In what has been dubbed a ‘loveless landslide’ and ‘meh-jority’, Sir Keir Starmer has entered Downing Street following an election that delivered the most distorted outcome in British electoral history. Starmer’s Labour won just 33.8% of the vote, far less than Jeremy Corbyn’s 40% when he lost to Theresa May in 2017 and just 1.7% up on Corbyn’s 2019 loss to Boris Johnson. Despite winning just a third of the popular vote on the second lowest turnout since the arrival of universal suffrage at 59.9%, Starmer secured 412 seats – 63.4% of the total – for a majority of 174. It means just 20% of eligible voters – one in five – cast a ballot for the party that now controls nearly two thirds of Parliament and can make laws with little opposition.
According to the Telegraph, the 30 point gap between the popular vote and seat share makes this “the most skewed result ever, far outpacing the previous 22 point gap recorded in 2001 under Tony Blair”.
It means Labour received over 500,000 fewer votes than Corbyn in 2019 but managed to pick up more than 200 additional seats.
The Conservatives’ vote share plummeted by 19.9 points to 23.7%, earning the party 121 seats, just 18.6% of the total.
Reform garnered 4.1 million votes with 14.2% – not far off half Labour’s tally – but won just five seats.
The distortion is clear when you look at votes per seat, depicted below, with Reform needing around 800,000 votes per seat, 34 times the 24,000 Labour required.
The Right was particularly hobbled by the non-proportional voting system this time round, as shown below.
Note that the above charts seems to show the Left outnumbering the Right in overall vote share. However, it’s important to remember that Labour tacked to the Right in this election to win back voters who deserted it in recent years. The party has promised to cut immigration (no sniggering at the back), stop the boats and not raise the main taxes, often criticising the Tories from the Right on taxation. When the party fails to curb immigration to sustainable levels, stop the boats and raises taxes, expect to see those voters start to peel away.
A comparison of elections since 1997 of vote share versus seat share shows how results would have differed under a proportional system.
Incidentally, the opinion polls were wrong yet again. The BBC’s poll tracker gave Labour an 18-point lead yesterday morning, way above the final gap of 11 points.
Here are a couple more charts that show how today’s result compares to those of the past. The first shows Labour’s vote share barely changing even as it moves from bad defeat to massive victory, the second the dive in turnout from a thoroughly disillusioned electorate.
A lot of Tory ‘Big Beast’ Ministers and ex-Ministers lost their seats last night. Here’s a selection from the Mail. Miriam Cates is gone as well.
Labour lost a couple of Shadow Ministers too, most notably Shadow Paymaster General Jonathan Ashworth, who was defeated by a ‘Muslim Vote’ independent. Shadow Culture Secretary Thangam Debbonaire was beaten by the Greens in Bristol Central. Jess Phillips clung on by just 693 votes in Birmingham Yardley in what she called “the worst election I have ever stood in” as she faced very unpleasant opposition from the pro-Palestine camp.
The results confirm how hard it is to achieve real change in a majoritarian voting system when voters are let down by the main parties and find themselves desperate for an alternative that the system is not designed to give them. The system has been broken this time mainly by the Conservatives spending 14 years making promises they had no intention of keeping because the party was packed with MPs who either didn’t really agree with the manifesto they were elected on or were unwilling in practice to do what was required to deliver it. What’s needed now is for a proper Right-wing movement to emerge from Reform and the Tories that is ready to capitalise on the inevitable failure of this new Labour Government when voters realise that it is no more willing or able to deliver what is necessary than the Tories were.
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