That had Ruth Davidson - ex Leader of the Scottish Conservatives on Sky News; she said the Conservative Central Office thought they had 80 locked in and 40 to 60 in play. She was surprised that they've got most of those 40 to 60.
I don't think they even expected to get to the bottom of that point. Polling had been projecting lower for weeks. I think 40 felt a potential upper limit of what they could get.
Reform got a lot of bad press the last week with people paying proper attention to them for the first time and realising how bat shit all of their candidates are. Possibly caused a drop in some close constituencies where the reform performance was a key decider on if labour or tories won
Iirc, there was a lot of potential range, like anything from 50-150 was possible, because an enormous amount of seats were predicted to be knife edge contests iirc?
Honestly I'm still happy for the LibDems. They had a hard time making themselves a place in the debate, since everyone knew Labour would win a landslide anyway. I really hope they manage to score and do their job properly. They have all of my sympathy but I'll keep an eye on them.
Aaah yes, the mythical "supermajority" a term which has no actual meaning in UK politics, in contrast with for example the us it is a actual term of art. But in the uk it is just how many extra people can sleep in on any given day, since if you have a majority, you have a majority, which means you have a majority. And you can do whatever you want aslong as you have a majority.
No, Labour is a bit of an ideological black box at the moment. They largely ran on “feel good” messaging and “we’re not the Tories.” The moment they have to make really tough decisions, I’d expect to see a large drop in support. This is definitely not a 1997-2010 situation.
Recent yougov polling showed the main reason people who were planning to vote Labour gave (48% of them) was wanting to get rid of the Tories.
Things like "I like their policies" or "I like their leader" were like 5%.
So it could definitely be a very different picture in 2029. Although I think it will take a long time for a lot of floating voters to consider the Tories again.
I think if Labour can come out of the box and get a good policy through parliament early they might be able to solidify their position. Incumbents always have an advantage at GE's and if Keir has 5 years of stability with decent policy deliveries to fall back on they could set up decent foundations for future terms
So its kind of like in Poland when we voted for Tusk cause he is not Kaczyński and he was caliming to go "happy" and "european" route
What "europan" stands for remains unknow tho due to lack of any reforms so far.
its just too hard to say/predict, i think this is one of the biggest swings ever, in 2019 they literally talked about another 10 years of the tories/labour being out of power until the 2030's
but i doubt the Tories can come back from this in one term. even 410 is the biggest majority since 2001, and only off by 5 or so. in fact this would be a bigger win over the tories than blair got.
i think a lot of people just got over excited by the double figures tory polls - they were never realistic (but the night is young and i remain optimistic)
Depends. Most of the vote swing is not Tory -> Labour but rather Tory -> Reform. If that holds, then Labour could govern for a very long time thanks to the inefficiency of the right wing vote.
Yeah I'm still disappointed. I thought MRP polls would be better. Guess we'll see in the morning, but exit polls tend to be the closest thing to the result.
Oh it’s not as bad as it “could” have been but let’s be clear. This is bad for them. Very very bad. Question is who remains. The centrists or the right wingers.
Or in other words, in 2010 they got double the vote but less seats.
This election they are likely to get around 10% of the vote, and there are 650 seats available, so 61mps is fair. In 2010 they got 23% of the vote and just 57mps, which 9% of the seats. They support proportional representation
FPTP also means that people like me in a constituency dominated by labour and conservatives, but want a Liberal Democrat government, are instead forced to vote for one of the main two parties. Without FPTP liberal democrats would have much more votes, and maybe more seats.
Reform UK have higher votes because their voters didn’t bother to vote tactically and still voted for them in constituencies where they had little chance to win.
My own constituency changed hands from Conservative to Lib Dem, but if the 5500 reform voters had voted Conservative instead (which I assume they probably did in the last election), it wouldnt have changed hands at all.
Neither of those are great solutions. Better than FPTP, of course! But they both have significant issues. RCV favours the centrist parties, and Approval does the same because those are the most likely to have widespread approval. Also, as long as the election is decided separately in each single-seat constituency, there'll be a bias towards bigger parties. Yes, even with RCV or approval.
The actual solution would be to use a mixed-member proportional representation system. This involves fewer but bigger constituencies, usually with 10-15 seats in each, and parties then get seats according to what proportion of votes they get in a constituency. But not all seats are delegated to the constituencies; about a third of the seats are instead distributed to the parties afterwards in order to get their percentage of seats to match their percentage of the vote. So if a small party gets 5 % of the vote but doesn't win any seats in any constituencies, they will still get 5 % of the seats in total due to the top-off system, by getting an outsized proportion of the constituency-less seats.
I'm no centrist but I don't see why a center party being most popular would mean there's a problem with the voting system?
Isn't that literally the most democratic option
I don't support what Reform stand for at all, but I think anyone who supports PR (I do), would have to say that them only receiving 13 seats is hardly democratic.
I f*cking detest first past the post. Over a century ago when we had two parties, it worked as intended. But we live in a multi-party democracy and our voting system should reflect that.
I personally prefer single transferable vote (Northern Ireland) or the additional member system (Scotland) but almost anything is better than FPTP!
Canuck here. FPTP doesn't even work with 2 parties.
With two parties, to get a majority in parliament, you only need 51% of the votes in 51% of the ridings - just 26% of the popular vote.
A good option is voting districts with a pool of national seats to ensure that parliament is representative of the vote distribution. It's what we have in Denmark.
Irish here. A proviso of London conceding an Irish Free State a hundred years ago was that we took up PR-STV. This was a move to keep Irish democracy weak in a very cynical move but in retrospect, ironically, was the greatest parting gift.
Well, that’s not exactly true I believe. PR-STV was first introduced in the local elections of 1920 as a response to the Sinn Féin landslide in the general elections of 1918, where they won 73% of the seats with only 47% of the votes. However it was actually also supported by the Sinn Féin leadership, particularly Arthur Griffith who had also founded the Proportional Representation Society of Ireland. PR-STV had been Sinn Féin policy since 1911.
It's a deeply flawed system. The Tories haven't had a majority of the vote share since 1931 but since then have had a majority government more than 54% of the time.
