Snap General Election called

[Mikey Brown]

I mean if Farage hadn’t come back would anything even have changed? Starmer can’t be under the impression he has done this himself can he?

Farage has been Labour’s biggest asset, but the number of young supporters he has is alarming.

[Zhivago]

I mean if Farage hadn’t come back would anything even have changed? Starmer can’t be under the impression he has done this himself can he?

Farage has been Labour’s biggest asset, but the number of young supporters he has is alarming.

He comes across to me as someone who is capable of deluding himself into believing he is the cause of his success. I can quote from him on this - 'we did it'. Someone needs to tell him, 'no you didn't really, if you are honest with yourselves'.

We should look at this soberly and realise that Theresa May, Boris Johnson, and Jeremy Corbyn achieved higher vote shares than Starmer has.

There is probably a not so ridiculous argument that Farage has been the most influential politician of the last decade.

[Sandydragon]

Get in!!!

Good to see the Tories get jumped, although not by as much as I would've liked, great to see LDs have such a good night, but top of the bill for me personally is seeing the SNP get humbled. Seeing useless, arrogant snouts-in-the-trough nationalist wankers getting booted will always put me in a good mood.

The overall result brings plenty of pressure for Labour, but that's for the next 5 years to sort out. For now I'm just enjoying the view.

Lib Dem’s have cleaned up very blue seats round me. Having met them though, complete muppets. But less muppety than the tories. Fckin ell. Looking at the detail, Tory vote went to Reform, enabling narrow Lib Dem wins, suspect replicated across the south east, predictable I suppose.

Turnout a bit of a worry, and Lib Dem’s have so far gained 63 seats with a .6 % vote share increase, and Labour 210 on a 1.6% uptick. Weird stuff. Reform getting 16% is no joke either.

Many of the Labour/ Liberal wins will have been in part due to the Reform surge.That is definitely a problem for the future and I think this result means that they are here to stay. I hope Farage gets bored and they fizzle out as a result since I think her personal charisma is outperforming his party. Its also clear that Reform will pick up plenty of blue collar worker's votes, so Labour has a future headache there.

Turnout was awful. Many traditonal tory voters didnt bother? Perhaps some Labour supporters decided that they wouldnt either since the decision wasnt in doubt overall.

Some Labour MPs had massive challenges in their seats, most obviously where there is concern over Gaza.

Overall, its a slapping for the Tories and a bit of a lukewarm welcome for Labour. Starmer needs to look past the numbers, which are superb and should allow him to be effective, and realise that there are very few safe seats anymore and a huge majority doesnt mean auto relection next time.

[Sandydragon]

I mean if Farage hadn’t come back would anything even have changed? Starmer can’t be under the impression he has done this himself can he?

Farage has been Labour’s biggest asset, but the number of young supporters he has is alarming.

He comes across to me as someone who is capable of deluding himself into believing he is the cause of his success.

We should look at this soberly and realise that Theresa May, Boris Johnson, and Jeremy Corbyn achieved higher vote shares than Starmer has.

There is probably a not so ridiculous argument that Farage has been the most influential politician of the last decade.

Without Farage, Labour would still have won, I think and analysis of votes needed here to be certain, but I'm sure it wouldnt be a landslide. Reform has done the Tories at the knees properly. Even where TOry MPs won, Karen Bradley in Staffs Moorlands for example, the Reform Challenge has been huge and turned a safe seat into a close run thing.

[Zhivago]

I mean if Farage hadn’t come back would anything even have changed? Starmer can’t be under the impression he has done this himself can he?

Farage has been Labour’s biggest asset, but the number of young supporters he has is alarming.

He comes across to me as someone who is capable of deluding himself into believing he is the cause of his success.

We should look at this soberly and realise that Theresa May, Boris Johnson, and Jeremy Corbyn achieved higher vote shares than Starmer has.

There is probably a not so ridiculous argument that Farage has been the most influential politician of the last decade.

Without Farage, Labour would still have won, I think and analysis of votes needed here to be certain, but I'm sure it wouldnt be a landslide. Reform has done the Tories at the knees properly. Even where TOry MPs won, Karen Bradley in Staffs Moorlands for example, the Reform Challenge has been huge and turned a safe seat into a close run thing.

Remember that Farage stood down his Reform candidates in 2019. He decided the outcome of that election, and this one.

