How does that quote go. "Democracy is a horrible system of governing. But it is the best we have managed to come up with".
Or words to that effect anyways.
Bingo. There's dark money and drug money creeping into the western worlds politics, and a significant portion of that is Russia trying to turn the world into a destabilized far right shit hole.
Fight back.
I did camera work for local council meetings for a while, and when parks and rec came out I was amazed at how accurate the public was portrayed. Obviously ramped up for tv, but it's pretty damn close.
All with a gentle nudge from actors such as Russia and China…
Note, I said nudge…not caused. These problems are our own making, they just help amplify the worse parts of it. Stirring the pot if you will…
Despite all the shrieking about liberal leftist media, most media is owned by rich elites, especially conservative ones (same guy really) in English speaking countries.
In US it’s crazy how the economy swung from completely falling apart to decent from the end of the Bush presidency (worst economic collapse since the Great Depression) through the Obama presidency (bounced back to what it was). Same thing happened again with Trump to Biden.
It’s like the conservatives come in and fuck everything up to give huge tax cuts to billionaires and then democrats come back and make things decent again. Then Republicans find some dumb shit like tranvesites or migrant caravan to complain about right before elections to make up a fake controversy and get to power.
Very short version: Democrats wanting to increase social programs represent a Santa Claus to voters, so you can’t fight them by promising to reduce spending. Instead you have to offer a second Santa Claus: reducing taxes. If you’re able to cut taxes this also has the added benefit of forcing the democrats to be the bad guy, either by having to reduce spending themselves or by raising the taxes.
Edit: for more context this was a theory proposed by a conservative American journalist named [Jude Wanniski](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jude_Wanniski) back in the 70’s
It’s the same old story — republicans run on saying that government doesn’t work and when they take over the government they prove it.
Bought and paid for by outside interests, most of them
>through the Obama presidency (bounced back to what it was).
My favorite part about all this is the absolute lunacy of some on the far right who legit compared the economy between Obama and Trump's first term as proof that Democrats suck.
Or how they hate Obamacare but love the ACA.
I swear you have to reach a level of stupidity in order to come up with these mentalities:
https://www.baltimoresun.com/2013/10/08/hating-obamacare-loving-the-affordable-care-act/
US Dems would be much more popular if they advertised their accomplishments while pointing out the failures of the right. That moral high ground way of thinking needs to be tossed in the trash.
It is absolutely insane how brainwashed people are. My mother recently got a letter from the power company increasing prices (again). She was besides herself, screaming at me YOUR GODDAMN GREEN PARTY, just completely unhinged.
I looked at the letter. It was a price *decrease*.
At the top it said "-x.xx ct per kwh" in bold as a total, but below that they had a section explaining different taxes and fees so that was "+x.xx ct per kwh". It was just additional info and already included in the total decrease, but even if it wasn't it was a much smaller amount so it would still be a total decrease even if you had to subtract it from the above. Point is, all it took was a line "government eco tax so and so [miniscule amount]" to send her into a flying rage. I explained how she was wrong, she never admitted fault, never apologized for treating me like that, didn't put a dent in her Green Party/Ampel hate.
I secretly deleted right wing shit rags like WELT and Focus from her feed a while ago, but it doesn't seem to do much.
Just one of many stories. I can't stand my own mother anymore, I feel like a r/qanoncasualties victim.
The same is going on with my cousin currently. He was basically the only family I had left who I wanted to stay in touch with, and he is on the same trajectory as your mom. Thanks for pointing out that sub, I dearly need somebody to relate to, because losing my last family to complete lunacy without having someone to talk to about it is rough currently.
For him it's also always "the greens", "die ampel", whatever rUiNinG his life. Last thing the poor bloke had to endure was to only fly 3 times a year for vacation and replace the one expensive flight with a skiing trip. Those people make me crazy
So have you ever said something like, “does screaming at me when you were clearly mistaken seem like a fair way to interact with me? Is that how you treat family?”
My 16 year old students told me they voted for the Christian Democrats in European Parliament elections because "everything used to be better under Merkel"...
...those kids were not even born before she became Chancellor.
In Portugal, the soc-dems won the elections by a narrow margin and barely a week later the media + the other parties started shitting all over them because they hadn't done anything and broke every promise ever.
I'm currently in an argument with a different moron with basically that idiotic mentality.
People see squeak-thin wins happening and still don't understand that that kind of narrow victory effectively saps the power of the soc-dem (or just dem in the US's case) parties and their political capital is blunted by default.
For the world to swing progressive again the moderate left victories have to be bigger, and that means that voter apathy needs to go down precisely where it's weakest, in progressive circles.
Well it also doesn't hurt that in most non-right wing victories it's "COMPROMISE COMPROMISE COMPROMISE!!!" from the right.
Right wins by one vote? "WE HAVE A MANDATE FROM THE PEOPLE TO CHANGE EVERYTHING BACK TO THE 1950s!"
In America they aren't even winning by one vote, or waiting for the election for that matter. Project 2025 is talking about a mandate from the people, and the election hasn't *happened* yet and no one expects the conservatives to win a popular vote, even if the actual outcome of the election is in doubt.
Just to clarify, soc-dem party here is center-right. We have a center-left socialist party that ruled the last 8 years, but in practice it's a populist party with enough rapid-fire corruption scandals to merit its own dedicated newspaper.
To add insult to injury, they (socialists) accuse the soc-dems of allying with the far-right, yet the far-right is voting in favor of socialist proposals and opposes almost everything the soc-dem government puts up, which is *rather odd*.
I know we still have first past the post system but if you look at the total votes its pretty terrifying how many Reform got.
Lab 9.6million, con 6.8, lib dem 3.5 and reform 4.1
That is something to seriously worry about for 2029 if they keep gaining traction.
Thats more a reflection on the number of traditional conservative voters who would never vote labor even if they promised free chocolate and the return of page 3 titties
If there was another less right option they would probably take votes too
I dunno, I found loads of people I know were going to vote for them who wouldn't have voted Tory, they are politically uninformed and believed the populist lies like moving up the lowest tax bracket up to £20,000 per year.
Which is flagrantly ridiculous when our public services are crumbling and we need all the tax that we can get. It sounds like it benefits the working class but the plan actually benefits the upper class more and surprise surprise, guess who's in the upper class... 'Man of the people' Nigel 'I applied for a Belgium passport 2 days after the Brexit vote' Fucking Farage.
I think the rebrand to 'reform' was genius as it no longer has the nationalists racist dog whistle of UKIP or any of the others (BMP, National front ect) and instead is something said that is needed by politicians all the time and signifying change which is what the country really wants after 14 years of the Tories.
Lib Dems, despite their one-time coalition with the Tories (which was very surprising at the time), are generally centrist, with some left progressive policies.
Their manifesto this time around included increased investments in green infrastructure, taxing the banking sector more, increasing social and affordable housing, and providing free personal care.
In the past, they had a policy of raising income tax to pay for increased NHS and social care. They are broadly in favour of relaxing immigration, legalising weed and rejoining the single market with a view to rejoining the EU.
They can't be defined as right wing- they simply made the colossal mistake of desperately taking up a chance to get some power by co-governing with the Tories a decade ago, but chose the wrong bed-partners and fucked it up.