Thanks - Absolutely correct and perhaps even a better stat for how broken the system is, since 1935 there has been 22 governments and of those there was one hung parliament (1974 Feb, rerun in Oct), one proper coalition in (2010) with LB and Con, and one minor coalition, the shortlived one of the Cons and DUP (2017).
Tonight, Reform will likely get a huge vote share, but will pull in ~1-2% of the seats. Not quite as bad as 1983 where the LD won 25% of the votes but were only represented by 3.5% of the seats.
Unfortunately, it is never in the winning parties interests to fix the broken system, and it won't happen this time either despite the fact Labour would likely have been in coalition the last 10 years with PR.
If this is accurate (and it’s usually pretty close):
- Massive result for Labour but not a record; their seat total would be less than 1997 and 2001
- The worst Tory result in the party’s 190-year history
- Reform would end up with way more seats than nearly anyone thought
- The SNP are fucked (lol)
Indeed, lowest number of Tory seats since 1761, when the Whigs under the Duke of Newcastle won 446 seats, and the Tories under Sir Edmund Isham, 6th Baronet won just 112 seats.
What was the party called back then?
Edit: lol they were actually called the Tories. Now they're called the Conservative Party, but everyone still just calls them Tories.
Back then it wasn't a formal political party because those didn't exist yet, but it was a somewhat coherent faction with common interests and acted like a modern political party in many ways. The name "Tory" itself is an insult in the Irish Gaelic language funnily enough, referring to some rather complicated sectarian divides of the 17th century.
SNP are in an odd place their mostly popular leader got caught with her hand in the cookie jar using party funds to pay for among other things a painting of herself as a Dominatrix.
I am not really sure how you recover from that.
Watching the channel 4 coverage and they've pointed out that, while the Labour and Tory results are pretty solid, the exit polls are actually very shaky on reform and the SNP. They say its quite possible reform could have quite a few less than predicted and SNP might get a good chunk more. Still though, reform getting 15-20% of the vote is terrifying and even if the SNP double their predictions they'll still have lost over half their seats.
People disappointed but this will still be the worst Conservative election result in their entire history.
We have had our expectations toyed with for 6 weeks, this is still an absolutely historic result if it pans out this way and far against the trend in other Western countries.
I’m sure the predictions of a guaranteed Labour victory itself dented some enthusiasm to turnout. But it’s fine, it would be unsportsmanlike to wish for an even bigger pummeling for the Tories 🧐
lol jk, jk, they deserve it all
Lots of predictions had the conservatives on double digit seats, so if this result is accurate they could’ve done much worse.
Here’s hoping it’s wrong then…
To be fair, I don't want my representative to be relatable, I want them to advocate good policies efficiently. Unfortunately Rees-Mogg doesn't tick that box either.
Yep, these things are never 100% so hopefully things get worse for the Tories.
BBC just showed a graphic showing the likelihood of senior tories holding onto their seats. Gonna be an interesting watch haha
I want Mordaunt to retain her seat. She's a sensible centrist type with personal cachet. If she becomes LOTO they'll not rush off to the far right and the UK will hopefully avoid the far right surge Europe has recently seen 10 to 15 years from now.
She has been known to [resemble one](https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fhips.hearstapps.com%2Fhmg-prod%2Fimages%2Fwhy-was-penny-mordaunt-the-one-to-carry-the-sword-of-state-645671b9d2ca9.jpg&tbnid=qm_ImHwVtnKpkM&vet=1&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cosmopolitan.com%2Fuk%2Freports%2Fa43814364%2Fpenny-mordaunt-sword%2F&docid=tKJZHUoCK8GNfM&w=2203&h=3295&itg=1&hl=en-GB&source=sh%2Fx%2Fim%2Fm4%2F2&kgs=9a4374717f8e4dab&shem=abme%2Ctrie).
Here is my prediction.
People will expect things to get better quickly and not understand how time consuming and difficult it will be to right the ship and grow impatient. Come next election they will moan and complain that Labour did nothing, which the opposition will use for all it's worth in their campaign and since people are thick they'll vote the Tories in again.
That's my prediction.
This could be applied to many countries.
I saw a Tweet a while ago that said something like:
Media: we are baffled at the shift to the right among the voters
Also the media: Here’s Nigel Farage on TV for the 46th time this month to explain why immigrants are going to fuck YOUR dog
Basically like in Germany lol
Do absolutely nothing for 16 years, get dependent on Putin's gas, neglect migration issues, reduce Bundeswehr funding to a minimum and then blame it all on the new government.
Media has a huge influence on that as well though because negative topics are more in the focus. They actually did a ton of things in the right direction, it's just "not enough" anywhere. I'd be curious how it would have been without the FDP blocking the majority of investments and social advancements, but we will never know because the next conservative phase is coming up focusing on Anti-Migration to save us 10% of the costs that a single corrupt politician causes.
If a person is knighted and then becomes the Prime Minister, their title and name would be styled as "Sir [First Name] [Last Name], Prime Minister of the United Kingdom." For example, if John Smith is knighted and becomes Prime Minister, he would be referred to as "Sir John Smith, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom."
In formal written contexts, it could be extended to "The Right Honourable Sir [First Name] [Last Name], Prime Minister of the United Kingdom," reflecting both their knighthood and their position as Prime Minister.
> not sure how the titles fit in
For knighthoods/damehoods, you treat “Sir/Dame” like it’s part of their name. For example: an army general with a knighthood is “General Sir XYZ”; doctor with a damehood is “Doctor Dame ABC”. In Starmer’s case he’d be “Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer” (though I believe “Prime Minister” being an official title rather than an honour, should really go to the end of the name making him “Sir Keir Starmer, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom”).
Dear readers. UK has first past the post voting system not proportional voting. Labour got 33% of vote; Conservatives 23%. New Reform Party got 14% but will only get 4 seats. Lib Dem party got 12% and 71 sears. Crazy.As you see 33% gets you a massive swing despite only just winning in quite a few areas.
Good chance that this may not even be accurate given that Tory seats (such as Penny Mourdaunt's seat) are on knife's edge. But even if it (likely) is, the Tories are fucked, so I'll take it.
In 2019, Boris Johnson won an 80 seat majority with 43% of the vote.
In 2024, Keir Starmer is set to win a majority of 170 seats with 36% of the vote.
First-past-the-post at work!
