I am not alone in noticing how widespread, but decidedly shallow, support for Labour was in this election.
It was, in fact, much worse than expected. This was the final poll tracker from the BBC:
The actual result with one seat (which will go to the LibDems) to be announced:
Labour did not get the 39 per cent or more anticipated level of support. It only got 34 per cent.
Incredibly, the Tories had a final bounce.
Reform did not do as well as expected.
Smaller parties and independents did do much better than expected.
The result is a horribly skewed parliamentary representation.
That left me struggling for a metaphor. The best I can come up with is of Labour being possessed of a puddle of support. And, like a puddle, a very little has gone a long way.
There might be a veneer of support, and even the appearance of that being widespread. However, because the reality is that this puddle is vey shallow, that support is going to evaporate very quickly. It will rapidly lose both breadth and depth. Before long it might not even be there at all, and we might wonder what this was all about.
That is what I think is going to happen.
There may be trouble for Labour ahead. And if there is, it will be all of their own making.
They should enjoy their summer. To quote Irving Berlin:
There may be trouble ahead
But while there's moonlight
And music and love and romance
Let's face the music and dance
Before the fiddlers have fled
Before they ask us to pay the bill
And while we still have the chance
Let's face the music and dance
Soon, we'll be without the moon
Humming a different tune and then
There may be tear drops to shed
So while there's moonlight
And music and love and romance
Let's face the music and dance
Let's face the music and dance
Soon, we'll be without the moon
Humming a different tune and then
There may be tear drops to shed
So while there's moonlight
And music and love and romance
Let's face the music and dance
Let's face the music and dance
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I could not agree more….should start taking bets on an early general election as they implode. With Rachel Reeves, Wes Streeting and rest of the gang in place we can only hope and pray for our country.
On the contrary, I think they’ll hold on for five years once support has dropped. Hoping the can scrap it back.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiqbJ0Gtb44 . Bad Moon Rising.
LINO had fewer people voting for it than in 2019 under Corbyn. A reality that hopefully will not have escaped Starmer & Co. But I rather doubt they will want this highlighted.
Not been able to do it yet, but there are a significant number of LINO seats where the deciding factor was Reform. Again, the Tories will have seen & noted this. So yes shallow – & the puddle will start to evaporate real quick – to stick with the metaphore.
The Tories lost the election because of a combo of being off-the-rails and Reform. LION did not win the election due to ideas/proposals – because there were none & the overall mood-music was Tory policies with a smile – not a snarl.
Politico had an OK analysis of what went wrong for the Tories – Sunak failed to pull together an experienced election team – thought he could do it himself with a hand-picked bunch of amateurs. https://www.politico.eu/article/tory-election-campaign-timeline-rishi-sunak-conservative-party-uk-election/
So he got what he deserved. Should never have been in politics – probably the worst PM ever (in fairness Truss is/was mad & thus at least has an excuse – no so the erm membership that picked her).
Support for Labour has been on a down trend since 2017. 2017 12.8 million votes, 2019 10.2 million votes, 2024 9.6 million votes and the total electorate is not shrinking.
There is a tendency for politicians to feel that even if they have won by only one vote they have a mandate to do whatever they please. However there will be many Labour MPs who are acutely aware of the shallowness of their puddle. How this affects their behaviour will largely depend on what party came second in their constituency. For instance, if was a Green or an Independent it might drive them more to the left, whereas if it was a Tory it might drive them more to the right.
This seems to be the trend of post Brexit politics. MPs are looking over their shoulders at what their constituents think, one eye on the policy handed to them from the party leadership, doubts about their own political beliefs and a mind focused on their personnel ambitions.
Do you really think that any of the Conservative politicians in the last parliament gave one second’s thought to what their constituents thought? Or most of the Labour ones either?
With such a large majority, there is the possibility that many of the ‘unlikely’ winning Labour MPs on Thursday will soon realise that theirs will be only a four/five-year tenure before losing their seat at the next General Election.
Result: the awkward squad will soon emerge, two fingers raised to the party whips, and party discipline become frayed. That could lead to the possibility, which sadly I doubt, that Labour reject neo/con/lib economic theory and genuinely serve the needs of the nation.
The other issue for Labour if it ditched its current stances on upholding neo/con/lib theory and on tax raising would be to open the way to proper funding of the nation’s needs. But constitutionally, if this varied from Labour’s 2024 election manifesto, it would open the door for the House of Lords to make mincemeat of any such Bills coming before their House.
I hope you are right
Most interesting. Owen Jones has an interesting qualitative piece in the Grauniad today which is a great counterparty to this analysis, and I find the combination of both these leaves me more hopeful than anything of the last 24 hours.
Owen posits that where people did engage with the electoral process they were in many cases looking for alternatives – especially where Labour were taking the left vote for granted. That can only grow, as you have highlighted in your blog recently, over 50% of the public are left of centre in the policies they want.
My sense is that those of us left of centre and activists in particular, need to ensure that instead of the image Starmer’s Labour will present about being a new broom and being fiscally responsible, we emphasise to friends, colleagues, neighbours, relatives that what the country got was Blair, Mandleson and Blackrock. We inform them of what that will mean and what to look out for – ie the privatisation of everything in the commons – better explanations of those SEZs and Freeports and the dangers those present. And that level of engagement has to start now without criticising people’s choices in this last election.
