Thanks.
Coming up to 3am and the results are starting to roll in at a proper frequency now. The Economist is running a live forecast which is showing the expected seats. Not much change from the exit poll so far but the night is young.
Because the Conservatives didn’t give those people what they wanted. They promised an end to all of the immigrants, but keeping all of the sweet EU trade deals. They delivered an end to all of the sweet EU trade deals, but kept the immigrants.
Although the centre left is going to be a dominant force, the centre right is being absolutely decimated. The only Tories hanging on seem to be the right wingers and all the (vaguely) talented moderates are losing. The moderates were already a diminishing force in the party but now it seems inevitable that the Conservative Party will lurch further to the right.
The SNP meanwhile might end up with only 6 seats. A hammer blow to the independence movement.
Looks like Farage won his race and will sit in the next Parlaiment.
Labour have just gained the 326 seat required to win.
At this exact moment:
Labour - 335
Conservative - 72
Lib Dem - 45
others - 31
It’s because of the crapulous electoral system. There’s only a tenuous relationship between the number of votes cast for a party and the number seats it secures, and the system typically delivers a large majority of seats to a party that the majority of voters have rejected. A fall in a party’s vote share not uncommonly goes along with a rise the number of seats the party wins, and vice versa.
What the system does fairly reliably deliver is a majority of seats to whichever party gets the most votes, even if (as is usual) that’s only a minority of votes. So, last time round, the Tory party, with 44% of the vote, was awarded 56% of the seats.
The system does this by tending to under-represent all other parties. Pretty much the only way a party (that doesn’t secure a majority of votes) can hope to counter this under-representation is by having its vote concentrated in a particular region or regions where it can hope to get more votes than any other single party — hence in 2019 the Scottish National Party, with 4% of the vote, won 7.5% of the seats, because its vote was heavily concentrated in Scotland, where it won more votes than any other single party — it won 45% of the Scottish vote, but 80% of the Scottish seats.
The Tories’ problem now is that their vote is not regionally concentrated — they are not the largest party in the UK as a whole, or in any country or region of the UK. So the system will crucify them, but only in the same way that it regularly crucifies many other parties.
Exactly. As is normal for Right Wing Populists they made bad promises “Brexit will give us so much money we can fully fund and fix the NHS!” and blamed the immigrants, appealing to xenophobia of the masses.
In my constituency, Labour have won the seat, but depressingly, Reform and the Tories won slightly over half the vote between them. What is wrong with people?
As to the wider point about First Past The Post, even though I backed the winning horse I agree it is ludicrous that Labour may get around 60% representation in Larliament, despite securing less than 40% of the vote.
(Surely privately Starmer will be disappointed and a little concerned about their % share being lower than forecast).
Looking over some results this morning, it seems Labour haven’t actually increased the number of people voting for them so much, but the Tories have lost votes to Reform and the lower turnout. But they’ve done that everywhere, and so dropped below labour support.
And Truss is gone! Beaten by Labour, not a lettuce (no jokes please), this time.
As a dual American / Irish whose lived in the UK nigh on 8 years this is a splendid win for the country.
I voted Lib Dem and my guy came in 2nd within 1,600 votes of defeating a Tory who’d been considered a “lock” 36.6% - 33.5%. He ain’t a lock anymore!
I fucking hate Nigel Farage and while I have no problem with the local candidate his Reform party were spoilers here in North Dorset and I reckon in a lot of places that kept many Tory “locks” eeking out wins.
ETA: Yeah I know Reform are right wingers so maybe they’d have gone Tory anyway yet I won’t take back hating Fucking Farage.
The loss of Penny Mordaunt is likely to have a big impact on the Conservative Party. It is the general view that Sunak will resign and fuck off to California (where his next job will be in cyber) at the earliest possible opportunity, and Mordaunt was looking like the leader presumptive.
One wonders if this will result in Patel or Braverman being elevated to party leader but if so it won’t do them any favors either with the wider public or the internal factions. I suppose they could always bring back Boris if he’s still around.
What I suspect we’ll see is chaos in Reform now that they are in Parliament and have to do the work - multiple factions amongst their tiny group, Nigel not turning up (his attendance as an MEP was appalling), defections, scandals, by-elections…and it will all be the fault of the EU and immigrants.
I’m in a long-term traditionally Labour stronghold in East London, so it was hardly surprising that the sitting Labour MP was returned. But she has had problems with factional strife within her constituency party, and this has a strongly pro-Palestinian Muslim community not impressed with the Labour leadership’s response to Gaza.
Turnout was barely over 50%, and the big surprise was that the Green candidate came second, as they did in a neighbouring constituency, and some way ahead of the Tories, an independent and the LibDems. Reform and the Workers Party (George Galloway fan club) came way behind, thank goodness (and I see GG is likewise out on his ear).
And so is Rees-Mogg (aka Lord Snooty), I see.
The exit poll was broadly correct on the number of Labour MPs. Heading for 413 now against the forecast of 410.
I hope this result actually means things will change. Last time Labour was in power it all went pear shaped with dumb decisions over wars, and they lost their chance. I hope lessons have been learned, but I suspect they have not.
Is there any significance to the geographical placement of the constituencies that Reform won? Three of them are on the east coast - not actually where the immigrants and refugees are landing in their boats - crossing the North Sea in a rubber dinghy isn’t all that practical, but is this something the citizens of Clacton, Skegness and Great Yarmouth have been made to fear?
No, it’s more to do with long-term economic decline in those areas (as elsewhere in former industrial and manufacturing towns, hence Boris Johnson’s proclaimed ambition for ‘levelling up’, which didn’t really).
Fishing and tourism have been in long-term decline in many of those seaside places, and spare capacity in hotels and B&Bs made property cheaper for parking the already poor and homeless from London, also asylum-seekers, plus farming in the East Midlands uses a lot of seasonal workers from overseas who don’t exactly get much opportunity to settle and integrate. These constituencies have some of the highest concentrations of poverty in the country