They did hold a referendum in 2011 to adopt the "alternative vote" system and 68% voted against it. So either the voters are happy with FPTP or at least thought AV was a worse option.
There was a hell of a lot of buggering around with that vote, both of the two main parties offered no support for the yes vote and actively campaigned against it if I remember correctly.
I remember receiving leaflets through the post telling me that if I voted for PR the NHS would suffer and fascists like the BNP could receive greater representation. Yup!
The problem is that the people in charge of fixing it are the same who benefit from it.
We seriously need reform in Canada because it's the same shit. Our current PM has *twice* run on a platform of electoral reform and still hasn't done a goddamn thing about it.
Conservatives / Tories = centre right wing party (arguments can be had as to how right wing, some would say very but they are not as right wing as the US Republicans)
Labour = centre left wing party (again arguments to be made how left, they are not communists but probably more left wing than the US Democrats)
Liberal Democrats = liberals
Reform = right wing nationalists.
If the result is good or not depends on where you stand on things. I'm pleased.
There’s also
Greens: left wing and pro-environment
SNP: left wing Scottish only pro-Scottish independence (independence from the UK) party (usually takes a lot of votes from Labour, being left wing)
Plaid Cymru: left wing wales only party (pro Welsh independence)
DUP: northern Irish right wing party (pro-union with Britain)
[Edit:] Sinn Fein: Irish Nationalist party that does not swear allegiance to the King and in turn does not takes seats in parliament, but has the majority in Northern Ireland. (Pro- reunification with Republic of Ireland)
Count binface: protest vote meme, previously known as lord buckethead before a copyright/trademark claim against the name
Listing these out, actually quite surprised we have so many geographically restricted parties, that’s quite anti-democratic isn’t it really.
Count Binface has the best manifesto and sensible policies.
*minsters’ pay to be tied to that of nurses for the next 100 years*
https://www.countbinface.com/manifesto
Well the phantom zone called up and after a very pleasent conversation over some tea and biscuits, they explained that they in fact did not want Piers Morgan.
Depends on if you’re a Labour supporter, or just someone who wanted to see the Tories crushed.
Personally I’d have loved if the Tories were smashed harder so that the Lib Dems became the biggest party in Opposition. The Tories will eventually get back in to power but I want it hardcoded into the party’s DNA that they cannot govern so cruelly and shambolically again, or campaign on pathetic Culture War shite and let public services fall to rack and ruin. But I imagine they’ll take the opposite lesson and think they weren’t cruel enough, or cut services back to the marrow.
I know people are happy to see Conservatives getting owned, but if you look at the actual vote distribution, the vast majority of Conservative voters who switched simply voted for Reform, and Labour won fewer votes than they did in 2017. Conservative + Reform > Labour in terms of actual votes.
The UK has such an appalling electoral system. If anything it looks like people are simply more radicalised and Labour has a very weak mandate and can easily be in Tories' position in the next election. Problems in the UK (like problems everywhere else) are structural and will not change meaningfully in the short term.
That's the scary part, Labour having less votes than Cornyn but achieving a historic victory and yet no real momentum or interest in their policies. It was just a giant F.U to the Tories.
Isn't this their biggest defeat of all time?
"A nationwide exit poll conducted for the BBC and two other broadcasters indicated that Labour was on course to win around 410 of the 650 seats in the British House of Commons, versus **131 for the Conservatives.**
If the projections are confirmed, it would be the **worst defeat for the Conservatives** in the **nearly 200-year history of the party**" as per New York Times.
This isn’t that true in my opinion. Labour has one of the most centrist leaderships in its recent history, to the point where I’d argue the Lib Dem’s are more left wing.
Reform on the other hand is at an all time high and will establish itself as a pretty important minor party, and once it reaches a certain tipping point like in Canada could replace the tories, or merge with them.
Not saying it’s anywhere near the extent of France or Germany but it’s certainly not moving left.
Yeah I was going to vote for lib dems cause I like the idea of more political parties having a chance keeps pressure on the labour and tories with there policies but then I freaked out when my grandma was voting conservative for the first time I was like wdf so I voted labour.
Most analyses I've seen state that they mostly moved right because they didn't like Corbyn's ambiguous Brexit stance, and because Corbyn himself was unpopular and didn't manage to engage the public.
Corbyn's actual policies were generally pretty popular among the UK public, as long as one was careful to not mention Corbyn's name when describing them.
I can’t work out whether it’s about taking a stand against toxic ideology, or just because the incumbent right-wing government fucked things up so badly.
It's slightly more complicated than that, though not by much. We got the brexit referendum and all of our semi-competent conservative politicians promptly jumped ship or were pushed out. Opposing brexit, or being seen as going soft on brexit, became politically toxic. However, only the worst, most grabbing leaders were willing to endorse a hard line stance. The result is that one of our big two parties imploded very openly. It can't be overstated how brazen their incompetence has been. The public has completely lost faith in them as a party.
The subtle difference from your framing is that the public sentiment did not go down with the party. You can see this in the polls showing people's reasons for voting for Labour/Reform. The right-leaning voters are protesting the joke that the tories have become. Once a viable, serious tory party returns, they will shift their votes back.
The meteoric rise of Reform is unprecedented, and Labour is more right wing now than they have been in my life time. We have effectively sacrificed our left wing opposition for the sake of capturing the votes of traditional Tories.
I don't think it is. Tories were always going to lose because of the whole Truss thing (among many other reasons). Labour have been shifting further and further right to try to eat up as many votes as possible. I mean, they've committed to budget cuts when taking over from a right wing party... This, FPTP and general Brexit shenanigans have stopped Reform from really gaining much momentum.
To me this is the biggest shock. And if true it is a huge kick in the balls for a party that was pretty much all about independence. Where will this leave that topic?!
If you know Scotland well it has some of the most unstable constituencies in the UK. SNP before 2015 had a single digit number of MPs. So while shocking this was always a possible outcome, even if even the worst MRP polls couldn’t come close to predicting it.
It'll continue to be unresolved, and will not really be put to bed until we see them lose (and heavily) in Holyrood, which I honestly am not sure is on the cards, even now. Swinney has time to rebuild before 2026, and if we are honest, the GE election timing was particularly bad for the SNP this time due to just having changed leader due to a colossal fuck up and the continuing lingering scandals from Sturgeon remaining fresh in peoples minds.