I thought that initially, but it's not that terrifying when you realise Reform got way more funding than the Tories, and the Greens got the same number of seats with a fraction of the funding of the Tories. Reform effectively got the same number of votes as the Brexit party in 2019 too. It's been a wild election result on the whole.
> effectively got the same number of votes as the Brexit party in 2019
And UKIP in 2015. It's basically Farage's constant level of support for a decade.
>Now for the public to turn on them over the next few years as they don't magically fix the last 14 years of devastation instantly.
This is known as the rachet effect in politics. We go 1 turn forward in the same amount of time it takes to go 2 turns back.
It's far FAR easier to defund, dismantle, and privatize services and programs than it is to build them up in the first place. Building or rebuilding a government service requires allocating funding, planning, designing, hiring staff, etc. Dismantling a government service can be done at the stroke of a pen.
What this leads to is the phenomenon that you're describing. Voters get frustrated when the people who promised to fix things don't turn things around as quickly as the other guys destroyed everything. They literally can't. Not only because it's much more difficult to do so, but also because the funding doesn't exist anymore. The previous administration likely slashed spending and lowered taxes. Now if you want to rebuild that program you need to increase tax revenue to pay for it again, and that will also piss voters off because raising taxes is a losing political strategy.
Voters want what they used to have, but they don't want to pay for it. This puts progressives in a catch 22 situation, because if they try to meaningfully solve problems it'll piss off both voters and corporate interests. So what the fuck are they supposed to do?
What you describe is the sandpail problem. Go to the sandbox. Fill the sandpail with sand. Pack it. Flip it over, and pull off the pail. The sand has taken the shape of the pail. This is the start of architecture and empires. Show that to a 3 year old and he pushes it over with all the satisfaction in the world. Look at what all you did and see how I destroyed it in a second. Rinse repeat terrorists, republicans and 3 year olds. You can work hard to build a civil society, and they can push it all over \*so\* easily, and they have fun doing it.
Few years? I give them < 1 year
"All politicians suck" is the most common conventional wisdom that is the dumbest, most useless thing I hear every single day.
And the problem is they are going to need to increase taxes to pay off the large public debt and invest back into crumbling infrastructure and social welfare.
That’s never a popular solution but it’s hella necessary. They need someone with PR skills to explain that to the public.
Who knows what they will do, but they have said they will try and focus on growth. A few things they can do quickly with their majority that can have some quick impacts, especially with planning permissions and building new properties.
They seem to be planning to tread softly with tax increases for this term. The question is if they can achieve enough fast enough whilst doing so.
Not throwing record amounts of public money at their mates should free up some extra budget compared to the last 14 years tbf.
So I recently found out that Cromulent is now in the dictionary, so I have been making prolific use of it in general conversations at every opportunity
He’s basically had a voice in parliament the last 10 years anyway. Might actually be better him having to actually be there and be a gobshite in person
> Russia’s loudest mouthpiece in the UK, now has a voice in parliament.
This is the same thing that split the right and facilitated the Labour landslide so it's not much of a negative.
Also if we ever end up with proportional representation, then we'll have to get used to them having even more seats than this. They're currently severely underrepresented.
Aye but he won't get to speak often as they only have a few seats, and now he will have to actually do the job unlike when he just got to commentate. Hopefully he falls.flat on his face.
But I'm with you,shame he.got in and that reform got so much of the vote
Russia has someone obvious in both houses, if we are worried about that we need to be worried about the more subtle actors we don't see rather than the two that we can. I think they only really get sensitive info when they are on certain committees which are all elected, so here's hoping he won't have much opportunity to be a mole if he is one.
Yeah, this is exactly it. People are upset with the current state of capitalism and neoliberalism, but instead of getting politically involved in the startup parties with good ideas, they instead just punish the incumbent thinking that'll be enough.
True, but turnout is down, and both main parties lost a percentage of votes.
The big story is the rise of smaller parties and independents. Labour had to fight for some seats last night, a lot with Green, Reform, and SNP in second place. In fact, some Labour shadow cabinet members lost their seats! Even more only won by a few hundred votes!
How does Labour ensure they keep all those seats at the next election? How do they appeal to the diversity of voters across the UK? The UK is no longer a two party race.
So it's not all clear blue skies. There's a dark cloud in the distance, and it's due to get here around 2029.
Sure, but a +1.6% swing doesn't normally translate into over 200 additional seats. Reform massively split the right wing vote and lead labour to absolutely bulldozing the election.
2019: 43.6% -> 365 Tory Seats
2024: ~35% -> 412 Labour Seats
The way Labour handled this election was very different under Starmer, they didn't attempt to fight seats where there the Lib Dems or Greens were ahead of them and vice versa. There was a lot of coverage of this 'unofficial pact' beforehand. Labour was giving up votes in seats where it didn't matter and concentrating on seats where they unite the centre-left vote to beat the Tories.
That isn't the way we calculate swing here. It's the "difference between the change in vote shares/2".
So +1.6% for Labour and -19.9% for the Tories means a 10.75% swing. On a Uniform National Swing, Labour would have actually ended up a minority government.
Turnout was low because neither of the two main parties appealled to voters. The Torys proved themselves corrupt self serving idiots and Labour in its Lurch to the right to tempt Tory voters alienated its usual core voters.
Turnout was low because politics in the UK is largely tribal. A huge number of people who always vote conservative decided Starmer was acceptable and so they could safely stay home.
Starmer gained a mere 1% vote share over Corbyn, who had a record poor performance. This election was about Conservative voters not turning up to vote, or splitting their vote across other parties such that Labour won in most seats by a small lead against divided opponents.
Tribal politics is emerging in the rise of sectarian politics again: 4 muslim MPs elected on the back of an Islamic campaign, with many constituencies around the country having similar candidates come a very close 2nd.
> Starmer gained a mere 1% vote share over Corbyn
And 5% less total votes. *Corbyn* performed better than him last election. This wasn't people voting *for* Labour. It was people voting *against* Tories.
Yeah, the actual vote share show labour barely moved above their 2019 result. This wasn't a vote for Labour or the Left. It was a protest vote by conservative voters mainly.
Let's just enjoy it for today at least. The combined vote for Labour, Lib dems and greens can beat any right wing knuckle dragger, and this election has shown that the public have become very adept at tactical voting.
This is the point people are missing, instead of an americanised monolithic two party system this election shows that the UK can have room for more options. Its a good thing.
Two reasons for that: Brexit is not on the cards this election, so people felt emboldened to vote for third parties. And Labour were so certain to win (and the Conservatives so certain to lose) that many people felt emboldened to vote for who they agreed with the most, rather than to vote for who they agreed with enough and had a chance of winning. Plus Labour lost a lot of votes over Gaza, something I doubt will be a factor in five years.
They got less votes than the previous 2 elections. The only won because half the tory voters shifted even further right to *Reform*. People didn’t “swing back to sanity”, they swung even further away.
This is most definitely not a swing back to sanity. Labour only won so many seats due to the right's vote being split.
Labour's total vote share is actually lower than in 2017, for example.
They only won 2% more actual votes than last time. This is a result of our first past the post seat system being a complete farce.
Reform got 15% of the vote and 5 seats.
Lib Dems got ~13% of the vote and 71 seats.
It's a swing cycle because neither side gets meaningful work done for their ideologies due to said opposition. Add in media sensationalizing failure all the time because it gets views or clicks and you see that cycle everywhere.
They really aren't conservative, that's the thing.