FPTP is so messed up. It's a joke of an electoral system. The whims of one man is deciding what government we get.

[Zhivago]

So what options do we have to fix the system?
- Keep FPTP but have a run-off, like France.
- Introduce some federalisation, maybe as part of the reform of the House of Lords, or more widely.
- Move to a more proportional electoral system.

[Which Tyler]

There's a lot of spin about Starmer doing great, but actually this is a poor performance. He is just lucky that the Tories imploded. If they don't bring in PR, the Tories will be back in power soon enough, probably after a merger with the far-right Reform party.

I don't see why he wouldn't have run a different campaign if the tories hadn't spent the entirety of his time as leader of the opposition imploding.

The labour campaign was absolutely to avoid giving the right wing press anything at all to shoot at them; because it was always a landslide win.

This election was always "get the tories out", and who could provide a new / temporary home for those tory voters. It's those voters Labour were chasing, to secure a big majority. I'm sure they don't mind LibDem and Green taking a few seats.
This is about as good a result as anyone could have hoped for, and the low turnout is, IMO, a result of it being a foregone conclusion.

I mean if Farage hadn’t come back would anything even have changed? Starmer can’t be under the impression he has done this himself can he?

Given that a labour landslide was a foregone conclusion before Farage came back, and Reform got candidates into most seats - yes, we'd have had broadly the same result; with more Lib Dem and lower voter turnout.

[Mikey Brown]

I mean if Farage hadn’t come back would anything even have changed? Starmer can’t be under the impression he has done this himself can he?

Given that a labour landslide was a foregone conclusion before Farage came back

It was? I’m fuzzy on the timeline.

I’m not suggesting you simply tally up Con + Reform, but I’m not convinced that being incompetent (or just a total c***) was actually that much of a deal breaker for a lot of (traditionally) Tory voters.

Maybe I’m just struggling with the idea of eventual Reform voters who would have gone Lib Dem / Labour otherwise.

[Mikey Brown]

Ah, you’ve included a picture. Now pictures I can understand. Fair enough.

Although that doesn’t predate reform?

[Puja]

There's a lot of spin about Starmer doing great, but actually this is a poor performance. He is just lucky that the Tories imploded. If they don't bring in PR, the Tories will be back in power soon enough, probably after a merger with the far-right Reform party.

I don't see why he wouldn't have run a different campaign if the tories hadn't spent the entirety of his time as leader of the opposition imploding.

The labour campaign was absolutely to avoid giving the right wing press anything at all to shoot at them; because it was always a landslide win.

This election was always "get the tories out", and who could provide a new / temporary home for those tory voters. It's those voters Labour were chasing, to secure a big majority. I'm sure they don't mind LibDem and Green taking a few seats.
This is about as good a result as anyone could have hoped for, and the low turnout is, IMO, a result of it being a foregone conclusion.

That's certainly part of it, but there's also part that Starmer failed to get his base out in any way shape or form. I agree that he needed to provide a new/temporary home for centre ground voters, but he went further than that, spending a lot of his time chasing Sun and Times readers, looking to appeal to bluer and bluer segments of the electorate at diminishing returns.

You can't argue with the results of 170 seat majority, but he did also achieve 4% lower vote share than the deeply flawed Corbyn did with an ambitiously socialist manifesto that inspired hope. That 170 is built on sand - he's alienated a chunk of his base and, if he doesn't please the people who loaned him their vote, he could find himself in the same position as the Boris majority in 5 years' time.

I remain hopeful though that he will pivot to more ambitious policy-making now that the election is done. Surely he must do.

Puja

[Which Tyler]

Since 1974 there have been 12 UK general elections. The EU referendum was also included in this analysis for a total of 13 national votes.

If you were born in the period 1951-1956, you have voted in all 13. The majority of your age cohort has in every case voted for the winning side.

If you were born in 1991, on the other hand, you've voted in five of those contests. Your age cohort has never once supported the winning side. If you were born later, you've voted in fewer contests, but again, never for the winners.

The closest point to equilibrium is 1981, when you would have been on the winning side three times (1997, 2005, and 2010) but would have been on the losing side consistently in the four votes since.

So the gist is: if you are 33 or younger, you've probably never voted for the winning side. If you're in your 70s, your generation has been running the entire country all your life.