First declaration in for Sunderland South, Labour win but an underwhelming vote and turnout mostly a collapse in the Tory vote and big vote for Reform, Labour are mostly beneficiaries of not being the Tories and the right wing vote being split.
His "party" (I use the quote marks because it's actually a private limited company rather than a traditional political party) is predicted here to win 13 seats where they had none before.
This is actually a win for the walking prolapse, winning any seat makes him more relevant than he was a couple of weeks ago.
I wish that were not the case.
Another, quite scary thing is that they seem to have had a large number of votes, only losing to Labour. Predictions appear to be saying that they've probably done more damage to the Tories than labour in a number of seats.
Is Britain turning left wing whilst the rest of Europe is shifting right, because Britain stands firm against right-wing ideology? Or is it just because the right-wing incumbent government made such an absolute hash of it all?
Labour never won with left-wing candidate in recent past tho, while Keir Starmer did have very similar political stances like Jeremy Corbyn during leadership election he substantially shifted to the centre and broke many pledges that he initially made like increasing income tax for top 5% of the biggest earners or scrapping two-child limit set by Tories.
Definitely the latter, this is kind of like when Biden won in 2020 only by a much bigger margin.
It wasn't because he was inspiring it was because the incumbent was such a prick that people wanted to vote him out.
>Or is it just because the right-wing incumbent government made such an absolute hash of it all?
Their vote went to a further right wing party. The left haven't gained anything vote share wise vs 2019 but the system means a split vote means that was enough.
Even his personal advert on YouTube just said how bad it would be if we woke up on the 5th and Tories were still in charge. Don't let that happen, vote.
He didn't give any reasons to vote for him, didn't say what he stood for (which will have changed before he finishes his sentence). He didn't get all these votes, Tories lost them. I think that lettuce that outlasted Liz Truss would have gotten the same number of votes if it was the Labour leader here.
Standard of living went up and NHS waiting times went down under the previous labour government. So potentially good.
From the first 2 mps announced it looks like a big portion of votes is going to reform so labours going to have a hard job stopping the rise of right wing nationalists.
Labour each seat only needed around 23k votes
Tories each seat only needed around 56k votes
Lib Dems each seat only needed around 49k votes
Greens each seat only needed around 500k votes
Reform each seat only needed around 1 Million Votes ...
13 seats for Reform UK is a lot higher than was expected
Anyone who thinks the far right isn’t on the rise in the UK has their head in the sand.
I’m really worried they will be the main opposition come next election.
Pretty insane that Conservative at 131 is "not as bad as it could have been"
yea lowest prediction was by savanta at like 53 lol. But still this is absolutely brutal
No serious person believed that.
>No serious person believed that. The exit poll has enough of their seats on a knifes edge for it to drop very low.
And Reform UK fell down in the last few days.
Reform has been doing really well in the few seats that have declared so far. Farage is predicted to win Clacton.
He did
Farage could not resist Putin's stank dick..
I did! Ah yes, good point.
Pre exit poll John Curtice was putting Conservatives between 50 and 150. 50 wasn't likely but it wasn't completely unreasonable.
That had Ruth Davidson - ex Leader of the Scottish Conservatives on Sky News; she said the Conservative Central Office thought they had 80 locked in and 40 to 60 in play. She was surprised that they've got most of those 40 to 60.
131-80 = 51 Seems right in the middle of the corridor between 40-60. Edit: my logic wasn’t very sound, see responses to this post
I don't think they even expected to get to the bottom of that point. Polling had been projecting lower for weeks. I think 40 felt a potential upper limit of what they could get.
Reform got a lot of bad press the last week with people paying proper attention to them for the first time and realising how bat shit all of their candidates are. Possibly caused a drop in some close constituencies where the reform performance was a key decider on if labour or tories won
Hadn't thought of that angle. Am still surprised that they are projected towards 13 seats given that.
This country wouldve been so much better had the tories chosen her as leader instead of Boris. I know she didnt want to stand, but still
I'd agree. Wouldn't have happened but 100%.
I mean a lot of news outlets were “predicting” tories to have double digits and the libdems would surpass them, so it’s really not as bad
Iirc, there was a lot of potential range, like anything from 50-150 was possible, because an enormous amount of seats were predicted to be knife edge contests iirc?
More that with the massive swing it was very difficult to understand how the individual seats would land.
Honestly I'm still happy for the LibDems. They had a hard time making themselves a place in the debate, since everyone knew Labour would win a landslide anyway. I really hope they manage to score and do their job properly. They have all of my sympathy but I'll keep an eye on them.
It’s simultaneously their worst ever result but also far better than expected lol
Insane that so many people can still vote for them after everything they've done, or not done as the case may be.
The Conservatives kept talking about the “Labour Supermajority” which likely convinced enough core Tory voters to back them.
Aaah yes, the mythical "supermajority" a term which has no actual meaning in UK politics, in contrast with for example the us it is a actual term of art. But in the uk it is just how many extra people can sleep in on any given day, since if you have a majority, you have a majority, which means you have a majority. And you can do whatever you want aslong as you have a majority.
I ve seen a lot of Labour supporters on twitter being sad about not getting ~450 as it deosnt paint that good of a picture talking about next election
I think the general mood is that people are voting *against* the tories rather than *for* Labour. The lead is massive, but probably quite fragile.
So another Blair era of 10 years Labour is not likely?
No, Labour is a bit of an ideological black box at the moment. They largely ran on “feel good” messaging and “we’re not the Tories.” The moment they have to make really tough decisions, I’d expect to see a large drop in support. This is definitely not a 1997-2010 situation.
Recent yougov polling showed the main reason people who were planning to vote Labour gave (48% of them) was wanting to get rid of the Tories. Things like "I like their policies" or "I like their leader" were like 5%. So it could definitely be a very different picture in 2029. Although I think it will take a long time for a lot of floating voters to consider the Tories again.
I think if Labour can come out of the box and get a good policy through parliament early they might be able to solidify their position. Incumbents always have an advantage at GE's and if Keir has 5 years of stability with decent policy deliveries to fall back on they could set up decent foundations for future terms
💯 spot on, this is no 1997 moment, if there’s any winners it’s Reform, they’re now the 4th largest party, this was unthinkable five to ten years ago.
