The 2019 British general election, part 5-aftermath and conclusions
Welcome to the final part of my analysis of the 2019 British general election. What overall have we learned from it?
This is clearly a realignment and pivotal election, one which has not only seen the end of decades-long dominance of particular types of constituency but which has also seen the end of many long great parliamentary careers, not only of MPs who have retired such as Kenneth Clarke but also those who were defeated at this election. Dennis Skinner and Frank Field were by no means the only long-serving MPs to be defeated-David Hanson, Roger Godsiff, Richard Burden, Sir David Crausby, Dominic Grieve, Caroline Flint, Ivan Lewis, Vernon Coaker, Mike Gapes, Gordon Marsden and Tom Brake had all been elected before the New Millennium as well, meaning that as many as 13 of the 73 MPs defeated this year had been MPs for more than 20 years. Sir Peter Bottomley, the new Father of the House, is the only remaining Conservative MP elected before Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister, and only Dame Margaret Beckett was first elected before he was (October 1974 in Lincoln, losing that seat in 1979 but she was elected for Derby South in 1983 and has represented that seat ever since; Sir Peter was elected in the Woolwich West by-election of March 1975, represented it and its successor Eltham until 1997, and has been MP for Worthing West since 1997). Jeremy Corbyn, who has announced his resignation as Labour Party leader, is interestingly enough now the joint-second longest continuously serving Labour MP having been first elected for Islington North in 1983 (alongside Nick Brown and Dame Margaret) after Barry Sheerman, who has served since 1979 (Huddersfield East 1979-83; Huddersfield 1983-present). The vast majority of rural and semi-rural seats in England and Wales (as opposed to self-contained towns large enough for one constituency and parts of large towns/cities) now have Conservative MPs, with Westmoreland & Lonsdale and the four Plaid Cymru seats being amongst the few exceptions, as do many seats on the edges of conurbations. By contrast Birmingham Northfield was the only "core city" seat to be gained by the Conservatives this year; the only other "core cities" to have Conservative MPs have them in their outlying suburbs which were not incorporated into those cities until 1974.
Without delay, Boris Johnson announced that the vote on the final version of Brexit, the Withdrawal Agreement Bill,will take place on Friday 20th December, the day after the next Queen's Speech, with concessions to those who voted Remain in the EU referendum absent. This will likely have disastrous consequences for Britain, at least in the short term, due to the forecast loss of EU trade even if a good trade deal can be struck, and the loss of European Union citizen specific rights for British citizens will hurt.
Here are five important conclusions to learn from this election:
1. The Remain issue is dead in the water-Brexit is now inevitable. With such a decisive Conservative majority no second referendum on British membership of the EU, let alone any revocation of Article 50, is possible. However, more critical issues such as the effects of man-made climate change, environmental justice and social justice go above the Remain/Leave divide and affect us all-progressives in Britain should now unite around these issues.
2. Political parties need to stop parachuting candidates into supposedly safe seats or supposedly assured gains. A key example is when Lambeth councillor and restauranteur Ibrahim Dogus, after failing to win the Labour nomination for the safely Labour central London seat of Vauxhall, sought election in the apparently safe seat of West Bromwich East when former Labour Party deputy leader Tom Watson stood down just days before the close of nominations. He was defeated convincingly by the Conservatives' Nicola Richards, a local councillor in the borough of Dudley next door who had grown up in the Black Country area (the boroughs of Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton). Local councillors within the constituencies they stood for performed particularly well this election, not only relating to the two largest parties of Conservative and Labour but also the Green Party.