We all know this, of course, but it's a good illustration of why younger voters might get frustrated and why politicians pander to the retired vote so much.

Pretty confident that this would be a broken stat now.

[Donny osmond]

Get in!!!

Good to see the Tories get jumped, although not by as much as I would've liked, great to see LDs have such a good night, but top of the bill for me personally is seeing the SNP get humbled. Seeing useless, arrogant snouts-in-the-trough nationalist wankers getting booted will always put me in a good mood.

The overall result brings plenty of pressure for Labour, but that's for the next 5 years to sort out. For now I'm just enjoying the view.

Lib Dem’s have cleaned up very blue seats round me. Having met them though, complete muppets. But less muppety than the tories. Fckin ell. Looking at the detail, Tory vote went to Reform, enabling narrow Lib Dem wins, suspect replicated across the south east, predictable I suppose.

Turnout a bit of a worry, and Lib Dem’s have so far gained 63 seats with a .6 % vote share increase, and Labour 210 on a 1.6% uptick. Weird stuff. Reform getting 16% is no joke either.

Yeah bit of a weird election all around, the main takeaway, imo, is the Tories and SNP being abandoned rather than anyone winning voters over. Reform might argue that but they'd be as wrong as they are about everything else. I would guess that a lot of the votes going to Lab and LD are folk abandoning previous positions.

It will be interesting to see how/what the LDs do with their new found "popularity". How do they hold onto those votes while being a large presence in WM but facing a huge lab majority? That'll be tricky for them to pull off.

Labour still have it all to do; if in 5 years they can't point to real genuine change they'll be booted out, and quite rightly. Personally, I voted for them this time but very much with a view of needing to see that faith being justified by their actions in office.

[Which Tyler]

Ah, you’ve included a picture. Now pictures I can understand. Fair enough.

Although that doesn’t predate reform?

Reform have existed for 5 years, and are essentially an extension of UKIP, who have existed since 1993
I chose the timeline of "since the election was called, until the day before the polls opened"
Nigel Garage announced that he was standing on May 3rd, if that's the date you're looking for.

That's certainly part of it, but there's also part that Starmer failed to get his base out in any way shape or form. I agree that he needed to provide a new/temporary home for centre ground voters, but he went further than that, spending a lot of his time chasing Sun and Times readers, looking to appeal to bluer and bluer segments of the electorate at diminishing returns.

As you say, he was trying to appease the right wing press and not-spook the right wing voter, so that even if they didn't come to labour, they also wouldn't vote conservative.

You can't argue with the results of 170 seat majority, but he did also achieve 4% lower vote share than the deeply flawed Corbyn did with an ambitiously socialist manifesto that inspired hope. That 170 is built on sand - he's alienated a chunk of his base and, if he doesn't please the people who loaned him their vote, he could find himself in the same position as the Boris majority in 5 years' time.

Much as I dislike it, we live in a FPTP country, and our parties have to play the FPTP game. As you say, a 170 seat majority shows that he was right. the vote share (and low turnout) show that he can't afford to sit on his laurels.

I remain hopeful though that he will pivot to more ambitious policy-making now that the election is done. Surely he must do.

Yup. The election is done now, neither he, nor LibDem (nor Reform) will keep the votes they've been loaned by Tory voters, and probably won't keep the suppressed vote of inevitability. Which means he needs to strike a balance between not spooking the right-wing press too badly, whilst also wooing the left wing of his own party.
I'm pretty confident that he personally is positioned to the left of his campaigning position, but how much so, and how much he feels he can enact is 100% up for debate. With +170, he should be able to do more-or-les what he pleases.



Incidentally, I'm 48. This is the second time I've voted for the winner of my constituency.

[Banquo]

He comes across to me as someone who is capable of deluding himself into believing he is the cause of his success.

We should look at this soberly and realise that Theresa May, Boris Johnson, and Jeremy Corbyn achieved higher vote shares than Starmer has.

There is probably a not so ridiculous argument that Farage has been the most influential politician of the last decade.

Without Farage, Labour would still have won, I think and analysis of votes needed here to be certain, but I'm sure it wouldnt be a landslide. Reform has done the Tories at the knees properly. Even where TOry MPs won, Karen Bradley in Staffs Moorlands for example, the Reform Challenge has been huge and turned a safe seat into a close run thing.