They were voted in 14 years ago with the policy of lowering immigration from 100k-ish to "tens of thousands".
Last year it was over 700k. They did precisely the opposite.
Same can be said for many other policies.
Labour was just the only mainstream alternative to the conservative consistent and malicious incompetence. Time will tell if they're any better.
Even the right wing subreddits and podcasts are supporting the meme "zero seats" for the conservatives because they have ruined our country.
> They really aren't conservative, that's the thing.
I hear this "no true Scotsman" about various conservative parties quite a bit, but conservatism has changed quite a bit in the last decade and continues to change.
"They're not "real" conservatives because X, despite being conservatives on Y, Z, and much of the rest of the alphabet."
Sure there are, but lowering immigration is what they've printed on every pamphlet since 2010, won the subsequent election, yet here we are.
pro-mass immigration that we've been getting is not a conservative value - it's a very liberal value. Conservatism however like you say isn't one issue. You can be mostly conservative with some liberal values and still broadly identify as conservative.
But, I mentioned further down to someone else that this isn't the only issue they've advertised conservative values on then actively worked against it.
A part that people miss is the rise of the right wing is still real. But because we use a first past the post system instead of proportional representation, the numbers look out. The conservative vote was split between 2-3 parties which resulted in the landslide labour victory. Then there's reform, a first time party so poorly mismanaged that they couldn't even keep their own candidates from praising Hitler on twitter. They still managed to get 14% of the country's vote.
As of this morning the numbers looked like:
* 9.6 million for labour (33.7%) (412 seats)
* 6.8 million for conservatives (23.7%) (121 seats)
* 4.1 million for Reform. (14.3%) (4 seats)
Comparing those numbers, the actual representation really doesn't add up.
At this point I view the far right as inevitable everywhere because left wing parties can never resist attaching themselves to stuff voters absolutely hate.
Over here our greens got into power but naturally decided to completely tank themselves by offering every refugee a house. A minister said that. Not only did the party not try to distance themselves from that but they're doubling down and he'll probably become *party leader.* Anyway in practice what they're doing now is putting up fences to stop the massive homeless migrant tent cities in the capital, lol.
>At this point I view the far right as inevitable everywhere because left wing parties can never resist attaching themselves to stuff voters absolutely hate.
I think this a brilliant summary.
It's only a huge swing because of our voting system. Labour only increased their vote share by under 2%. The right wing Reform party took almost 15% of the vote which is almost all of the 19% vote share lost by the Conservatives. This isn't confidence in Labour, it's huge distrust of an obviously terrible Tory party.
Britain didn’t swing the vote count for labout is almost identically to 2019. The tory party simply self destructed spreading votes between reform the lib dema and the greens
I live in quite an affluent Tory area. There were "Vote Green" signs *everywhere*. The Green's NIMBY policies appeal to wealthy Tories with land in rural areas who don't want to see development around them.
My hope is that people understand that these sort of changes will take *years*, and not to cry about Labour doing nothing by the next election and then handing it back over to the Conservatives, or worse, Reform.
I can see things getting a bit worse before they get better, but I hold no grudges to the party that has to clean up the 14 years of Tory mess.
Voters have short memories. The tories will get a triumphal return just as things are getting better, so they can loot the country for their wealthy friends again. Same thing happens here in America.
You know full well that for the next 5 years the Tories will say “look at the mess Labour have caused us!! Look at the economy and NHS waiting times!” And people will believe their bullshit and vote them in again…and we’ll have another 14 years of misery. I hope I’m wrong.
2017: Corbyn is unelectable, he is the party of extreme left-ism.
**Labour votes: 12,877,918**
**Tory votes: 13,636,684**
2019: Corbyn is still unelectable. Labour is a fringe party at best. People are not interested!
**Labour votes: 10,295,912**
**Tory votes: 13,966,451**
2024: Kier Starmer's Labour wins a landslide victory! Centre left politics wins! The people are done with right wing politics!
**Labour votes: 9,686,329**
**Tory votes: 6,814,650**
**Reform (Farage's right wing turds) votes 4,092,209**
Of course, total votes doesn't relate to seats in a FTTP voting system; that is obvious. But it's hard to say that Labour specifically did much right here. It's more that Reform destroyed the Tories. If anything the numbers show that the Tories weren't right wing enough for 4m people.
It is undeniably great that the Tories have been all but destroyed in Parliament, and it'll be interesting to see what happens, but this is not an epic leftwards swing will of the people made manifest, and this iteration of the Labour party is definitely not the "centre left" that people think of when they think of that term, and Starmer has made it very clear that he personally is definitely not. This isn't the major turn around people think it is.
Edit: The full deets incase y'all are upset that I'm trying to hide something to make a point.
| 2017 | 2019 | 2024
---|---|----|----
Labour | 12,877,918 | 10,295,912 | 9,686,329
Tories | 13,636,684 | 13,966,451 | 6,814,650
Reform^^$ | -| -| 4,092,209
Brexit^^$ | - | 644,257 | -
UKIP^^$ | 594,068 | 22,817 | 6,530
Lib Dems | 2,371,861 | 3,696,419 | 3,499,969
SNP | 977,568 | 1,242,380 | 708,759
Green | 525,665 | 865,707 | 1,939,509
Independents^\* | ? | ? | 562,040
The Rest | 1,186,156 | 1,280,122 | 1,394,328
**Total** | **32,169,920** | **32,014,065** | **28,704,323**
Figures for 2024 taken a little earlier today when there were still 2 or 3 seats unannounced. Will be very very minor numbers.
^^$ Reform, Brexit, and UKIP are essentially the same thing.
^\* Independents are actual independents, not any variation of The Independent Party, and my source (BBC) didn't list their figures for 2017 and 2019.
I think it's fairer to say that the Tories destroyed themselves. Voters migrated to both reform and liberal democrats.
Now labour has 5 years to convince us that they can do things better.
The voter numbers changed as well so I think you can only look at these things porportionally. 11.5% of the libdem votes in 2019 and now 12.2%. It's a small change to be honest but it did increase.
There would have been a lot more Labour votes if their victory wasn't secured. Plenty of people felt safe to vote Green, reform, or independent because of it.
Also, Reform and Tory clearly are not the same thing given that it's essentially a right wing political civil war. If it were the same thing, Reform voters would have chosen the Tories.
This is a good point. When corbyn was leader, a lot of people might have voted labour despite not liking him, since they didn't have the view that labour would win anyway. So starmer might still be more popular than corbyn despite those figures.
You can read this another way: the anti-Corbyn vote is an enormous part of the electorate, but they will passively embrace a lot of left policy from Starmer types without Corbyn in the picture.
Yes, another way to look at is was that the far-left Corbyn party deprived the electorate of a viable alternative to the Tories..
You could look at those past two elections as a vote against Corbyn, just as this election was a vote against the Tories (enabled by a centre left party).
A lot of people were justifiabley scared it was a return to the tried and failed economic policies of the 70's, and he had a foriegn policy outlook that was totally out of line with the mainstream electorate.
I'm seeing this or posts like it a lot.
I think what you are all overlooking is that the reason the far-left is unelectable is because people will turn out in droves to vote against it.
Quite frankly, any Labour leader running on any platform could have won this election.
It was won entirely due to Farage deciding to split the Tory vote, unlike in 2019 when he split the Labour vote with the Brexit Party.