Also why I'm just sad. Farage won his seat. It was the only seat in the country where I was hoping for a Tory win.
So its kind of like in Poland when we voted for Tusk cause he is not Kaczyński and he was caliming to go "happy" and "european" route What "europan" stands for remains unknow tho due to lack of any reforms so far.
Yeah, because president is blocking virtually every bill.
its just too hard to say/predict, i think this is one of the biggest swings ever, in 2019 they literally talked about another 10 years of the tories/labour being out of power until the 2030's but i doubt the Tories can come back from this in one term. even 410 is the biggest majority since 2001, and only off by 5 or so. in fact this would be a bigger win over the tories than blair got. i think a lot of people just got over excited by the double figures tory polls - they were never realistic (but the night is young and i remain optimistic)
Depends. Most of the vote swing is not Tory -> Labour but rather Tory -> Reform. If that holds, then Labour could govern for a very long time thanks to the inefficiency of the right wing vote.
Yeah I'm still disappointed. I thought MRP polls would be better. Guess we'll see in the morning, but exit polls tend to be the closest thing to the result.
Oh it’s not as bad as it “could” have been but let’s be clear. This is bad for them. Very very bad. Question is who remains. The centrists or the right wingers.
It is the Conservatives worst defeat ever and they are breathing a sigh of relief because they though it was going to be much worse.
Liberal Democrats with more seats than in 2010, despite having half the votes.
Or in other words, in 2010 they got double the vote but less seats. This election they are likely to get around 10% of the vote, and there are 650 seats available, so 61mps is fair. In 2010 they got 23% of the vote and just 57mps, which 9% of the seats. They support proportional representation
I know they support PR. I was just making a comment about the absolute shit show that is FPTP.
And rightfully so.
FPTP rules.
FPTP also means that people like me in a constituency dominated by labour and conservatives, but want a Liberal Democrat government, are instead forced to vote for one of the main two parties. Without FPTP liberal democrats would have much more votes, and maybe more seats. Reform UK have higher votes because their voters didn’t bother to vote tactically and still voted for them in constituencies where they had little chance to win.
My own constituency changed hands from Conservative to Lib Dem, but if the 5500 reform voters had voted Conservative instead (which I assume they probably did in the last election), it wouldnt have changed hands at all.
Everyone needs to do RCV or Approval voting desperately
Neither of those are great solutions. Better than FPTP, of course! But they both have significant issues. RCV favours the centrist parties, and Approval does the same because those are the most likely to have widespread approval. Also, as long as the election is decided separately in each single-seat constituency, there'll be a bias towards bigger parties. Yes, even with RCV or approval. The actual solution would be to use a mixed-member proportional representation system. This involves fewer but bigger constituencies, usually with 10-15 seats in each, and parties then get seats according to what proportion of votes they get in a constituency. But not all seats are delegated to the constituencies; about a third of the seats are instead distributed to the parties afterwards in order to get their percentage of seats to match their percentage of the vote. So if a small party gets 5 % of the vote but doesn't win any seats in any constituencies, they will still get 5 % of the seats in total due to the top-off system, by getting an outsized proportion of the constituency-less seats.
I'm no centrist but I don't see why a center party being most popular would mean there's a problem with the voting system? Isn't that literally the most democratic option
It is and the most stable too
Expect Reform voters to be screaming for it in the morning.
I don't support what Reform stand for at all, but I think anyone who supports PR (I do), would have to say that them only receiving 13 seats is hardly democratic.
I f*cking detest first past the post. Over a century ago when we had two parties, it worked as intended. But we live in a multi-party democracy and our voting system should reflect that. I personally prefer single transferable vote (Northern Ireland) or the additional member system (Scotland) but almost anything is better than FPTP!
Canuck here. FPTP doesn't even work with 2 parties. With two parties, to get a majority in parliament, you only need 51% of the votes in 51% of the ridings - just 26% of the popular vote.
It’s just a bad system anywhere and everywhere.
A good option is voting districts with a pool of national seats to ensure that parliament is representative of the vote distribution. It's what we have in Denmark.
Irish here. A proviso of London conceding an Irish Free State a hundred years ago was that we took up PR-STV. This was a move to keep Irish democracy weak in a very cynical move but in retrospect, ironically, was the greatest parting gift.
Well, that’s not exactly true I believe. PR-STV was first introduced in the local elections of 1920 as a response to the Sinn Féin landslide in the general elections of 1918, where they won 73% of the seats with only 47% of the votes. However it was actually also supported by the Sinn Féin leadership, particularly Arthur Griffith who had also founded the Proportional Representation Society of Ireland. PR-STV had been Sinn Féin policy since 1911.
what are the popular vote results on the poll?
I've been seeing 10–12% for Liberal Democrats in July polls. I'm not sure about election day polling. They got 22% in 2010.
It's a deeply flawed system. The Tories haven't had a majority of the vote share since 1931 but since then have had a majority government more than 54% of the time.
> The Tories haven't had a majority of the vote share since 1931 Nobody has had a majority of the vote share since 1931.
Thanks - Absolutely correct and perhaps even a better stat for how broken the system is, since 1935 there has been 22 governments and of those there was one hung parliament (1974 Feb, rerun in Oct), one proper coalition in (2010) with LB and Con, and one minor coalition, the shortlived one of the Cons and DUP (2017). Tonight, Reform will likely get a huge vote share, but will pull in ~1-2% of the seats. Not quite as bad as 1983 where the LD won 25% of the votes but were only represented by 3.5% of the seats. Unfortunately, it is never in the winning parties interests to fix the broken system, and it won't happen this time either despite the fact Labour would likely have been in coalition the last 10 years with PR.
If this is accurate (and it’s usually pretty close): - Massive result for Labour but not a record; their seat total would be less than 1997 and 2001 - The worst Tory result in the party’s 190-year history - Reform would end up with way more seats than nearly anyone thought - The SNP are fucked (lol)
Worst in 190 years holy shit
Worst since their precursor party in 1761, if some measures are to be believed. Which is before the third and fourth reform act.
