Las elecciones en Reino Unido en 5 artículos.... según Alma Agustí

Elecciones sobre todo menos Brexit, The Economist, 1/6/17

WHEN Theresa May called the election in April, she said getting the best deal for Britain when it leaves the European Union was the central issue. After a wobbly fortnight she tried again this week to focus on Brexit, saying that if Jeremy Corbyn replaced her he would be "alone and naked in the negotiating chamber". Yet although Brexit is the biggest challenge for the country, it has played a relatively minor role in the campaign.

Yet five weeks on, these efforts are not bearing much fruit. This is not because Brexit has no electoral impact. It is clearly behind the near-total collapse of the UK Independence Party, a big boost for Mrs May. It is helping to lure working-class voters from Labour to the Tories (see Bagehot). And paradoxically it may be weakening the vociferously anti-Brexit Liberal Democrats. Their attempt to woo the 48% who voted Remain seems to have misfired, partly because polls find that as many as half of them are reconciled to Brexit.

But at the level of individual constituencies the effect of the referendum is harder to detect. Consider the four Tory constituencies in south Buckinghamshire. Two are held by Leavers in Remain-voting seats and two by Remainers in Leave-voting ones. All four were targeted by lobbyists, yet none seems in danger of losing. In the West Midlands, where a clutch of proRemain Labour MPs are fighting to retain Leave-voting seats, one reports that the issue of Brexit seldom comes up when she is canvassing. The same seems to be true in the south-west, where Lib Dem dreams of making big gains have largely evaporated.

La caída de los Liberal demócratas, Jessica Elgot, The Guardian, 6/6/17

"The problem they’ve had throughout the campaign is they have wanted Britain to realign along Brexit lines," Joe Twyman, YouGov’s head of political and social research said. "But there are a significant proportion of remainers who think the result should be respected – so it’s now two-thirds who think it’s right we should leave."

Clegg said the main parties both wanted to divert discussions away from the minutiae of Brexit. "May is just talking about herself ... Corbyn is talking about everything else but Brexit," he said. "It’s not easy for anyone to disrupt that when the two larger battalions lock horns on turf which suits them and doesn’t suit anybody else. I really hope people, particularly Guardian readers, understand what is going on."

Causas de la subida de Corbyn, Berta Barbet, Politikon, 29/5/17

Las lecturas sobre las posibles causas de la recuperación del partido de Corbyn en las encuestas no se han hecho esperar y, para variar, cada cuál ha intentado barrer para su casa. Como de costumbre en el debate político, el foco se ha puesto en causas coyunturales y eventos concretos como una supuesta recuperación de la capacidad de liderazgo de Corbyn o un error grave de la campaña de May con el programa electoral.  Se han obviando las dinámicas más estructurales de todas las campañas electorales como la movilización de los electorados desmovilizados y coordinación del voto útil.

Aunque entre los votantes laboristas es ligeramente más baja, la UE parece ser el tema de estas elecciones y, como tal, esta estructurando el voto de una parte importante de ciudadanos. Habrá que ver como se reparten estos votantes por circunscripciones y como se transforman en diputados, pero parece que, como era previsible, la campaña ha permitido estructurar de algún modo una oposición a la estrategia de May por el lado del europeísmo, seguramente no sea suficiente como para parar su mayoría, pero sí para recortar las enormes distancias que separaban a laboristas y conservadores en abril.

Los nuevos "bastardos", Simon Jenkins, The Guardian, 9/6/17 The new Tory "bastards". Never take the electors for granted. Never believe what they tell pollsters. They have left Theresa May’s government clinging to office, devastated and in disarray. They have left Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour opposition defeated yet cock-a-hoop. Scottish nationalism has been dealt a blow. The Liberal Democrats have failed to recover. Ukip has been demolished. Most alarming, de facto power has been handed to a small band of Ulster fundamentalists. It is hard to recall a more chaotic election result in recent British history. Meanwhile it is likely that in coming months a "remainist" or perhaps "softest" fifth column will open up across parliament and among the lobbyists. The collapse of Ukip and the probable increase in emboldened remain MPs clearly undermines whatever May’s "hard Brexit" stance was meant to achieve. In the Commons there should now be a majority behind Corbyn’s view, that no deal is worse than a soft deal.

Conclusion, Laura Kuenssberg, BBC, 7/6/2017

The results are not based on what the pollsters say, nor entirely on what happens in the rough and tumble of election campaigns, nor what any journalist or pundit says. Nor is the outcome in a time of political volatility predictable in any traditional sense.

So, anyone now making guesses about the final outcome of the election is doing just that, guessing, even if those guesses are of the most informed kind.

With those caveats in mind though, we have spent the last few weeks travelling the country with political leaders, talking to voters, and also talking to dozens of candidates who have been on the doorstep trying to secure the vote for their parties. And it is worth exploring the broad conclusions that many of them share.

Alma Agustí es Graduada en Ciencias Políticas por la Universidad Pompeu Fabra. Máster en Political Science and Political Economy en la London School of Economics y Becaria de "la Caixa"