He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber, to the lascivious pleasing of a lute
As someone who adores Shakespeare it has always been a source of glee that the winter of (our) discontent features so heavily in the lexicon of British political discourse. The winter of discontent was responsible for the most important post war inflexion point in this country’s politics, the premiership of Margaret Thatcher and eighteen years of Conservative rule.
In late 1978 Labour led in the polls and Jim Callaghan was preferred to Margaret Thatcher on the best PM question then the winter of discontent happened. Much like how Black Friday destroyed the reputation of the Conservatives and ensured the Conservatives didn’t win a general election for another eighteen years the winter of discontent did the same for Labour. Even at the 1992 and 1997 general elections the Conservatives kept on mentioning the winter of discontent.
As we can see in the above tweet YouGov finding more and more people are experiencing food shortages in this country and there might be an electoral price for Boris Johnson. Now this isn’t all solely down to Brexit, for example the HGV driver shortage existed long before Brexit and Covid-19 hasn’t helped it is clear that Brexit has made a bad situation worse.
Just like 1978/79 there’s problems with the bins not being collected and with news that ‘Marks & Spencer has held an emergency meeting with 40 of its top European food suppliers amid fears EU member states and the UK are not ready for the introduction of stringent border controls within a month. New restrictions being introduced from October 1 are expected to disrupt imports from the EU – the source of a quarter of Britain’s food…..The nightmare bedding in the Northern Ireland Protocol could be dwarfed by chaos of importing goods from EU when full force of restrictions is imposed.’ The mixture of the optics could look horrible for Boris Johnson and the government especially if it turns our European neighbours don’t have these problems.
Whilst I’m not predicting a 1978 winter of discontent moment it is possible we do see short term polling shocks. Back in 2000 the only time Labour fell behind in the polls in that parliament was when there was the fuel protests. But Boris Johnson needs to be careful and make sure he doesn’t allow a narrative that he prioritises Brexit over food supplies to become received wisdom.
TSE