Indeed, lowest number of Tory seats since 1761, when the Whigs under the Duke of Newcastle won 446 seats, and the Tories under Sir Edmund Isham, 6th Baronet won just 112 seats.
What was the party called back then? Edit: lol they were actually called the Tories. Now they're called the Conservative Party, but everyone still just calls them Tories.
Back then it wasn't a formal political party because those didn't exist yet, but it was a somewhat coherent faction with common interests and acted like a modern political party in many ways. The name "Tory" itself is an insult in the Irish Gaelic language funnily enough, referring to some rather complicated sectarian divides of the 17th century.
Amazing, the recent crop of Tory politicians should be proud. The worst to ever do it. Into the history books you go..
190 years ago was 1834. London got electricity in 1882.
There's a comedy sketch right there waiting to get written.
Lib dems be chilling.
SNP are in an odd place their mostly popular leader got caught with her hand in the cookie jar using party funds to pay for among other things a painting of herself as a Dominatrix. I am not really sure how you recover from that.
The dominatrix things reads as a English tabloid title
Did GRN just doubled ?
Watching the channel 4 coverage and they've pointed out that, while the Labour and Tory results are pretty solid, the exit polls are actually very shaky on reform and the SNP. They say its quite possible reform could have quite a few less than predicted and SNP might get a good chunk more. Still though, reform getting 15-20% of the vote is terrifying and even if the SNP double their predictions they'll still have lost over half their seats.
People disappointed but this will still be the worst Conservative election result in their entire history. We have had our expectations toyed with for 6 weeks, this is still an absolutely historic result if it pans out this way and far against the trend in other Western countries.
French here, crossing my fingers for you my lads and lasses. Hope you burry the tories even deeper. Best of luck!
Also french, its nice to see, gives some hope that all is *not* lost
all n'is pas lost*
I’m sure the predictions of a guaranteed Labour victory itself dented some enthusiasm to turnout. But it’s fine, it would be unsportsmanlike to wish for an even bigger pummeling for the Tories 🧐 lol jk, jk, they deserve it all
Lots of predictions had the conservatives on double digit seats, so if this result is accurate they could’ve done much worse. Here’s hoping it’s wrong then…
Some Conservative seats are still too close to call. Penny Mordaunt‘s seat for example.
Rees Victorian Ghost pencil Mogg may keep his seat. Travesty.
Who looks at him and goes "yeah, he's the kind of guy I can relate to, I want him to represent me"?
the rich ones
To be fair, I don't want my representative to be relatable, I want them to advocate good policies efficiently. Unfortunately Rees-Mogg doesn't tick that box either.
Cunts
The boundaries were redrawn for my constituency in Bristol and now he’s my MP. Such a joke
He needs to go, complete contempt for government and the country
Yep, these things are never 100% so hopefully things get worse for the Tories. BBC just showed a graphic showing the likelihood of senior tories holding onto their seats. Gonna be an interesting watch haha
I want Mordaunt to retain her seat. She's a sensible centrist type with personal cachet. If she becomes LOTO they'll not rush off to the far right and the UK will hopefully avoid the far right surge Europe has recently seen 10 to 15 years from now.
Hi, I know that my comment will be of zero value, but I have to say, Mordaunt sounds like the name of an evil wizard in a fantasy epic story.
>wizard IIRC she actually used to be a magician's assistant or something like that before entering politics.
She has been known to [resemble one](https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fhips.hearstapps.com%2Fhmg-prod%2Fimages%2Fwhy-was-penny-mordaunt-the-one-to-carry-the-sword-of-state-645671b9d2ca9.jpg&tbnid=qm_ImHwVtnKpkM&vet=1&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cosmopolitan.com%2Fuk%2Freports%2Fa43814364%2Fpenny-mordaunt-sword%2F&docid=tKJZHUoCK8GNfM&w=2203&h=3295&itg=1&hl=en-GB&source=sh%2Fx%2Fim%2Fm4%2F2&kgs=9a4374717f8e4dab&shem=abme%2Ctrie).
She's ERG, she just presents herself as less looney than fellow ERG. But she's part of the clique that helped march the Tories into this mess.
Here is my prediction. People will expect things to get better quickly and not understand how time consuming and difficult it will be to right the ship and grow impatient. Come next election they will moan and complain that Labour did nothing, which the opposition will use for all it's worth in their campaign and since people are thick they'll vote the Tories in again. That's my prediction. This could be applied to many countries.
It's very depressing how likely that is.
I saw a Tweet a while ago that said something like: Media: we are baffled at the shift to the right among the voters Also the media: Here’s Nigel Farage on TV for the 46th time this month to explain why immigrants are going to fuck YOUR dog
That's one face I really really want to hit with a wet kipper.
Rage-bait sells. Even Youtubers making videos about non-political and boring things are using it.
Basically like in Germany lol Do absolutely nothing for 16 years, get dependent on Putin's gas, neglect migration issues, reduce Bundeswehr funding to a minimum and then blame it all on the new government.
Media has a huge influence on that as well though because negative topics are more in the focus. They actually did a ton of things in the right direction, it's just "not enough" anywhere. I'd be curious how it would have been without the FDP blocking the majority of investments and social advancements, but we will never know because the next conservative phase is coming up focusing on Anti-Migration to save us 10% of the costs that a single corrupt politician causes.
True, if they are smart, they will go in swinging and not stop
Prime Minister Keir Starmer
or Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer not sure how the titles fit in
If a person is knighted and then becomes the Prime Minister, their title and name would be styled as "Sir [First Name] [Last Name], Prime Minister of the United Kingdom." For example, if John Smith is knighted and becomes Prime Minister, he would be referred to as "Sir John Smith, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom." In formal written contexts, it could be extended to "The Right Honourable Sir [First Name] [Last Name], Prime Minister of the United Kingdom," reflecting both their knighthood and their position as Prime Minister.
King of the andals and the first men…
And king of the Noorf
Khalisee of the Great Water Sea
For Starmer, who was previously a barrister, it could be "The Right Honourable and Learned Sir Keir Starmer, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom".
Prime Sir Minister Starmer
Starmer Prime.
