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Notes -
The UK general election has largely completed
Labour wins, Sir Keir Starmer is the new British PM
Results as of 8am, 6 seats undeclared:
LAB: 410, CON: 119, Lib Dem: 71, SNP: 9, Reform: 4, Green: 4, Plaid Cymru: 4, Independents: 5
I've left off Northern Irish parties
In many ways, there are few surprises, with Labour taking a hefty majority as everyone predicted and the Tories suffering their worst result in seat count in their history. There are a few bigger themes:
Labour wins by default
Despite their hefty seat count, Labour's share of the vote amounted to only 34%. To put that into perspective, Corbyn's (one of the independent seats, FYI) 2019 campaign picked up 32% of the vote. Up against one of the least popular Tory governments in history, Starmer barely managed to beat the divisive former leader. Predictions of 40% vote shares and a complete Tory wipeout didn't come to pass.
A poll taken just a few days before the vote highlights the problem for Labour: the main reason for people to vote for them was to get rid of the Tories. There was no enthusiasm for Starmer or his policies. They now have a hefty majority and 5 years in which to change that, but there's no sign in any of their policies that they will actually be radical enough, nor do they have much freedom to move. The Tories left behind a historically high tax take while the level of government services was only seen to decline. Raising taxes further is never a popular move, but without more cash Labour's traditional approach of pumping money into the NHS or education has no possibility. Starmer could be bold on areas related to productivity, housing, pensions, or immigration, but there's just zero sign he'll do so. Labour's vote is brittle and the remaining Tories are already looking to 2029 as a good chance to regain power.
Zero Seats fails to materialize
On the Tory side, things are looking pretty good. Which is to say, it's a terrible result for them but far less damaging than some polls indicated. Talks of not even being the official opposition or being taken over by Reform look like pure fantasy now. It's a blow for right wingers, who had hoped to expel the more moderate elements, and there's a good chance the next leader will be another neoliberal.
4 seats for Reform is not a terrible result under First Past the Post, but with initial exit polls giving them as many as 13 it will look disappointing in the morning light. Farage is in parliament at the 7th time of asking, but the rules of the commons can be quite effective at muzzling troublesome voices - if you don't get called upon by the speaker, then you cannot participate unless you are the official opposition.
FPTP looks increasingly ill-suited
Reform's 4 seats came from 14% of the vote. This is double the vote share of the Green's but both ended with the same number of seats. The Lib Dems received only 12% but ended with 65 more seats than either. The major parties had little enthusiasm but still managed to shut out the smaller guys, but the distribution of seats looks increasingly ridiculous as more third parties start to gather support.
With the left expelled from Labour and the Tory party avoiding a Reform merge, the hope now for left and right wingers is that 2029 might spell the end for FPTP in a hung parliament situation.
Scottish nationalism crumbles, but rises for Welsh and Irish republicans
The best result of the night surely goes to Scotland, who were able to mostly expel the utterly atrocious SNP. For a long time, the Scottish nationalists coasted along on independence sentiment and being "not the Tories". This masked the fact that on practically every devolved measure, they underperformed even the disastrous UK government. Labour's weakness does offer them a glimmer of hope, but with independence sidelined it's hard to see a way back to their previous strengths for a generation.
Wales saw the reverse, with their nationalist party, Plaid Cymru, gaining 2 more seats. Welsh nationalism and independence are far less popular than the Scottish varieties ever were, but the SNP came to the fore by slowly building up support, and perhaps the same will work for Plaid?
Northern Ireland remains a basket case. The republican party, Sinn Fein, has become the largest in their government, but not through gaining seats. Instead the main unionist party, the DUP, lost seats to other challengers. You'll probably see some xitter users proclaiming that results show a rise in republicanism due to Sinn Fein being the largest party, but the reality is a lot of the results appear to be down to petty squabbles related to power sharing and other administration-related issues.
All that's left now is to see what Labour can do. Given the US and right wing slants of the Motte, I doubt we have more than 1 or 2 Labour voters here, but if any are out there it will be interesting to hear their thoughts
Kudos to the author for writing a top notch post.
One mitigating factor here is that Labour consciously sacrificed vote share by making policy declarations that would allow them to win in the constituencies they needed to pick up. The Corbyn strategy of loading the manifesto with pledges popular with their base saw them pile up enormous majorities in urban centres whilst leaving swathes of middle England a few % out of reach. Hopefully Starmer's pragmatism will extend to his premiership.
I voted Labour and really hope we do see some decisive action. Starmer has clearly been tight lipped on policy details as part of his campaign strategy so it'll be interesting to see how things pan out. House of Lords reform is a near certainty but hopefully we'll see ambition in other areas.
Personally, I'd love to see him crush the NIMBY malaise, bulldoze the greenbelt and get infrastructure and housing being built once again. Significant investment in nuclear power would also be fantastic.
The game theory is quite fun here I think. The Labour and Tory parties are committed to FPTP in part because changing to a PR system would inevitably result in schisms within their own parties. Unity is only maintained by the knowledge that breaking away leads to near certain electoral death.
I hope one day the somewhat sensible Alliance party can grow into being a serious party of regional government.
Apologies if I'm misrepresenting your preferred policies, but the constant insistence that we need to build more annoys me. I grew up in quite a nice part of the countryside. How about we leave that the way it is, and we don't import 600,000 people every year? The population of native British people is shrinking - we don't have a housing crisis, we have an immigration crisis and an economy that encourages treating shelter as an asset.
Infrastructure and nuclear, granted, we need.
Something that seems to be neglected in NIMBY discourse: there's no reason beauty and building have to be mutually exclusive!
We are a far richer and mightier civilisation than the one that actually built all the pleasant Cotswolds stone villages and so on! There is absolutely no reason we couldn't build enough housing in a way that was actively aesthetically pleasing - possibly at greater cost than horrible concrete, but nothing compared to the effective cost of building being mostly illegal - if we wanted to.
Of course, we'd have to turn the architectural establishment on its head, but we should do that anyway. I propose an Ugly Tax.
In theory, I agree. The conservatives tried it with the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission but like so much else they failed to follow through. The head of the Commission (Sir Roger Scruton, the UK's equivalent of Thomas Sowell) was monstered on twitter using misrepresented quotes and the 'moderate' wing of the Conservatives instantly fired him (within five hours of the first tweet). I remain flabbergasted by the sheer wasted potential of the last 5 years of Tory government.
If Labour picked up the program, I would still argue for getting the population under control before doing lots of building, but I would be much happier with a proposed building spree.
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