Remember that Farage stood down his Reform candidates in 2019. He decided the outcome of that election, and this one.

FPTP is so messed up. It's a joke of an electoral system. The whims of one man is deciding what government we get.

Agreed on Farage.

Straight PR would have made a pretty volatile parliament I reckon.

[Banquo]

There's a lot of spin about Starmer doing great, but actually this is a poor performance. He is just lucky that the Tories imploded. If they don't bring in PR, the Tories will be back in power soon enough, probably after a merger with the far-right Reform party.

I don't see why he wouldn't have run a different campaign if the tories hadn't spent the entirety of his time as leader of the opposition imploding.

The labour campaign was absolutely to avoid giving the right wing press anything at all to shoot at them; because it was always a landslide win.

This election was always "get the tories out", and who could provide a new / temporary home for those tory voters. It's those voters Labour were chasing, to secure a big majority. I'm sure they don't mind LibDem and Green taking a few seats.
This is about as good a result as anyone could have hoped for, and the low turnout is, IMO, a result of it being a foregone conclusion.

That's certainly part of it, but there's also part that Starmer failed to get his base out in any way shape or form. I agree that he needed to provide a new/temporary home for centre ground voters, but he went further than that, spending a lot of his time chasing Sun and Times readers, looking to appeal to bluer and bluer segments of the electorate at diminishing returns.

You can't argue with the results of 170 seat majority, but he did also achieve 4% lower vote share than the deeply flawed Corbyn did with an ambitiously socialist manifesto that inspired hope. That 170 is built on sand - he's alienated a chunk of his base and, if he doesn't please the people who loaned him their vote, he could find himself in the same position as the Boris majority in 5 years' time.

I remain hopeful though that he will pivot to more ambitious policy-making now that the election is done. Surely he must do.

Puja

I think he likely will but hardly encourages trust in politics really.

[Zhivago]

Without Farage, Labour would still have won, I think and analysis of votes needed here to be certain, but I'm sure it wouldnt be a landslide. Reform has done the Tories at the knees properly. Even where TOry MPs won, Karen Bradley in Staffs Moorlands for example, the Reform Challenge has been huge and turned a safe seat into a close run thing.

Remember that Farage stood down his Reform candidates in 2019. He decided the outcome of that election, and this one.

FPTP is so messed up. It's a joke of an electoral system. The whims of one man is deciding what government we get.

Agreed on Farage.

Straight PR would have made a pretty volatile parliament I reckon.

I think PR would give us permanent left-wing coalitions, although it depends on the Lib Dems, I guess. But at least it would be fairer and people would feel their vote counted.

At a minimum, there needs to be serious reform of the house of lords, and more devolution.

[Which Tyler]

Nice timing.
Keir should wait until after the changing of the guard, before seeing His Maj
ETA: of course, it will, these things take more than 5 minutes

[Mikey Brown]

Ah, you’ve included a picture. Now pictures I can understand. Fair enough.

Although that doesn’t predate reform?

Reform have existed for 5 years, and are essentially an extension of UKIP, who have existed since 1993
I chose the timeline of "since the election was called, until the day before the polls opened"
Nigel Garage announced that he was standing on May 3rd, if that's the date you're looking for.

Just to be clear that wasn't me being snarky about the pictures - completely genuine. My hands did type 'reform' when my brain was saying 'Farage', as in Farage ditching his Trump project and returning to stand here. I was under the impression they had basically no momentum at all before he got back in the limelight.

[Which Tyler]

Just to be clear that wasn't me being snarky about the pictures - completely genuine. My hands did type 'reform' when my brain was saying 'Farage', as in Farage ditching his Trump project and returning to stand here. I was under the impression they had basically no momentum at all before he got back in the limelight.

Fair enough, I thought you probably meant Garage (I see that typo, but I'm keeping it!) but wasn't sure - easy to conflate the party and the man.
He gave them a bump from around 14% to around 17% (peaking at 19% before discovering that their candidates were a bunch of fascists); they returned to 15% by voting-eve, and then to 14.3% on the day.

Labour's lowest polling was 36%, as opposed to 33.8% on the day.

[Banquo]

Remember that Farage stood down his Reform candidates in 2019. He decided the outcome of that election, and this one.

FPTP is so messed up. It's a joke of an electoral system. The whims of one man is deciding what government we get.