3. For all its faults, the House of Commons is at least becoming much more diverse. Many of the new Conservative MPs come from working-class or relatively average backgrounds. Jonathan Gullis, my Conservative opponent in Stoke-on-Trent North who defeated Labour MP Ruth Smeeth by 6,286 votes in this election to become the first Conservative MP to represent Burslem and neighbouring areas since 1931 (Burslem preceded Stoke-on-Trent North in constituency terms), was the head of year at an academy in Birmingham before this election and an NASUWT representative; in the past this type of background would have been typical of Labour MPs. "Teacher, Tory, and trade unionist" are indeed words you normally never hear together in the same sentence. Many of the new Conservative MPs who won previously long-standing Labour seats grew up on council estates, grew up in single-parent families, or both. This election also saw the highest number of women elected to Parliament, 220, although this still means nearly 2/3 of MPs are men. This parliament is also the most ethnically diverse with 65 MPs (10% of all MPs) coming from black and ethnic minority (BAME) backgrounds, including Feryal Clark (Labour, Enfield North), the first Kurdish MP and Imran Ahmad Khan (Conservative, Wakefield), the first Ahmadi MP. Even though Labour made a net loss of 60 seats the number of Labour MPs from ethnic minorities increased to 41, more than 20% of current Labour MPs. Conversely, only 6% of current Conservative MPs (22 in total) are from BAME backgrounds; apart from Mr Ahmad Khan, Saqib Bhatti (Meriden), Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) and Darren Henry (Broxtowe) are the only new Conservative MPs from BAME backgrounds.
Privately-educated Oxbridge-graduate MPs are becoming rarer and rarer with each passing parliament. As many as eight Old Etonians retired at this election, namely Nick Hurd (four generations of his family including himself have been Conservative MPs), Sir Oliver Letwin (former Shadow Home Secretary), Sir Nicholas Soames (the last of the long-standing Spencer-Churchill line of parliamentarians, being a grandson of Winston Churchill), Jo Johnson (the PM's brother), David Tredinnick, Sir Henry Bellingham, Sir Hugo Swire, and Rory Stewart (briefly Secretary of State for International Development); furthermore Zac Goldsmith, also an Old Etonian, lost his seat of Richmond Park to the Liberal Democrats' Sarah Olney. The only new Old Etonian elected this year was Danny Kruger at Devizes, Wiltshire. The number of Conservative MPs educated at prestigious private schools (e.g. Haileybury, Merchant Taylors', St Paul's) significantly decreased overall even without taking the retirement of Old Etonians into account, and there are few privately-educated Labour MPs apart from Jeremy Corbyn. Only three children of former MPs were elected: Rachel Hopkins (daughter of Kelvin Hopkins), Jerome Mayhew (son of Patrick Mayhew) and Laura Farris (daughter of Michael McNair-Wilson, who represented the seat of Newbury from 1964 to 1992 which she now herself represents; she is the niece of Patrick McNair-Wilson, who represented New Forest from 1968 to 1997). The backgrounds of Geoffrey Clifton-Brown and Jacob Rees-Mogg now look positively archaic within this parliament.
4. Proportional representation is direly needed. The Conservatives and Brexit Party polled between them 45.6% (the Conservatives 43.6%, the Brexit Party 2.0%), but the pro-Brexit Conservatives won 56.3% of the seats in the House of Commons. More prominently, the Conservative vote share in England was 47.1% yet as many as 345 English constituencies (nearly 65% of all 533 constituencies in England) now have a Conservative MP. The Liberal Democrats increased their vote share by 4.2% on 2017 yet still made a net loss of one seat. The Green Party polled 835,579 votes but Caroline Lucas remains their only MP. The electorate is becoming increasingly fickle and old traditions on both sides no longer hold sway.
5. Political parties must stop taking voters for granted. In a democracy, the people need to be listened to and properly represented, whoever they are or where they originally come from. Labour in particular paid the price for assuming Labour voters in their old industrial heartlands would vote for them election after election even if only to stop the Conservatives; they were proved decisively wrong this year. The Conservatives lost many voters in the south of England, normally their strongest base, and had the Liberal Democrats run a better campaign they may have made historic losses such as the seats of Esher & Walton and Wokingham, which the Liberal Democrats never came close to winning even in 1997 or 2001.