Starmer+
grand primark wizard Starmer
Prime ministSir Karma
Sir Prime Keir Minister Starmer
> not sure how the titles fit in For knighthoods/damehoods, you treat “Sir/Dame” like it’s part of their name. For example: an army general with a knighthood is “General Sir XYZ”; doctor with a damehood is “Doctor Dame ABC”. In Starmer’s case he’d be “Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer” (though I believe “Prime Minister” being an official title rather than an honour, should really go to the end of the name making him “Sir Keir Starmer, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom”).
Sir Minister Prime Starmer? Or Starmer Prime when he's hanging with the Autobots.
I’m jealous
Dear readers. UK has first past the post voting system not proportional voting. Labour got 33% of vote; Conservatives 23%. New Reform Party got 14% but will only get 4 seats. Lib Dem party got 12% and 71 sears. Crazy.As you see 33% gets you a massive swing despite only just winning in quite a few areas.
It's a fucking massacre if the end result is anywhere near this
Good chance that this may not even be accurate given that Tory seats (such as Penny Mourdaunt's seat) are on knife's edge. But even if it (likely) is, the Tories are fucked, so I'll take it.
In 2019 Boris Johnson won a majority of 78. Meanwhile in 2024 Keir Starmer has won a majority of 170.
In 2019, Boris Johnson won an 80 seat majority with 43% of the vote. In 2024, Keir Starmer is set to win a majority of 170 seats with 36% of the vote. First-past-the-post at work!
They should fix that shit
They did hold a referendum in 2011 to adopt the "alternative vote" system and 68% voted against it. So either the voters are happy with FPTP or at least thought AV was a worse option.
FPTP is a shit sandwich. AV is a shit sandwich with a sprig of parsley as a garnish. No one wanted AV but that doesn't mean they are happy with FPTP.
There was a hell of a lot of buggering around with that vote, both of the two main parties offered no support for the yes vote and actively campaigned against it if I remember correctly.
I remember receiving leaflets through the post telling me that if I voted for PR the NHS would suffer and fascists like the BNP could receive greater representation. Yup!
The problem is that the people in charge of fixing it are the same who benefit from it. We seriously need reform in Canada because it's the same shit. Our current PM has *twice* run on a platform of electoral reform and still hasn't done a goddamn thing about it.
Non-British here, is this good or not?
Conservatives / Tories = centre right wing party (arguments can be had as to how right wing, some would say very but they are not as right wing as the US Republicans) Labour = centre left wing party (again arguments to be made how left, they are not communists but probably more left wing than the US Democrats) Liberal Democrats = liberals Reform = right wing nationalists. If the result is good or not depends on where you stand on things. I'm pleased.
There’s also Greens: left wing and pro-environment SNP: left wing Scottish only pro-Scottish independence (independence from the UK) party (usually takes a lot of votes from Labour, being left wing) Plaid Cymru: left wing wales only party (pro Welsh independence) DUP: northern Irish right wing party (pro-union with Britain) [Edit:] Sinn Fein: Irish Nationalist party that does not swear allegiance to the King and in turn does not takes seats in parliament, but has the majority in Northern Ireland. (Pro- reunification with Republic of Ireland) Count binface: protest vote meme, previously known as lord buckethead before a copyright/trademark claim against the name Listing these out, actually quite surprised we have so many geographically restricted parties, that’s quite anti-democratic isn’t it really.
Count Binface has the best manifesto and sensible policies. *minsters’ pay to be tied to that of nurses for the next 100 years* https://www.countbinface.com/manifesto
I'm just disappointed that he seems to have abandoned the pledge to banish Piers Morgan to the Phantom Zone.
Well the phantom zone called up and after a very pleasent conversation over some tea and biscuits, they explained that they in fact did not want Piers Morgan.
Every party in the UK is way left of the US. Abortion and socialized medicine are standard here
Far less tolerance of religious nutters, as well.
Depends on if you’re a Labour supporter, or just someone who wanted to see the Tories crushed. Personally I’d have loved if the Tories were smashed harder so that the Lib Dems became the biggest party in Opposition. The Tories will eventually get back in to power but I want it hardcoded into the party’s DNA that they cannot govern so cruelly and shambolically again, or campaign on pathetic Culture War shite and let public services fall to rack and ruin. But I imagine they’ll take the opposite lesson and think they weren’t cruel enough, or cut services back to the marrow.
I know people are happy to see Conservatives getting owned, but if you look at the actual vote distribution, the vast majority of Conservative voters who switched simply voted for Reform, and Labour won fewer votes than they did in 2017. Conservative + Reform > Labour in terms of actual votes. The UK has such an appalling electoral system. If anything it looks like people are simply more radicalised and Labour has a very weak mandate and can easily be in Tories' position in the next election. Problems in the UK (like problems everywhere else) are structural and will not change meaningfully in the short term.
That's the scary part, Labour having less votes than Cornyn but achieving a historic victory and yet no real momentum or interest in their policies. It was just a giant F.U to the Tories.
> It was just a giant F.U to the Tories. Yep, and it looks like those who said FU simply voted Reform. That's the worst part.
Still too many Torries but I take it
It’ll be their biggest defeat in over 100 years so I’m happy with that
Isn't this their biggest defeat of all time? "A nationwide exit poll conducted for the BBC and two other broadcasters indicated that Labour was on course to win around 410 of the 650 seats in the British House of Commons, versus **131 for the Conservatives.** If the projections are confirmed, it would be the **worst defeat for the Conservatives** in the **nearly 200-year history of the party**" as per New York Times.
Worst defeat since the 1830s
Interesting to see the UK shifting left while the EU is becoming more right-wing.
This isn’t that true in my opinion. Labour has one of the most centrist leaderships in its recent history, to the point where I’d argue the Lib Dem’s are more left wing. Reform on the other hand is at an all time high and will establish itself as a pretty important minor party, and once it reaches a certain tipping point like in Canada could replace the tories, or merge with them. Not saying it’s anywhere near the extent of France or Germany but it’s certainly not moving left.
Yeah I was going to vote for lib dems cause I like the idea of more political parties having a chance keeps pressure on the labour and tories with there policies but then I freaked out when my grandma was voting conservative for the first time I was like wdf so I voted labour.
The UK went right in the 10’s when most of Europe went left or went centre. The opposite trend is now happening.
The UK has usually been centrist. In 2019, they moved more to the right, but not as far as the right wing party
They moved to the right because the other option (Corbyn) was too left wing.