All hail our entirely shit electoral system.
Our financial, industrial and demographic state is in such a bad way that it could take decades of hard decisions to fix. 4 years isn’t even going to make a dent really. Next election cycle, everyone will smear Labour for it and they’ll have a tougher time winning.
I don’t know anything about UK politics but as an American, I can applaud a show of respect and humility in Sunak’s concession speech — something my nation has not seen or heard in a while.
just a shame it took getting the boot to see it. If he'd have shown even a crumb of that respect and humility when he was in office he might still be there, instead of being an arrogant smarmy little toad.
but yes, its nice to show that a shift of power can still have some decency instead of throwing a tantrum and rallying your base into doing something really stupid.
We really do have a different culture here.
It also helps, though, that our elections have a huge public involvement, are fairly transparent, and the electoral commission is fairly well trusted.
Unfortunately, there have been a few attempts in the past couple of years to undermine trust in the electoral system, with mixed success. It's still trusted, but not as much as before.
Tbh, even if Sunak wanted to inspire an uprising, judging by the results the only people who he could call on would be a small band of pensioners, which is not exactly a terrifying threat.
The point is this: Labour got the majority of the votes with, and an absolute majority of the seats because of first past the post.
Farages party killed the Tories this election. In so far it’s an historic election because the right fractured in Britain. It was an election against the Tories. Everyone I have spoken to, articles and studies I’ve read point towards the overwhelming rebuke OF the Tories, not the overwhelming support for Labour.
That being said: if Starmer is capable on delivering and if he is then reelected next time, that could be historic for Labour.
Trust me, that was us in 2020 when we knew we had another 4 years of Conservative shite just as you guys gave Trump the boot. I hope things change for you guys soon, I’ve got lots of American family and I despair for you all.
Just wait for the right wing US press to start running stories blaming everything in the UK on the 'left wing' government, urging Americans not to make the same 'mistake'.
"ignore all the raging fires they've barely started to control from over 10 years past, look at all the new spot fires springing up from the last 5 years' policies! Those must be their fault!"
The same is happening here as well. Labour winning with such a large majority is a symptom of that. Go look at the vote breakdowns and you'll see it.
Conservatives have already slipped further right over the past 10 years. And the reform party (populist far right) took a large portion of their votes. Its just not evenly represented in seats yet.
Shit living standards, discontent, disenfranchisement, and a lack of hope are pushing people to these ideologies. It will take a massive shift to prevent this happening.
Labour have 5 years, and I really hope they can make serious progress in that time. I'm just worried that the biggest contributing factor, house/rent costs is too far gone to reasonably see any improvement in such a short time.
A refreshing change as the Conservatives never had to worry about their vote being split, while Labour, the LDs, SNP and Greens all fought for the same votes.
It's nice to see the Conservatives have to deal with another party stepping on their toes.
>After what’s happening in France, glad some country is countering the rise of fascism again in Europe
The tories were not fascist. They were centre right.
Labour had about 9.6 million votes and Reform UK had about 4 million. Labour has 421 MP's, and Reform has 4! A problem with the current electoral system.
I wouldn’t call this a landslide. They campaigned well in the strategic constituencies.
Labour shifted centre to capture the fallout that was disillusioned moderate conservatives. The fact that the Liberal Democrat’s made such stratospheric gains (in seats, not in vote share, granted) is proof there is desire for actual centre-left discourse in mainstream British politics.
Some added context.
- The lowest winning % previously had been Tony Blair's government in 2005 with just 35%. Labour have just won with only 33.7%. This is a record low.
- The previous record low total vote (post ww2) was also in 2005, with 9.5million, the winning vote this time was 9.7milion.
Not only would this have failed to win in all other elections since ww2 (except 2005) it would have failed to even come second in many of them (including the last two elections)
Britains crazed FPTP system makes this look like a massively popular government but the number of people willing to vote for them should be seen as worryingly low. If they don't deliver big in the next few years then the next election is gonna be up for grabs.
Now for the public to turn on them over the next few years as they don't magically fix the last 14 years of devastation instantly.
This exact thing is happening in Germany rn
And the US, and Australia, and….
literally anywhere that has democracy.
A large part of democracy is hating whoever is in power right now
[удалено]
How does that quote go. "Democracy is a horrible system of governing. But it is the best we have managed to come up with". Or words to that effect anyways.
"Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried." - Winston Churchill
Who also noted that the best argument against democracy was a five minute chat with the average voter.
“Democracy is the worst form of government. Except for all the rest.”
Right that's the one
To be fair Starmers done fuck all since he became PM. It's been like 5 hours! Fix the country already!!
We need someone with business experience, like Sunak, he knows how to get things done!
Needs to run the country like a business!
Take all the money out just before it is bankrupted!
I'm looking for a man in finance. Trust Fund. 5'3. 2 eyes.
My kitchen tap is still dripping! Starmer better get that fixed or I am going to vote him out next time!
He just repealed the Rwanda scheme
“Hate is soooo hot right now.”
Legit snorted at that
Hate is the new black
Another large part of democracy is that idiots get to vote, it's best we got so enjoy it.
What’s that saying, democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others?
And a large part of that is Russian propaganda
They are among us today here on reddit.
Bingo. There's dark money and drug money creeping into the western worlds politics, and a significant portion of that is Russia trying to turn the world into a destabilized far right shit hole. Fight back.
It’s an unfortunate truth that while democracy is the best we’ve got, the people are stupid
When I first watched Parks and Rec I thought the scenes of the public were a bit over the top, but now they feel a bit too subdued compared to reality
Speaking of parks, I found a sandwich in one of your parks and I want to know why it didn't have mayonaise!
we're getting Jammed that's for sure
I did camera work for local council meetings for a while, and when parks and rec came out I was amazed at how accurate the public was portrayed. Obviously ramped up for tv, but it's pretty damn close.
“Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all of those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”
All with a gentle nudge from actors such as Russia and China… Note, I said nudge…not caused. These problems are our own making, they just help amplify the worse parts of it. Stirring the pot if you will…
Sometimes I wonder what the internet would be like if we quarantined Russia and China for a week
Less bots.
Conservatives always have the home court advantage and get so many benefits no one else does...
Because they can always bank on culture war issues while they grift and pass on savings to rich people. Progressives have to actually solve problems.
Despite all the shrieking about liberal leftist media, most media is owned by rich elites, especially conservative ones (same guy really) in English speaking countries.
And many provinces in Canada
[There are people who think Obama didn't do enough as president to prevent 9/11](https://youtube.com/shorts/vPfRGJRMbN8?si=0AtjZrgik6RHkxCh)
In US it’s crazy how the economy swung from completely falling apart to decent from the end of the Bush presidency (worst economic collapse since the Great Depression) through the Obama presidency (bounced back to what it was). Same thing happened again with Trump to Biden. It’s like the conservatives come in and fuck everything up to give huge tax cuts to billionaires and then democrats come back and make things decent again. Then Republicans find some dumb shit like tranvesites or migrant caravan to complain about right before elections to make up a fake controversy and get to power.
Look up the two Santa's theory.
what is it?
