Labour wins UK general elections but Keir Starmer must note the divisions

Labour’s victory is based on just 35% of the vote. (Source: Bloomberg)

The big picture this morning is clear. The Labour Party has won a huge majority. The Conservative Party has suffered the worst defeat in its history. The British political system has done what it does best, producing a crunchy result and delivering a clear mandate.

But look a little more closely, and lots of little pictures emerge. Little pictures which should give Starmer pause — as Britain’s politics is fragmenting in interesting ways.

Labour’s victory is based on just 35% of the vote. Starmer won roughly the same proportion of the vote as Jeremy Corbyn in 2019 and a smaller proportion than in 2017, when Corbyn came close to defeating Theresa May with 40%. Corbyn, who has retained his Islington North constituency as an independent despite the Labour Party’s best efforts, delivered a waspish but accurate verdict: “it is not a landside of votes. It is a landslide of seats.”

Indeed, this was not a pro-Labour election but an anti-Tory one. Voters used any vehicle they could to express their fury with the Conservative Party: voting Labour if they were the leading anti-Tory challengers, but also backing the Lib Dems, Reform and the Greens. The most spectacular humiliation for the Tories was Liz Truss’s loss of her South-West Norfolk seat, which was a direct punishment for her disastrous 49 days as prime minister.

Other so-called big beasts who lost include Jacob Rees-Mogg, a voluble Brexiteer, Grant Shapps, the defense minister, and Penny Mordaunt, the leader of the House of Commons. All told, 44 government ministers have lost their seats, including 12 cabinet ministers. The Tories lost the seats of every Tory prime minister since 2010 except Rishi Sunak’s: Witney (once David Cameron), Maidenhead (once Theresa May), Uxbridge (Once Boris Johson) and SW Norfolk (Truss).

The Tories were not the only incumbent party to take a beating last night. The Scottish National Party was reduced to a rump of just nine seats. If Labour’s share of the vote was roughly static in England and actually fell in Wales, it surged in Scotland, increasing the number of Scottish Labour MPs from just one in 2019 to 37. This is a just verdict on the SNP’s dismal record in their 17 years in power in Scotland. Happily, it also puts Scottish independence off the agenda for the foreseeable future. Labour’s victory was also a victory for the British union.

The smaller parties did unusually well for a first-past-the-post system. Whereas the British Parliament usually features two big parties, the government and the opposition, this time it will feature one huge party and a gaggle of smaller ones. With 71 seats, up from just 11, the Liberal Democrats have more seats than at any time since 1923 (when they were called simply the Liberals). A party that routinely complains of being a victim of the first-past-the-post system now enjoys a number of seats in line with its popular support.

The most striking story of the night, however, is the breakthrough of the Reform Party. Startup parties are rare in British politics. Reform has come from nothing to split the right-of-center vote, pushing the Conservatives into third place in many constituencies, to win four seats in parliament and to put a star of the global right, a close friend of Donald Trump and ally of Marine Le Pen and Georgia Meloni, in the heart of British politics.

Nigel Farage’s victory in the seaside town of Clacton means that he can finally put the word MP after his name after seven failed attempts. It also means that he can do what he did so brilliantly in the European Parliament: play the role of an insider-outsider who enjoys both the trappings of a parliamentary party leader and the freedom to denounce “the establishment.”

The war in Gaza had a significant influence on the election. The Labour vote was down significantly in seats where more than 20% of the population is Muslim, with independent candidates defeating Labour MPs with solid majorities, including Jonathan Ashworth, a shadow minister who lost his seat in Leicester South to a representative of the Workers Party. The only positive news from the incursion of Gaza into British politics is that left-wing firebrand George Galloway lost the Rochdale seat that he won in a by-election four months ago to Labour.

The result was not quite the Armageddon for the Conservatives that some polls had predicted: They will be the official opposition and will have a solid base of MPs on which to rebuild. Sunak will probably stay on as a caretaker leader and Jeremy Hunt, who retained his seat against expectations, will act as a steadying force.

But the success of Reform (and Farage’s presence in parliament) underlines the dilemma facing the Tories: Do they try to reunite the right by moving rightwards and reabsorbing Reform voters? (Taken together the Conservatives and Reform won a higher proportion of the vote than Labour.) Or should they try to recapture the middle ground from Labour?

Their ability to resolve this dilemma may well determine whether Starmer enjoys just one term in Downing Street or two.

Credit: Bloomberg