Agreed on Farage.

Straight PR would have made a pretty volatile parliament I reckon.

I think PR would give us permanent left-wing coalitions, a

dunno, 52% springs to mind . But even then, they'd be volatile.

[Banquo]

Just to be clear that wasn't me being snarky about the pictures - completely genuine. My hands did type 'reform' when my brain was saying 'Farage', as in Farage ditching his Trump project and returning to stand here. I was under the impression they had basically no momentum at all before he got back in the limelight.

Fair enough, I thought you probably meant Garage (I see that typo, but I'm keeping it!) but wasn't sure - easy to conflate the party and the man.
He gave them a bump from around 14% to around 17% (peaking at 19% before discovering that their candidates were a bunch of fascists); they returned to 15% by voting-eve, and then to 14.3% on the day.

Labour's lowest polling was 36%, as opposed to 33.8% on the day.

this makes interesting reading...https://www.theguardian.com/politics/ng ... -landslide. And it hasn't yet got to Reform impact where the libdems beat the Tories in the south east.

Anyone got the vote shares for England, Wales, Scotland ?

[Puja]

Sunak's resignation speech includes saying, "I believe that the UK is more prosperous, fairer and resilient than in 2010."



Puja

[Banquo]

IDS hung on thanks to Labour splitting their own vote!

[Son of Mathonwy]

Sunak's resignation speech includes saying, "I believe that the UK is more prosperous, fairer and resilient than in 2010."



Puja

Going out on a lie (actually three lies in one). What an honest politician.

[Son of Mathonwy]

That was quite a night. Various thoughts:

Broadly speaking this is the best the country can hope for (other than the Tories down to 3rd place, maybe).

It was great to see a Truss, Rees-Mogg, Liam Fox and Fabricant go down, but on balance, probably a shame (am I really saying this?) the more moderate Mordaunt went too:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/ar ... heir-seats

Great that Corbyn won (with 49% of the vote) over Labour. And a shame that Labour's underhand actions in Chingford allowed IDS to survive (as well as robbing parliament of Faiza Shaheen). A shame too that Wes Streeting just held off an independent by 500 votes. Ah well.

Good to see the SNP cut down to the size they deserve. And nice that the Greens are no longer a complete joke, with 4 MPs and plenty of second places. It's a pleasure to see Wales as a Tory-free zone .

Compared with the exit poll, Reform's 4 MPs is a relief, but I was gutted to see Anderson win (I'd already accepted that Farage couldn't be stopped )

It was a landslide in seats but not in votes. Labour were only slightly up in vote what from 2019 and down from 2017. So this was not about what Labour did (which was as little as possible in fact) but what the Tories and Farage did. The Tories set this up with austerity and Brexit and internal division, then finished up with chaos and economic disaster. Then Farage put them to the sword by doing what he chose not to do in 2019.

Labour now needs to deliver noticeable improvements to people's lives in the next 5 years or this result will be in jeopardy. And if the Tories can neutralize Farage or bring him onboard, and stop splitting the right/far-right vote, Labour will have a much, much harder fight.

What the Tories do now is huge and totally in the balance. If they want to win again they have to stop Farage from splitting the vote. But what does Farage want? Can he be bought off? Taking him in or merging with Reform means Farage taking over the party so that would obviously be a disaster for anyone who doesn't like living under fascism (and would obviously be a disaster for any other Tory with leadership ambitions). But if Farage can't be bought and is in it for the long haul of destroying the Tories and taking their place as the party of the right then they have the choice: centre or right? Their membership would obviously choose right, as would a number of big figures (who have unfortunately found themselves in safe-ish seats), although there are some more moderate voices (and here it is probably a pity that Mordaunt lost her seat).

If Farage persists, the Tories are in big trouble whichever way they go. Personally I think they can't compete with Farage on the right - people always prefer the authentic version over the copy - and anyway there are only so many anti-immigrant/racist votes available. But tracking left they bump into Starmer on the right edge of centre. It's tough, and success rests on external events. But just as Starmer has cashed in on Tory failure, they would cash in if Labour fails to deliver. Obviously (IMO) it's better for the country if they track left and leave far-right arguments on the fringes of politics rather than in the shadow cabinet, but what happens depends on a few personalities who are positioning themselves at this very moment.