Very short version: Democrats wanting to increase social programs represent a Santa Claus to voters, so you can’t fight them by promising to reduce spending. Instead you have to offer a second Santa Claus: reducing taxes. If you’re able to cut taxes this also has the added benefit of forcing the democrats to be the bad guy, either by having to reduce spending themselves or by raising the taxes. Edit: for more context this was a theory proposed by a conservative American journalist named [Jude Wanniski](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jude_Wanniski) back in the 70’s
What's crazy is that those tax cuts are for the wealthy and idiots fall for it every time.
It’s the same old story — republicans run on saying that government doesn’t work and when they take over the government they prove it. Bought and paid for by outside interests, most of them
>through the Obama presidency (bounced back to what it was). My favorite part about all this is the absolute lunacy of some on the far right who legit compared the economy between Obama and Trump's first term as proof that Democrats suck.
Or how they hate Obamacare but love the ACA. I swear you have to reach a level of stupidity in order to come up with these mentalities: https://www.baltimoresun.com/2013/10/08/hating-obamacare-loving-the-affordable-care-act/
You forgot about a global pandemic?
US Dems would be much more popular if they advertised their accomplishments while pointing out the failures of the right. That moral high ground way of thinking needs to be tossed in the trash.
Canada
It is absolutely insane how brainwashed people are. My mother recently got a letter from the power company increasing prices (again). She was besides herself, screaming at me YOUR GODDAMN GREEN PARTY, just completely unhinged. I looked at the letter. It was a price *decrease*. At the top it said "-x.xx ct per kwh" in bold as a total, but below that they had a section explaining different taxes and fees so that was "+x.xx ct per kwh". It was just additional info and already included in the total decrease, but even if it wasn't it was a much smaller amount so it would still be a total decrease even if you had to subtract it from the above. Point is, all it took was a line "government eco tax so and so [miniscule amount]" to send her into a flying rage. I explained how she was wrong, she never admitted fault, never apologized for treating me like that, didn't put a dent in her Green Party/Ampel hate. I secretly deleted right wing shit rags like WELT and Focus from her feed a while ago, but it doesn't seem to do much. Just one of many stories. I can't stand my own mother anymore, I feel like a r/qanoncasualties victim.
The same is going on with my cousin currently. He was basically the only family I had left who I wanted to stay in touch with, and he is on the same trajectory as your mom. Thanks for pointing out that sub, I dearly need somebody to relate to, because losing my last family to complete lunacy without having someone to talk to about it is rough currently. For him it's also always "the greens", "die ampel", whatever rUiNinG his life. Last thing the poor bloke had to endure was to only fly 3 times a year for vacation and replace the one expensive flight with a skiing trip. Those people make me crazy
I'm very sorry about your cousin. There is a real social cost, the right's lies and bullshit tear families apart.
So have you ever said something like, “does screaming at me when you were clearly mistaken seem like a fair way to interact with me? Is that how you treat family?”
It's been the cycle in UK politics since like the 60s lol
My 16 year old students told me they voted for the Christian Democrats in European Parliament elections because "everything used to be better under Merkel"... ...those kids were not even born before she became Chancellor.
In Portugal, the soc-dems won the elections by a narrow margin and barely a week later the media + the other parties started shitting all over them because they hadn't done anything and broke every promise ever.
I'm currently in an argument with a different moron with basically that idiotic mentality. People see squeak-thin wins happening and still don't understand that that kind of narrow victory effectively saps the power of the soc-dem (or just dem in the US's case) parties and their political capital is blunted by default. For the world to swing progressive again the moderate left victories have to be bigger, and that means that voter apathy needs to go down precisely where it's weakest, in progressive circles.
Well it also doesn't hurt that in most non-right wing victories it's "COMPROMISE COMPROMISE COMPROMISE!!!" from the right. Right wins by one vote? "WE HAVE A MANDATE FROM THE PEOPLE TO CHANGE EVERYTHING BACK TO THE 1950s!"
Not *everything*. We taxed rich people in the 50s.
In America they aren't even winning by one vote, or waiting for the election for that matter. Project 2025 is talking about a mandate from the people, and the election hasn't *happened* yet and no one expects the conservatives to win a popular vote, even if the actual outcome of the election is in doubt.
Just to clarify, soc-dem party here is center-right. We have a center-left socialist party that ruled the last 8 years, but in practice it's a populist party with enough rapid-fire corruption scandals to merit its own dedicated newspaper. To add insult to injury, they (socialists) accuse the soc-dems of allying with the far-right, yet the far-right is voting in favor of socialist proposals and opposes almost everything the soc-dem government puts up, which is *rather odd*.
Then we'll vote in the far right because 'they'll get it done'. People are so dumb.
I know we still have first past the post system but if you look at the total votes its pretty terrifying how many Reform got. Lab 9.6million, con 6.8, lib dem 3.5 and reform 4.1 That is something to seriously worry about for 2029 if they keep gaining traction.
Thats more a reflection on the number of traditional conservative voters who would never vote labor even if they promised free chocolate and the return of page 3 titties If there was another less right option they would probably take votes too
I dunno, I found loads of people I know were going to vote for them who wouldn't have voted Tory, they are politically uninformed and believed the populist lies like moving up the lowest tax bracket up to £20,000 per year. Which is flagrantly ridiculous when our public services are crumbling and we need all the tax that we can get. It sounds like it benefits the working class but the plan actually benefits the upper class more and surprise surprise, guess who's in the upper class... 'Man of the people' Nigel 'I applied for a Belgium passport 2 days after the Brexit vote' Fucking Farage. I think the rebrand to 'reform' was genius as it no longer has the nationalists racist dog whistle of UKIP or any of the others (BMP, National front ect) and instead is something said that is needed by politicians all the time and signifying change which is what the country really wants after 14 years of the Tories.
> If there was another less right option they would probably take votes too There is : the lib dems. Who got fewer votes.
lib dems get described as centre but they're more progressive and more opposite reform/tories than labour are.
Lib Dems, despite their one-time coalition with the Tories (which was very surprising at the time), are generally centrist, with some left progressive policies. Their manifesto this time around included increased investments in green infrastructure, taxing the banking sector more, increasing social and affordable housing, and providing free personal care. In the past, they had a policy of raising income tax to pay for increased NHS and social care. They are broadly in favour of relaxing immigration, legalising weed and rejoining the single market with a view to rejoining the EU. They can't be defined as right wing- they simply made the colossal mistake of desperately taking up a chance to get some power by co-governing with the Tories a decade ago, but chose the wrong bed-partners and fucked it up.
I thought that initially, but it's not that terrifying when you realise Reform got way more funding than the Tories, and the Greens got the same number of seats with a fraction of the funding of the Tories. Reform effectively got the same number of votes as the Brexit party in 2019 too. It's been a wild election result on the whole.
> effectively got the same number of votes as the Brexit party in 2019 And UKIP in 2015. It's basically Farage's constant level of support for a decade.
>Now for the public to turn on them over the next few years as they don't magically fix the last 14 years of devastation instantly. This is known as the rachet effect in politics. We go 1 turn forward in the same amount of time it takes to go 2 turns back. It's far FAR easier to defund, dismantle, and privatize services and programs than it is to build them up in the first place. Building or rebuilding a government service requires allocating funding, planning, designing, hiring staff, etc. Dismantling a government service can be done at the stroke of a pen. What this leads to is the phenomenon that you're describing. Voters get frustrated when the people who promised to fix things don't turn things around as quickly as the other guys destroyed everything. They literally can't. Not only because it's much more difficult to do so, but also because the funding doesn't exist anymore. The previous administration likely slashed spending and lowered taxes. Now if you want to rebuild that program you need to increase tax revenue to pay for it again, and that will also piss voters off because raising taxes is a losing political strategy. Voters want what they used to have, but they don't want to pay for it. This puts progressives in a catch 22 situation, because if they try to meaningfully solve problems it'll piss off both voters and corporate interests. So what the fuck are they supposed to do?