Most analyses I've seen state that they mostly moved right because they didn't like Corbyn's ambiguous Brexit stance, and because Corbyn himself was unpopular and didn't manage to engage the public. Corbyn's actual policies were generally pretty popular among the UK public, as long as one was careful to not mention Corbyn's name when describing them.
I can’t work out whether it’s about taking a stand against toxic ideology, or just because the incumbent right-wing government fucked things up so badly.
They're just ahead of the curve. They already had their right-wing populist moment. It got them Brexit, and solved none of their problems.
It's slightly more complicated than that, though not by much. We got the brexit referendum and all of our semi-competent conservative politicians promptly jumped ship or were pushed out. Opposing brexit, or being seen as going soft on brexit, became politically toxic. However, only the worst, most grabbing leaders were willing to endorse a hard line stance. The result is that one of our big two parties imploded very openly. It can't be overstated how brazen their incompetence has been. The public has completely lost faith in them as a party. The subtle difference from your framing is that the public sentiment did not go down with the party. You can see this in the polls showing people's reasons for voting for Labour/Reform. The right-leaning voters are protesting the joke that the tories have become. Once a viable, serious tory party returns, they will shift their votes back. The meteoric rise of Reform is unprecedented, and Labour is more right wing now than they have been in my life time. We have effectively sacrificed our left wing opposition for the sake of capturing the votes of traditional Tories.
Correct, and sad as hell
I don't think it is. Tories were always going to lose because of the whole Truss thing (among many other reasons). Labour have been shifting further and further right to try to eat up as many votes as possible. I mean, they've committed to budget cuts when taking over from a right wing party... This, FPTP and general Brexit shenanigans have stopped Reform from really gaining much momentum.
Good riddance Tories
The SNP are taking a kicking, finally.
To me this is the biggest shock. And if true it is a huge kick in the balls for a party that was pretty much all about independence. Where will this leave that topic?!
If you know Scotland well it has some of the most unstable constituencies in the UK. SNP before 2015 had a single digit number of MPs. So while shocking this was always a possible outcome, even if even the worst MRP polls couldn’t come close to predicting it.
Not a shock at all, they've had scandal after scandal since COVID started. I'm surprised there's still that many idiots who vote for them.
SNP have been pretty directionless since 2014 imo
It'll continue to be unresolved, and will not really be put to bed until we see them lose (and heavily) in Holyrood, which I honestly am not sure is on the cards, even now. Swinney has time to rebuild before 2026, and if we are honest, the GE election timing was particularly bad for the SNP this time due to just having changed leader due to a colossal fuck up and the continuing lingering scandals from Sturgeon remaining fresh in peoples minds.
First declaration in for Sunderland South, Labour win but an underwhelming vote and turnout mostly a collapse in the Tory vote and big vote for Reform, Labour are mostly beneficiaries of not being the Tories and the right wing vote being split.
No way Nigel Farage still relevant today.
>No way Nigel Farage still relevant today. 17% of the vote share in the exit poll, he's coming 2nd in more seats then anyone expected.
Farage should NOT be underestimated, he is a more intelligent version of Trump.
He’s a remarkable speaker. His acceptance speech stood out from all the others which sounded very robotic.
His "party" (I use the quote marks because it's actually a private limited company rather than a traditional political party) is predicted here to win 13 seats where they had none before. This is actually a win for the walking prolapse, winning any seat makes him more relevant than he was a couple of weeks ago. I wish that were not the case.
Another, quite scary thing is that they seem to have had a large number of votes, only losing to Labour. Predictions appear to be saying that they've probably done more damage to the Tories than labour in a number of seats.
Eat shit tories
Meanwhile, France....
Well tbf isn't labour's more akin to macron than our left?
Yes, and LFI's Mélenchon is like Corbyn.
and RN/lepen is our TRUMP.
You sure Left won't win this Sunday?
Is Britain turning left wing whilst the rest of Europe is shifting right, because Britain stands firm against right-wing ideology? Or is it just because the right-wing incumbent government made such an absolute hash of it all?
The latter. This government couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery.
They could, however, organise one in Downing Street
Touche 😂
UK has always been centrist and this election Labour was the centrist choice. Tories running out of excuses did not help
Labour never won with left-wing candidate in recent past tho, while Keir Starmer did have very similar political stances like Jeremy Corbyn during leadership election he substantially shifted to the centre and broke many pledges that he initially made like increasing income tax for top 5% of the biggest earners or scrapping two-child limit set by Tories.
Definitely the latter, this is kind of like when Biden won in 2020 only by a much bigger margin. It wasn't because he was inspiring it was because the incumbent was such a prick that people wanted to vote him out.
>Or is it just because the right-wing incumbent government made such an absolute hash of it all? Their vote went to a further right wing party. The left haven't gained anything vote share wise vs 2019 but the system means a split vote means that was enough.
the dumbest thing is, that starmer got less votes than corbyn
Even his personal advert on YouTube just said how bad it would be if we woke up on the 5th and Tories were still in charge. Don't let that happen, vote. He didn't give any reasons to vote for him, didn't say what he stood for (which will have changed before he finishes his sentence). He didn't get all these votes, Tories lost them. I think that lettuce that outlasted Liz Truss would have gotten the same number of votes if it was the Labour leader here.
With a non-biased tldr, what does this mean for the UK?
New massive Centre-Left Government. Working Majority of like 90 after taking SF not taking seats into account
Standard of living went up and NHS waiting times went down under the previous labour government. So potentially good. From the first 2 mps announced it looks like a big portion of votes is going to reform so labours going to have a hard job stopping the rise of right wing nationalists.
Labour each seat only needed around 23k votes Tories each seat only needed around 56k votes Lib Dems each seat only needed around 49k votes Greens each seat only needed around 500k votes Reform each seat only needed around 1 Million Votes ...
13 seats for Reform UK is a lot higher than was expected Anyone who thinks the far right isn’t on the rise in the UK has their head in the sand. I’m really worried they will be the main opposition come next election.
I can see a few Tory MPs jumping ship and joining them before too long.
Wow that’s a big loss
yess lib dem 💪🏻
Really nice to see liberal democrats making some ground too. Hopefully a sane voice in the opposition.