Alan's Green Thoughts

All things considered, what are the top five conclusions that can be drawn from the results of the 2024 United Kingdom general election? 1. The British electoral and political system is at breaking point and needs to be reformed, fast. This election, according to the Gallagher Index of proportionality, was the most disproportional in the history of British suffrage, and reminiscent of the fragmentation New Zealand's Parliament underwent in the mid-1990s which caused it to eventually switch to (mixed member) proportional representation for its legislative elections, which it first used in 1996 and has used ever since. Britain is becoming a true multiparty state slowly but surely, with both Labour and the Conservatives not only having reached the lowest combined vote since 1922, but also the lowest combined number of seats at 533 (counting the Speaker as Labour). For the first time ever in England, there are as many as 5 parties with more than 1 seat apiece, and 6 colours of rosettes...

The 2024 United Kingdom general election proved just as remarkable in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as it did in England. In Scotland, the SNP's drubbing was one of the main undersold stories of this election; in light of scandals that led to the resignation of Nicola Sturgeon and Scottish independence looking like a more distant prospect, especially with Scottish voters more concerned about the cost-of-living crisis like everywhere else in the UK, the SNP dropped from 47 seats (notionally) to just 9, and more importantly they did not win any seats south of the River Tay, being driven back to the Highlands and north-eastern Scotland where prior to the SNP's shift towards social democracy their strongest bases used to be (before the 2015, the majority of SNP seats in Westminster were north of the River Tay). In some seats anti-SNP swings exceeded 20%, with one particularly outspoken SNP MP, Joanna Cherry, losing Edinburgh South West on a 23.4% swing to Labour, the highest...

In addition to the five parties I mentioned in the first 2 parts of this analysis, other political parties, as well as Independent candidates more than ever before, made a notable impact in this year's British general election. The Workers' Party, the newest creation of George Galloway, failed to make the impact pollsters predicted it would, partly because it only stood 152 candidates when it had announced more than 250 initially, although this was still enough for it to qualify for a Party Political Broadcast, and also because like Reform UK some of its candidates were mired in controversy; for example, their candidate in Wakefield & Rothwell, former rugby player Keith Mason, was initially suspended over past offensive Tweets he had posted but later reinstated It polled only 0.7% of the vote as a result, and won no seats; in fact George Galloway himself lost Rochdale, which he gained in the 2024 by-election there, lost by 1,440 to Huffington Post journalist Paul Waugh, not...

Arguably at the British general election of 2024, just as big a winner as the Labour Party were the smaller parties, especially the Liberal Democrats, the Green Party, and Reform UK, the successor to the Brexit Party. Between them these 3 parties alone won as many as 81 seats and 32.6% of the vote, almost equal to Labour's vote share and 8.7% more than the outgoing Conservative government polled. Had some form of proportional representation existed for UK parliamentary elections, they would have won more than 200 seats between them (assuming election by regions using the Additional Member System with a 5% threshold by region, which is what the Scottish Parliament and Senedd have used since their inception although the Senedd will switch to a different PR system from 2026). Not only did the Liberal Democrats have their best ever election result since they were formed in 1988 from a merger of the Liberals and the Social Democratic Party (SDP), their results were the best for any thir...

As predicted for months by every pollster and every British major media outlet, in the recent United Kingdom general election which coincidentally coincided with Independence Day in the USA, Labour achieved a dramatic landslide over the outgoing Conservative government, by winning as many as 411 seats, 412 if House of Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle's seat of Chorley is counted.   However, unlike with the Blair landslides of 1997 and to a lesser extent 2001, it was a landslide on leaky foundations-(Sir) Tony Blair and Labour won 43% of the vote in 1997, but Sir Keir Starmer and Labour only managed 33.8% of the vote, an increase of only 1.7% from Labour's drubbing of 2019. By comparison, Labour increased their vote share by 7% from 1992 to 1997. So how did they manage it? Of course, the old psephological adage is that oppositions do not win elections-governments lose them. The Conservatives lost more heavily than ever before, dropping to 121 seats-the lowest in the Conservativ...

  With nominations for the British general election 2024 having closed yesterday and with statements of persons nominated having been released, this election has already set a record for highest number of candidates-over 4,500 across the UK, beating the previous record of 4,150 set in 2010. The number of MPs retiring at this election did not however quite match the 2010 record despite major constituency boundary changes, with 132 retiring at this election including Mick Whitley and Beth Winter, who failed to find new seats after losing selections in merged seats and Sam Tarry, who was deselected in Ilford South and failed to find another seat, compared to 149 in 2010. In the vast majority of seats, all five major British political parties-the Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats, the Green Party and Reform UK-are contesting, the Speaker's seat of Chorley notwithstanding, with the Workers' Party and (continuity) Social Democratic Party the only other political parties contes...