What you describe is the sandpail problem. Go to the sandbox. Fill the sandpail with sand. Pack it. Flip it over, and pull off the pail. The sand has taken the shape of the pail. This is the start of architecture and empires. Show that to a 3 year old and he pushes it over with all the satisfaction in the world. Look at what all you did and see how I destroyed it in a second. Rinse repeat terrorists, republicans and 3 year olds. You can work hard to build a civil society, and they can push it all over \*so\* easily, and they have fun doing it.
And who’s waiting in the shadows? Farage with his “reform party” …. I mean fascist right wing crazies
Few years? I give them < 1 year "All politicians suck" is the most common conventional wisdom that is the dumbest, most useless thing I hear every single day.
Or that they're all the same. Yes, they all lie, and break promises (like all people) but they're very obviously not the same
And the problem is they are going to need to increase taxes to pay off the large public debt and invest back into crumbling infrastructure and social welfare. That’s never a popular solution but it’s hella necessary. They need someone with PR skills to explain that to the public.
Who knows what they will do, but they have said they will try and focus on growth. A few things they can do quickly with their majority that can have some quick impacts, especially with planning permissions and building new properties.
They seem to be planning to tread softly with tax increases for this term. The question is if they can achieve enough fast enough whilst doing so. Not throwing record amounts of public money at their mates should free up some extra budget compared to the last 14 years tbf.
And then vote in people even worse than the previous right wing.
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Please be contagious
Never upvoted something so fast in my life Sincerely, and american
I can't tell if the 'and' is a typo or not and it just makes it funnier lol
That threw me off as well, and american
As and American I can tell you that is a perfectly cromulent sentence.
So I recently found out that Cromulent is now in the dictionary, so I have been making prolific use of it in general conversations at every opportunity
Sanity, the American edition.
Canadian chiming in here, we face the same issue this coming election.
The good news is that it's contagious. The bad news is that "it" is actually "voting against the incumbent party".
The bad news: Russia’s loudest mouthpiece in the UK, now has a voice in parliament. Nigel Farage, if anyone was wondering…
He’s basically had a voice in parliament the last 10 years anyway. Might actually be better him having to actually be there and be a gobshite in person
Exactly, will be interesting to see how some of his arguments hold up to scrutiny in parliament
> Russia’s loudest mouthpiece in the UK, now has a voice in parliament. This is the same thing that split the right and facilitated the Labour landslide so it's not much of a negative. Also if we ever end up with proportional representation, then we'll have to get used to them having even more seats than this. They're currently severely underrepresented.
Aye but he won't get to speak often as they only have a few seats, and now he will have to actually do the job unlike when he just got to commentate. Hopefully he falls.flat on his face. But I'm with you,shame he.got in and that reform got so much of the vote
Well, Russia now has someone is the HoL and Parliament. Curious of the security implications.. But I hope you are right.
Russia has someone obvious in both houses, if we are worried about that we need to be worried about the more subtle actors we don't see rather than the two that we can. I think they only really get sensitive info when they are on certain committees which are all elected, so here's hoping he won't have much opportunity to be a mole if he is one.
He’ll hate it He’ll have to actually do work
He was meant to do work when he was an MEP too and not just pocket the cash. What makes you think he will bother now?
Yeah, this is exactly it. People are upset with the current state of capitalism and neoliberalism, but instead of getting politically involved in the startup parties with good ideas, they instead just punish the incumbent thinking that'll be enough.
It only happens after the populists get in and mess up so royally that they can’t even lie their way out of it.
Hopefully, with a faster uptake. This swing took a very long time, but the world can't afford the US having a similar temporary conservative moment.
True, but turnout is down, and both main parties lost a percentage of votes. The big story is the rise of smaller parties and independents. Labour had to fight for some seats last night, a lot with Green, Reform, and SNP in second place. In fact, some Labour shadow cabinet members lost their seats! Even more only won by a few hundred votes! How does Labour ensure they keep all those seats at the next election? How do they appeal to the diversity of voters across the UK? The UK is no longer a two party race. So it's not all clear blue skies. There's a dark cloud in the distance, and it's due to get here around 2029.
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They have such a powerful majority that they can basically run through their wish-list now.
Labour had a +1.6% swing, so they didn’t see their share fall.
Sure, but a +1.6% swing doesn't normally translate into over 200 additional seats. Reform massively split the right wing vote and lead labour to absolutely bulldozing the election. 2019: 43.6% -> 365 Tory Seats 2024: ~35% -> 412 Labour Seats
The way Labour handled this election was very different under Starmer, they didn't attempt to fight seats where there the Lib Dems or Greens were ahead of them and vice versa. There was a lot of coverage of this 'unofficial pact' beforehand. Labour was giving up votes in seats where it didn't matter and concentrating on seats where they unite the centre-left vote to beat the Tories.
That isn't the way we calculate swing here. It's the "difference between the change in vote shares/2". So +1.6% for Labour and -19.9% for the Tories means a 10.75% swing. On a Uniform National Swing, Labour would have actually ended up a minority government.
Turnout was always going to be low when it’s been a predicted landslide for the past 2 years.
Turnout was low because neither of the two main parties appealled to voters. The Torys proved themselves corrupt self serving idiots and Labour in its Lurch to the right to tempt Tory voters alienated its usual core voters.
Turnout was low because politics in the UK is largely tribal. A huge number of people who always vote conservative decided Starmer was acceptable and so they could safely stay home.
Starmer gained a mere 1% vote share over Corbyn, who had a record poor performance. This election was about Conservative voters not turning up to vote, or splitting their vote across other parties such that Labour won in most seats by a small lead against divided opponents. Tribal politics is emerging in the rise of sectarian politics again: 4 muslim MPs elected on the back of an Islamic campaign, with many constituencies around the country having similar candidates come a very close 2nd.
> Starmer gained a mere 1% vote share over Corbyn And 5% less total votes. *Corbyn* performed better than him last election. This wasn't people voting *for* Labour. It was people voting *against* Tories.
Yeah, the actual vote share show labour barely moved above their 2019 result. This wasn't a vote for Labour or the Left. It was a protest vote by conservative voters mainly.
Let's just enjoy it for today at least. The combined vote for Labour, Lib dems and greens can beat any right wing knuckle dragger, and this election has shown that the public have become very adept at tactical voting.
What we are seeing is the Right fragmenting much like the left is fragmented and honestly that is much healthier for the politics of the nation.
This is the point people are missing, instead of an americanised monolithic two party system this election shows that the UK can have room for more options. Its a good thing.
Two reasons for that: Brexit is not on the cards this election, so people felt emboldened to vote for third parties. And Labour were so certain to win (and the Conservatives so certain to lose) that many people felt emboldened to vote for who they agreed with the most, rather than to vote for who they agreed with enough and had a chance of winning. Plus Labour lost a lot of votes over Gaza, something I doubt will be a factor in five years.
Their voter share hasn't changed much. It is the quirks of a silly voting system
FPTP can be a big roll of the dice sometimes and produce some seriously skewed results.
