-Boris Johnson's government won
an overwhelming majority
in the election
and it was quite a surprise.
They'll be able to push through
a lot of their plans for Brexit
and other policies,
and international policies.
And the period of rapid-fire
uncertainty
and lots of elections
does appear to be over,
for at least the time being.
-I want to thank the people
of this country
for turning out to vote
in a December election.
-This is the strongest
Conservative government
since the days
of Margaret Thatcher
and it's a little hard
to see how Labour comes back
from this in the near future.
It also means that Brexit
will happen,
pretty much dashes completely
the hopes of a second referendum
that could've reversed Brexit.
The UK will not have
another election until 2024,
so Boris Johnson
has a lot of time to try
and leave his mark
on the country.
Jeremy Corbyn's Labour
opposition party
lost a lot of seats.
Corbyn has now said that
he will be stepping down.
One of the biggest
surprises here
was how poorly Corbyn's
opposition did.
-I called for, last night,
a period of reflection
in the party
and, obviously,
the ruling body of the party,
our National Executive,
will decide what process
we follow, then,
for the election
of a successor to me.
But I'm quite prepared,
and I was elected to do so,
to lead the party
until that takes place.
-No one really thought Labour
was going to win a majority,
but they thought they might
be able to stop
the Conservatives
from getting majority.
There's gonna be a big sort
of postmortem
of exactly why
this happened.
Right now, there appears
to be two big factors:
one was just simply Corbyn
was not a popular leader.
His negative approval ratings
were really high.
And then, the sort of bigger
structural problem was that,
under him, the Labour Party
was never really able to work
out a way to deal with Brexit.
It eventually said that it would
agree to a second referendum,
but only after years of debate.
And, on the other hand,
Boris Johnson's Conservative
government,
they are able to
sort of simply say,
"We are the party
that will get Brexit done".
It looks almost certain,
now, that Boris Johnson
will be able to pass
his withdrawal agreement,
which will mean that Britain
will leave the EU
at the end of January.
There'll be a transition period.
Boris wants that transition
period to only last
until the end
of December 2020.
The idea is,
in that transition period,
Britain will work out, you know,
a trade deal with the EU.
The withdrawal agreement
is really only about
how Britain leaves the EU,
not what comes afterwards.
The big hurdle, going forward,
will be negotiating
a new trade deal with the EU.
The good thing for Boris is that
he's gonna have
a lot of flexibility there,
but he has given himself
quite a hard deadline
of the end of 2020
to work out a new deal.
In theory, if he doesn't
work out a deal,
then it would be
basically a no deal Brexit.
There would be crashing out
with World Trade Organization
rules on the borders.
You know, I don't see
any indication
that he would do that,
but, you know,
it is negotiations
over trade that are difficult.
So, counterintuitively, I think
there's probably,
quite a few people in the EU
who are relatively happy
of this result.
Not because they agree
with Boris Johnson
or they want Britain
out of the EU.
Britain leaving the EU
does weaken the EU.
But this was probably
the only result
that provided
a clear path forward
and, at least, now,
people can start planning
for an EU without Britain in it.
And something that's hung
over Europe,
all its trading relations for
the last three and a half years,
now, there's at least a light
at the end of the tunnel.
-Thank you all.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