I hope you have enjoyed reading my analysis.
Alan.
This is clearly a realignment and pivotal election, one which has not only seen the end of decades-long dominance of particular types of constituency but which has also seen the end of many long great parliamentary careers, not only of MPs who have retired such as Kenneth Clarke but also those who were defeated at this election. Dennis Skinner and Frank Field were by no means the only long-serving MPs to be defeated-David Hanson, Roger Godsiff, Richard Burden, Sir David Crausby, Dominic Grieve, Caroline Flint, Ivan Lewis, Vernon Coaker, Mike Gapes, Gordon Marsden and Tom Brake had all been elected before the New Millennium as well, meaning that as many as 13 of the 73 MPs defeated this year had been MPs for more than 20 years. Sir Peter Bottomley, the new Father of the House, is the only remaining Conservative MP elected before Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister, and only Dame Margaret Beckett was first elected before he was (October 1974 in Lincoln, losing that seat in 1979 but she was elected for Derby South in 1983 and has represented that seat ever since; Sir Peter was elected in the Woolwich West by-election of March 1975, represented it and its successor Eltham until 1997, and has been MP for Worthing West since 1997). Jeremy Corbyn, who has announced his resignation as Labour Party leader, is interestingly enough now the joint-second longest continuously serving Labour MP having been first elected for Islington North in 1983 (alongside Nick Brown and Dame Margaret) after Barry Sheerman, who has served since 1979 (Huddersfield East 1979-83; Huddersfield 1983-present). The vast majority of rural and semi-rural seats in England and Wales (as opposed to self-contained towns large enough for one constituency and parts of large towns/cities) now have Conservative MPs, with Westmoreland & Lonsdale and the four Plaid Cymru seats being amongst the few exceptions, as do many seats on the edges of conurbations. By contrast Birmingham Northfield was the only "core city" seat to be gained by the Conservatives this year; the only other "core cities" to have Conservative MPs have them in their outlying suburbs which were not incorporated into those cities until 1974.
Without delay, Boris Johnson announced that the vote on the final version of Brexit, the Withdrawal Agreement Bill,will take place on Friday 20th December, the day after the next Queen's Speech, with concessions to those who voted Remain in the EU referendum absent. This will likely have disastrous consequences for Britain, at least in the short term, due to the forecast loss of EU trade even if a good trade deal can be struck, and the loss of European Union citizen specific rights for British citizens will hurt.
Here are five important conclusions to learn from this election:
1. The Remain issue is dead in the water-Brexit is now inevitable. With such a decisive Conservative majority no second referendum on British membership of the EU, let alone any revocation of Article 50, is possible. However, more critical issues such as the effects of man-made climate change, environmental justice and social justice go above the Remain/Leave divide and affect us all-progressives in Britain should now unite around these issues.
2. Political parties need to stop parachuting candidates into supposedly safe seats or supposedly assured gains. A key example is when Lambeth councillor and restauranteur Ibrahim Dogus, after failing to win the Labour nomination for the safely Labour central London seat of Vauxhall, sought election in the apparently safe seat of West Bromwich East when former Labour Party deputy leader Tom Watson stood down just days before the close of nominations. He was defeated convincingly by the Conservatives' Nicola Richards, a local councillor in the borough of Dudley next door who had grown up in the Black Country area (the boroughs of Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton). Local councillors within the constituencies they stood for performed particularly well this election, not only relating to the two largest parties of Conservative and Labour but also the Green Party.
