The British general election of 2024, part 1: A Labour landslide on leaky foundations

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 Conservative Party's history-and their lowest ever vote share, just 23.9%; more importantly it represents a decrease of almost 20% from 2019, and they were also defending a notionally high majority-the constituency boundary changes would notionally have resulted in a Conservative majority as high as 94 had they been in place then. The issue of Brexit had artificially inflated support for the Conservatives whilst the process took place, but once it had actually happened and the UK had been through the worst effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the cost of living crisis, not to mention a string of scandals especially Partygate that resulted in Boris Johnson's resignation, the short but disastrous tenure of Liz Truss (who notably was unseated at this election), and a perceived failure by outgoing Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to achieve anything of substance, support for the government rapidly plummeted, to the point where in the weeks leading up to the election, some commentators predicted the Conservatives would fall to 3rd place behind Reform UK (formerly the Brexit Party) and in seat terms not even hold enough for Official Opposition status. Whilst did this not happen they emerged only 49 seats ahead of the Liberal Democrats, and many Conservatives held their seats by less than 1000 votes (even when they were previously defending majorities notionally exceeding 20,000 votes!); notable examples include Conservative Party Chair Richard Holden, who was selected for Basildon & Billericay after his North West Durham seat had been abolished in the major boundary changes that took place for this election, holding by only 20 votes after a recount, David Reed holding the new seat of Exmouth & Exeter East by only 121 votes in a contest where both Labour and the Liberal Democrats campaigned hard and where former Independent candidate Claire Wright had endorsed the Liberal Democrats, and outgoing Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt defying expectations by holding Godalming & Ash against a strong Liberal Democrat challenge by 891 votes. By the same token, there were so many Conservatives who unexpectedly lost by small margins: Shailesh Vara unexpectedly lost the otherwise rock solidly Conservative seat of North West Cambridgeshire (even accounting for the fact it was significantly shrunk in boundary changes) to new Baby of the House (i.e. the youngest serving MP) Sam Carling by 39 votes, outgoing Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer losing Ely & East Cambridgeshire to the Liberal Democrats by 495 votes, and Ameet Jogia losing Hendon to Labour by just 15 votes, the smallest majority in any seat in this year's election. The Conservatives only recovered Mid Bedfordshire amongst their by-election losses, and both boundary changes and the by-election winner Alistair Strathern moving to Hitchin (which contained part of the pre-2024 Mid Bedfordshire, and which he won for Labour) were significant factors there; they lost North Shropshire (which along with its predecessor Oswestry had been won by the Conservatives at every general election since 1832) by an even wider margin at the general election than at the 2021 by-election the Liberal Democrats gained it at (15,311-nearly treble the Liberal Democrat majority in the by-election!), and the only seat they held during a by-election and retained at this general election was Old Bexley & Sidcup, having narrowly lost Uxbridge & South Ruislip to Labour this year when last year they held it by 495 votes over fears of the effects of ULEZ (Ultra Low Emission Zone) expansion in Greater London, and also Southend West & Leigh (the successor to Southend West); as for Jill Mortimer, who won Hartlepool on a 16% swing in the 2021 by-election there, she finished third behind Reform UK with Labour easily regaining the seat. In fact the only crumbs of Conservative comfort were their surprise gain of Leicester East from Labour, where not only was the sitting MP Claudia Webbe (who had been expelled from Labour following her conviction for harassment) standing as an Independent but former Labour MP Keith Vaz was standing for One Leicester; both easily saved their deposits and split the Labour vote enough to allow the Conservatives to win it, even though Shivani Raja, who consequently became the first Conservative MP elected in the city of Leicester since 1983, polled just 31.1%, the net swing in their favour in such seats as Brent West (the successor to Brent North) and Harrow East (which was also the only constituency this election where the Conservatives polled over 50%) which like Leicester East have a substantial proportion of Hindu voters, and the fact they held Keighley and Staffordshire Moorlands, which, in addition to the aforementioned Harrow East, had Labour MPs from 1997 to 2010.

With Labour's win being a foregone conclusion and neither Sir Keir nor Mr Sunak being seen as particularly inspiring leaders, nor having particularly inspiring solutions to deal with Britain's long term problems, many of Labour's 210 notional gains-the highest by any party since 1945- came with reduced vote shares for Labour, whether or not the vote was split by an Independent, a Workers' Party candidate, or a Green surge. This proved especially true where selection controversies became widespread public knowledge-and in the case of Chingford & Woodford Green it cost Labour the chance to unseat former Conservative leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith; the combined vote share of Faiza Shaheen, who stood as an Independent after being deselected by Labour over her comments on the civil war in Gaza, and the replacement Labour candidate, Shama Tatler, was almost 50%; Sir Iain polled only 35.6%. Many of the seats where the Labour vote share increased sharply were in the south of England and where only Labour and the Conservatives were competitive, such as most of Hertfordshire's constituencies. In many cases Labour won seats primarily due to Reform UK heavily splitting the Conservative vote; the Conservative vote share decrease by over 30% in many seats Labour gained including key bellwethers or former bellwethers such as Amber Valley, and in many Labour gains the Labour vote actually decreased significantly; Labour gained Peterborough by 118 votes despite their vote share decreasing by 9.2% on 2019, although this was also a seat where the Workers Party of Britain performed well (more on them later in a blog post coming soon) and many Labour incumbents in safe seats saw sharp falls in their support, even in Merseyside where Dan Carden became the only MP, apart from Sir Lindsay, to receive more than 70% of the votes cast in this constituency. Furthermore, it was in Labour seats where turnout decreased most significantly-many inner-city constituencies which were safely Labour saw turnout decreases of more than 10% and turnouts of less than 50%, with one such inner-city constituency, the "new" (actually recreated) seat of Manchester Rusholme, achieving the lowest turnout this year-a pathetic 40%. Labour may have achieved a landslide but a swing of even 3% at the next election will see it collapse like a deck of cards being poked with a fork, such is the fragmentation of the vote now-this year resulted in the lowest combined Labour and Conservative vote share across Britain by far, just 57.7%, and the total support for the winning Labour Party amongst the electorate eligible to vote as a whole was just 20.3%.

Coming up in part 2-the impact of the surges of the Green Party, the Liberal Democrats, and Reform UK.