Here comes the Brexit election

A FORTNIGHT BEFOREMP Christmas, winter fêtes and school nativity plays will be put on hold as village halls are once again converted into polling stations. Britain faces its third general election in little more than four years, a result of the fact that today’s s cannot agree on how to leave the European Union—or even whether to leave at all. Boris Johnson, the Conservative prime minister, promises that with a majority he will “get Brexit done”. Jeremy Corbyn, his Labour rival, proposes a second referendum, with the option to call the whole thing off.That alone would represent a momentous choice. Yet in what is being billed as the Brexit election, more is at stake than Britain’s relationship with Europe. The far-left Mr Corbyn promises to put the state at the heart of the economy, whereas Mr Johnson’s Tories seem to be moving towards a more freewheeling form of capitalism. At the same time, both potential prime ministers would pick at the ties between the nations of the United Kingdom. Britain’s Christmas contest is its most important in living memory. And with volatile polls, upstart parties and new ideological axes that define voters, it is the least predictable, too.