3. For all its faults, the House of Commons is at least becoming much more diverse. Many of the new Conservative MPs come from working-class or relatively average backgrounds. Jonathan Gullis, my Conservative opponent in Stoke-on-Trent North who defeated Labour MP Ruth Smeeth by 6,286 votes in this election to become the first Conservative MP to represent Burslem and neighbouring areas since 1931 (Burslem preceded Stoke-on-Trent North in constituency terms), was the head of year at an academy in Birmingham before this election and an NASUWT representative; in the past this type of background would have been typical of Labour MPs. "Teacher, Tory, and trade unionist" are indeed words you normally never hear together in the same sentence. Many of the new Conservative MPs who won previously long-standing Labour seats grew up on council estates, grew up in single-parent families, or both. This election also saw the highest number of women elected to Parliament, 220, although this still means nearly 2/3 of MPs are men. This parliament is also the most ethnically diverse with 65 MPs (10% of all MPs) coming from black and ethnic minority (BAME) backgrounds, including Feryal Clark (Labour, Enfield North), the first Kurdish MP and Imran Ahmad Khan (Conservative, Wakefield), the first Ahmadi MP. Even though Labour made a net loss of 60 seats the number of Labour MPs from ethnic minorities increased to 41, more than 20% of current Labour MPs. Conversely, only 6% of current Conservative MPs (22 in total) are from BAME backgrounds; apart from Mr Ahmad Khan, Saqib Bhatti (Meriden), Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) and Darren Henry (Broxtowe) are the only new Conservative MPs from BAME backgrounds.
Privately-educated Oxbridge-graduate MPs are becoming rarer and rarer with each passing parliament. As many as eight Old Etonians retired at this election, namely Nick Hurd (four generations of his family including himself have been Conservative MPs), Sir Oliver Letwin (former Shadow Home Secretary), Sir Nicholas Soames (the last of the long-standing Spencer-Churchill line of parliamentarians, being a grandson of Winston Churchill), Jo Johnson (the PM's brother), David Tredinnick, Sir Henry Bellingham, Sir Hugo Swire, and Rory Stewart (briefly Secretary of State for International Development); furthermore Zac Goldsmith, also an Old Etonian, lost his seat of Richmond Park to the Liberal Democrats' Sarah Olney. The only new Old Etonian elected this year was Danny Kruger at Devizes, Wiltshire. The number of Conservative MPs educated at prestigious private schools (e.g. Haileybury, Merchant Taylors', St Paul's) significantly decreased overall even without taking the retirement of Old Etonians into account, and there are few privately-educated Labour MPs apart from Jeremy Corbyn. Only three children of former MPs were elected: Rachel Hopkins (daughter of Kelvin Hopkins), Jerome Mayhew (son of Patrick Mayhew) and Laura Farris (daughter of Michael McNair-Wilson, who represented the seat of Newbury from 1964 to 1992 which she now herself represents; she is the niece of Patrick McNair-Wilson, who represented New Forest from 1968 to 1997). The backgrounds of Geoffrey Clifton-Brown and Jacob Rees-Mogg now look positively archaic within this parliament.
4. Proportional representation is direly needed. The Conservatives and Brexit Party polled between them 45.6% (the Conservatives 43.6%, the Brexit Party 2.0%), but the pro-Brexit Conservatives won 56.3% of the seats in the House of Commons. More prominently, the Conservative vote share in England was 47.1% yet as many as 345 English constituencies (nearly 65% of all 533 constituencies in England) now have a Conservative MP. The Liberal Democrats increased their vote share by 4.2% on 2017 yet still made a net loss of one seat. The Green Party polled 835,579 votes but Caroline Lucas remains their only MP. The electorate is becoming increasingly fickle and old traditions on both sides no longer hold sway.
5. Political parties must stop taking voters for granted. In a democracy, the people need to be listened to and properly represented, whoever they are or where they originally come from. Labour in particular paid the price for assuming Labour voters in their old industrial heartlands would vote for them election after election even if only to stop the Conservatives; they were proved decisively wrong this year. The Conservatives lost many voters in the south of England, normally their strongest base, and had the Liberal Democrats run a better campaign they may have made historic losses such as the seats of Esher & Walton and Wokingham, which the Liberal Democrats never came close to winning even in 1997 or 2001.
I hope you have enjoyed reading my analysis.
Alan.
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