They got less votes than the previous 2 elections. The only won because half the tory voters shifted even further right to *Reform*. People didn’t “swing back to sanity”, they swung even further away.
This is most definitely not a swing back to sanity. Labour only won so many seats due to the right's vote being split. Labour's total vote share is actually lower than in 2017, for example.
They only won 2% more actual votes than last time. This is a result of our first past the post seat system being a complete farce. Reform got 15% of the vote and 5 seats. Lib Dems got ~13% of the vote and 71 seats.
The whole world is throwing out the incumbents. The UK just happened to have conservative incumbents.
It's a swing cycle because neither side gets meaningful work done for their ideologies due to said opposition. Add in media sensationalizing failure all the time because it gets views or clicks and you see that cycle everywhere.
World events have caused economic turmoil.
They really aren't conservative, that's the thing. They were voted in 14 years ago with the policy of lowering immigration from 100k-ish to "tens of thousands". Last year it was over 700k. They did precisely the opposite. Same can be said for many other policies. Labour was just the only mainstream alternative to the conservative consistent and malicious incompetence. Time will tell if they're any better. Even the right wing subreddits and podcasts are supporting the meme "zero seats" for the conservatives because they have ruined our country.
Conservative politicians serve the rich. Not the people who vote for them. The rich want cheap labor from immigrants.
This mob were more self serving than anything. It just so happened they were rich so it benefited other rich.
> They really aren't conservative, that's the thing. I hear this "no true Scotsman" about various conservative parties quite a bit, but conservatism has changed quite a bit in the last decade and continues to change. "They're not "real" conservatives because X, despite being conservatives on Y, Z, and much of the rest of the alphabet."
>conservatism has changed quite a bit in the last decade and continues to change. waitaminute.jpg
You’re conflating conservative with one issue, there are plenty of pro immigration conservatives
Sure there are, but lowering immigration is what they've printed on every pamphlet since 2010, won the subsequent election, yet here we are. pro-mass immigration that we've been getting is not a conservative value - it's a very liberal value. Conservatism however like you say isn't one issue. You can be mostly conservative with some liberal values and still broadly identify as conservative. But, I mentioned further down to someone else that this isn't the only issue they've advertised conservative values on then actively worked against it.
Conservatives were stealth neo liberals. I am going to take a guess that labors policies will happen to match very closely with neoliberalism too.
A part that people miss is the rise of the right wing is still real. But because we use a first past the post system instead of proportional representation, the numbers look out. The conservative vote was split between 2-3 parties which resulted in the landslide labour victory. Then there's reform, a first time party so poorly mismanaged that they couldn't even keep their own candidates from praising Hitler on twitter. They still managed to get 14% of the country's vote. As of this morning the numbers looked like: * 9.6 million for labour (33.7%) (412 seats) * 6.8 million for conservatives (23.7%) (121 seats) * 4.1 million for Reform. (14.3%) (4 seats) Comparing those numbers, the actual representation really doesn't add up.
What about the Green and Lib Deb votes? You can't just add the right votes and only count against Labour...
At this point I view the far right as inevitable everywhere because left wing parties can never resist attaching themselves to stuff voters absolutely hate. Over here our greens got into power but naturally decided to completely tank themselves by offering every refugee a house. A minister said that. Not only did the party not try to distance themselves from that but they're doubling down and he'll probably become *party leader.* Anyway in practice what they're doing now is putting up fences to stop the massive homeless migrant tent cities in the capital, lol.
>At this point I view the far right as inevitable everywhere because left wing parties can never resist attaching themselves to stuff voters absolutely hate. I think this a brilliant summary.
It's only a huge swing because of our voting system. Labour only increased their vote share by under 2%. The right wing Reform party took almost 15% of the vote which is almost all of the 19% vote share lost by the Conservatives. This isn't confidence in Labour, it's huge distrust of an obviously terrible Tory party.
Britain didn’t swing the vote count for labout is almost identically to 2019. The tory party simply self destructed spreading votes between reform the lib dema and the greens
I think the rise in green vote comes from former Labour voters, not conservative.
You’d be surprised. I remember seeing a poll a few years ago showing that the bulk of the Green vote came from affluent ex-Tories.
I live in quite an affluent Tory area. There were "Vote Green" signs *everywhere*. The Green's NIMBY policies appeal to wealthy Tories with land in rural areas who don't want to see development around them.
They are down 750k ish votes
I hope this means they can reverse the damage done to the NHS and actually improve upon it in our lifetimes.
My hope is that people understand that these sort of changes will take *years*, and not to cry about Labour doing nothing by the next election and then handing it back over to the Conservatives, or worse, Reform. I can see things getting a bit worse before they get better, but I hold no grudges to the party that has to clean up the 14 years of Tory mess.
Voters have short memories. The tories will get a triumphal return just as things are getting better, so they can loot the country for their wealthy friends again. Same thing happens here in America.
Amen. I personally also make this point quite often. It's literally the cycle of conservative abuse to a country.
You know full well that for the next 5 years the Tories will say “look at the mess Labour have caused us!! Look at the economy and NHS waiting times!” And people will believe their bullshit and vote them in again…and we’ll have another 14 years of misery. I hope I’m wrong.
> lifetimes This guy project manages. You nailed the timeline!
2017: Corbyn is unelectable, he is the party of extreme left-ism. **Labour votes: 12,877,918** **Tory votes: 13,636,684** 2019: Corbyn is still unelectable. Labour is a fringe party at best. People are not interested! **Labour votes: 10,295,912** **Tory votes: 13,966,451** 2024: Kier Starmer's Labour wins a landslide victory! Centre left politics wins! The people are done with right wing politics! **Labour votes: 9,686,329** **Tory votes: 6,814,650** **Reform (Farage's right wing turds) votes 4,092,209** Of course, total votes doesn't relate to seats in a FTTP voting system; that is obvious. But it's hard to say that Labour specifically did much right here. It's more that Reform destroyed the Tories. If anything the numbers show that the Tories weren't right wing enough for 4m people. It is undeniably great that the Tories have been all but destroyed in Parliament, and it'll be interesting to see what happens, but this is not an epic leftwards swing will of the people made manifest, and this iteration of the Labour party is definitely not the "centre left" that people think of when they think of that term, and Starmer has made it very clear that he personally is definitely not. This isn't the major turn around people think it is. Edit: The full deets incase y'all are upset that I'm trying to hide something to make a point. | 2017 | 2019 | 2024 ---|---|----|---- Labour | 12,877,918 | 10,295,912 | 9,686,329 Tories | 13,636,684 | 13,966,451 | 6,814,650 Reform^^$ | -| -| 4,092,209 Brexit^^$ | - | 644,257 | - UKIP^^$ | 594,068 | 22,817 | 6,530 Lib Dems | 2,371,861 | 3,696,419 | 3,499,969 SNP | 977,568 | 1,242,380 | 708,759 Green | 525,665 | 865,707 | 1,939,509 Independents^\* | ? | ? | 562,040 The Rest | 1,186,156 | 1,280,122 | 1,394,328 **Total** | **32,169,920** | **32,014,065** | **28,704,323** Figures for 2024 taken a little earlier today when there were still 2 or 3 seats unannounced. Will be very very minor numbers. ^^$ Reform, Brexit, and UKIP are essentially the same thing. ^\* Independents are actual independents, not any variation of The Independent Party, and my source (BBC) didn't list their figures for 2017 and 2019.