An informed electorate will be far more dangerous to Starmer’s Labour than the chief exec of Reform Ltd could ever be.
I must read him
In a nutshell Owen Jones is saying that now the incompetent and venial Tories have been ditched Starmer’s administration have got to prove they’re not simply yet another sociopathic politician re-run. On the evidence so far Starmer and his team don’t look capable of doing this!
It is a good article.
On a related note, I saw a BBC prog – talking heads on the election – one was the Tory (Montgomery), Mick Lynch and a smarmy Mandelson – Lynch cut Mandelson dead. LINO faces not just the Greens but also organised labour – which, quite rightly is more interested in being paid fairly than the cretinous excuses given by Starmer/Reeves and other LINO people. Thus an autumn of “you will pay us or strikes” will kick off LINOs government. I am confident that Starmers authoritarian instincts will get the better of him. We shall see.
Starmer “changed” the Labour Party with the aim of making it more attractive to voters; “If you don’t like what I’ve done, the door is open, and you can leave”.
Three million less people voted for Starmer than Corbyn. Labour won because Tory voters switched to Reform, the Lib Dems and elsewhere:
Share of the vote (UK)
☑️2017 Corbyn 12,877,918 votes
☑️2019 Corbyn 10,269,051 votes
☑️2024 Starmer 9,634,399 votes
Starmer himself has been steadily losing votes, he’s not popular:
Holborn and St Pancras
☑️2017 Starmer 41,343
☑️2019 Starmer 36,641 (Drop of 5%)
☑️2024 Starmer 18,884 (Further drop of 15%)
Labour won the 2024 in spite of Starmer, not because of him.
Labour won because the Tories vote was decimated.
Some of that data may be blogged
But I am very tired today
A huge majority of seats based on a third of 60% – that is, just a fifth – of the registered voters (about one in seven of the total population). It is obscene.
How quickly can the Conservatives turn themselves around? Can Reform exploit their new platform in Parliament (and in the media, and online)? Might the Lib Dems outflank Labour on the left?
And what is a Labour actually going to do to improve peoples lives?
You needed to mention the Freens
Otherwise, agreed
Good point. I should have mentioned the Greens (or Freens(!)) alongside the Lib Dems as potentially outflanking Labour in the left. That said, although they reached four seats, I just don’t think the Greens are on the cusp of breaking though. They and the Lib Dems might just fall back next time. The current electoral system just kills smaller parties with widespread support unless they focus ruthlessly on a small number of constituencies.
I could also have mentioned the SNP and Plaid, but independence seems to be off the agenda for the time being and their representation is also small.
More important but getting little attention is Sinn Fein on seven seats, the SDLP on two, and the Alliance on one, so the unionists again are in the minority. The hardline unionists seems to be radicalising and fracturing again – DUP to TUV and an independent. The writing is on the wall. Not today and not tomorrow but sometime soon the call for a border poll is going to become irresistible.
Independence is not off the agenda
PC did really well
The SNP and Scottish independence are not synonymous
Boris Johnson held only 24% total electorate’s vote to produce an 80 seat majority, produce a disastrous Brexit, lose control of the Home Office, the immigration issues, and become an corrupt immovable obstacle until 2024, when the country had already long deserted the Conservative government; all only achieved because of FPTP. And now it is happening again. Locked in until 2029 wth a giant majority, no matter what – because our politics is tyrannised by a Westminster Cartel founded and maintained solely through FPTP. We are defeated at the starting gate, yet again. It survives only because the electorate and politicians pretending to each other they believe in “change”. They are all telling porkies. We keep doing the same self destructive act, because they are all terrified of change. That is the fact lurking in the shadows here. Change – my foot.
Starmer didn’t win anything. He just didn’t lose as badly as the rest of the right wing did. Changing tack, it’s very depressing to see that, even after the last 14 years with all the damage done, there are still a significant number of people who believe it in their best interest to vote Tory. Too many people are in love with misery in this country.
This is the real distorting corruption of politics induced by FPTP. It can only produce a Westminster Cartel, which is what we have. It is critical that this is the change we demand, because the system serves the 21st century conditions so badly, this corrupt distortion can only lurch in mor and more extreme and unjust ways, just to ensure the Cartel survives
Hi Richard,
My feeling is simply this, unless the LP changes course, and quickly, the UK will have it’s very own ‘Macron’ moment in a few years time.
If Labour has left itself with a puddle…
Is that beautiful rainbow sheen we see simply the veneer of a fossil fuel?
“Reform did not do as well as expected.”
are you being serious? they got more votes than the Lib Dems!! Fair enough 5 seats isn’t the near 100 they would have got under PR but you but be the only person on the planet who thinks they underachieved!!! It was incredible they got so many votes.
They did not do as the exit poll predicted
My comment was justified
Starmer has been pushed to change his mind on Diane Abbott and on Gaza.
This leads me to hope he can be pushed to the left now.
As for the next election what is needed is to educate people and involve the large number who don’t vote.
Hopefully the Unions will exert influence.
I think the Tories were lazy as well as defending an elite. Therefore if Labour are competent and diligent they can get a lot done to help people.
But aren’t Fred and Ginge a delight to watch, unlike Starver…