-fated process, could
satisfy no one.
“Anyone who thinks decapitating the Government and starting
again will magically produce a solution, or a way out of this maze, is
indulging themselves in that most ancient of forlorn hopes: the idea that
this is a problem of personnel, not one of policy,” wrote Alex Massie, an editor
for the center-right Spectator. “It is not a lack of will that has
brought us to this broken place but, instead, the irrefutable logic of the
Brexit process itself. It is not being done well because it cannot be done
well.”
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