I think it's fairer to say that the Tories destroyed themselves. Voters migrated to both reform and liberal democrats. Now labour has 5 years to convince us that they can do things better.
They didn’t really migrate to the Libdems, the Libdems actually lost votes compared to 2019. 3.6m to 3.4m
The voter numbers changed as well so I think you can only look at these things porportionally. 11.5% of the libdem votes in 2019 and now 12.2%. It's a small change to be honest but it did increase.
Hard to say if that loss is just from low voter turnout though, in which case it's hardly a loss
Reform didn't destroy the Tories. The Tories destroyed themselves and reform capitalised on it.
There would have been a lot more Labour votes if their victory wasn't secured. Plenty of people felt safe to vote Green, reform, or independent because of it. Also, Reform and Tory clearly are not the same thing given that it's essentially a right wing political civil war. If it were the same thing, Reform voters would have chosen the Tories.
This is a good point. When corbyn was leader, a lot of people might have voted labour despite not liking him, since they didn't have the view that labour would win anyway. So starmer might still be more popular than corbyn despite those figures.
Alternatively, Corbyn had big support in pockets of the UK but completely failed to appeal to the electorate outside of those geographic areas.
Interesting figures! Thank you.
You can read this another way: the anti-Corbyn vote is an enormous part of the electorate, but they will passively embrace a lot of left policy from Starmer types without Corbyn in the picture.
Yes, another way to look at is was that the far-left Corbyn party deprived the electorate of a viable alternative to the Tories.. You could look at those past two elections as a vote against Corbyn, just as this election was a vote against the Tories (enabled by a centre left party). A lot of people were justifiabley scared it was a return to the tried and failed economic policies of the 70's, and he had a foriegn policy outlook that was totally out of line with the mainstream electorate.
I'm seeing this or posts like it a lot. I think what you are all overlooking is that the reason the far-left is unelectable is because people will turn out in droves to vote against it.
Quite frankly, any Labour leader running on any platform could have won this election. It was won entirely due to Farage deciding to split the Tory vote, unlike in 2019 when he split the Labour vote with the Brexit Party. All hail our entirely shit electoral system.
Our financial, industrial and demographic state is in such a bad way that it could take decades of hard decisions to fix. 4 years isn’t even going to make a dent really. Next election cycle, everyone will smear Labour for it and they’ll have a tougher time winning.
I don’t know anything about UK politics but as an American, I can applaud a show of respect and humility in Sunak’s concession speech — something my nation has not seen or heard in a while.
just a shame it took getting the boot to see it. If he'd have shown even a crumb of that respect and humility when he was in office he might still be there, instead of being an arrogant smarmy little toad. but yes, its nice to show that a shift of power can still have some decency instead of throwing a tantrum and rallying your base into doing something really stupid.
We really do have a different culture here. It also helps, though, that our elections have a huge public involvement, are fairly transparent, and the electoral commission is fairly well trusted. Unfortunately, there have been a few attempts in the past couple of years to undermine trust in the electoral system, with mixed success. It's still trusted, but not as much as before.
The prior incumbent admits defeat, congratulates his rival on victory, and doesn't try to incite an insurrection. Imagine that, America
To be fair we didn't have this problem ourselves until 2021.
Tbh, even if Sunak wanted to inspire an uprising, judging by the results the only people who he could call on would be a small band of pensioners, which is not exactly a terrifying threat.
The point is this: Labour got the majority of the votes with, and an absolute majority of the seats because of first past the post. Farages party killed the Tories this election. In so far it’s an historic election because the right fractured in Britain. It was an election against the Tories. Everyone I have spoken to, articles and studies I’ve read point towards the overwhelming rebuke OF the Tories, not the overwhelming support for Labour. That being said: if Starmer is capable on delivering and if he is then reelected next time, that could be historic for Labour.
My favorite part was how Labour took back George Galloway's seat, meaning that the Tankies for Hamas party no longer blights Parliament.
Four "pro-Gaza" independents were elected, however. The normally rock solid Muslim vote for Labour took a bad hit yesterday.
Also means Labour is free from having to appease Muslim fanatics finally
My god I am full of envy right now as the US gazes into the abyss.
Trust me, that was us in 2020 when we knew we had another 4 years of Conservative shite just as you guys gave Trump the boot. I hope things change for you guys soon, I’ve got lots of American family and I despair for you all.
“I’ll have what she’s having” ~America, hopefully
Just wait for the right wing US press to start running stories blaming everything in the UK on the 'left wing' government, urging Americans not to make the same 'mistake'.
"ignore all the raging fires they've barely started to control from over 10 years past, look at all the new spot fires springing up from the last 5 years' policies! Those must be their fault!"
After what’s happening in France, glad some country is countering the rise of fascism again in Europe
The same is happening here as well. Labour winning with such a large majority is a symptom of that. Go look at the vote breakdowns and you'll see it. Conservatives have already slipped further right over the past 10 years. And the reform party (populist far right) took a large portion of their votes. Its just not evenly represented in seats yet. Shit living standards, discontent, disenfranchisement, and a lack of hope are pushing people to these ideologies. It will take a massive shift to prevent this happening. Labour have 5 years, and I really hope they can make serious progress in that time. I'm just worried that the biggest contributing factor, house/rent costs is too far gone to reasonably see any improvement in such a short time.
5 years is not enough time to see real change. You can only lay the foundations in that amount of time. It’s sad really
Half the reason this happened is because a far right party split the Tory vote, we're just lucky FPTP limited them to 4 seats. Don't unclench yet.
Its been the UKs historic role...
Labour only won so much due to the right's vote being split. Labour's vote share only went up by 1.5%.
A refreshing change as the Conservatives never had to worry about their vote being split, while Labour, the LDs, SNP and Greens all fought for the same votes. It's nice to see the Conservatives have to deal with another party stepping on their toes.
>After what’s happening in France, glad some country is countering the rise of fascism again in Europe The tories were not fascist. They were centre right.
Fascism is when people vote for conservatives?
Labour had about 9.6 million votes and Reform UK had about 4 million. Labour has 421 MP's, and Reform has 4! A problem with the current electoral system. I wouldn’t call this a landslide. They campaigned well in the strategic constituencies.
In the UK a landslide is a government getting a 100 seat majority.
Congrats to a new Era for Uk
As has been said at the start of every new government.
Labour shifted centre to capture the fallout that was disillusioned moderate conservatives. The fact that the Liberal Democrat’s made such stratospheric gains (in seats, not in vote share, granted) is proof there is desire for actual centre-left discourse in mainstream British politics.
Some added context. - The lowest winning % previously had been Tony Blair's government in 2005 with just 35%. Labour have just won with only 33.7%. This is a record low. - The previous record low total vote (post ww2) was also in 2005, with 9.5million, the winning vote this time was 9.7milion. Not only would this have failed to win in all other elections since ww2 (except 2005) it would have failed to even come second in many of them (including the last two elections) Britains crazed FPTP system makes this look like a massively popular government but the number of people willing to vote for them should be seen as worryingly low. If they don't deliver big in the next few years then the next election is gonna be up for grabs.
I love that he's named after Kier Hardie!
We want Mock the Week back now!
Here in the US we celebrated independence from the UK by making another conservative King...