Bugger Off, Tories!

The headline is a historic Labour victory, with a majority of just under 300, and the lowest number of Tory MPs ever. Given the size of the Tory majority in 2019 this result is unprecedented: normally large majorities are chipped away over time; the predictions back then were that Johnson could be PM into the 2030’s and looking just at the numbers that wasn’t unreasonable. (It’s easy in hindsight to say ‘but looking at his personality, his downfall was inevitable.’) This majority is roughly the same size as Blair's first victory (slightly bigger because the Tory vote collapsed so hard) but that came from a tiny Tory majority rather than a huge one.

What is notable is the collapse in the Tory vote. Yes, they lost a monumental 250 seats, and they lost them in all directions, roughly 200 to Labour (Labour also took some from the SNP), 50 to the LibDems, 5 to Reform and 2 to the Greens. They lost over 20 ministers, including four cabinet ministers (both of these are records) but they also lost 20% of their share. Comparing back to 1997, the Tories lost 11%, in 2019 Labour lost nearly 8%. This is basically as bad as those two - both regarded as disasters for the respective parties - added together. While the votes probably went in all directions on an individual basis - you could go and find people who switched Con to Lab, especially if you looked in the normal swing seats, the big story is the 13% rise in the Reform vote (from the Brexit Party vote in 2019) and most of the rest showing up as an increase in the Green vote.

In normal times I would not expect disgruntled Tory voters to vote Green, they’re a progressive party in the UK, and I suspect a lot of their increase comes from people like me who wanted Labour to be more radical. (I actually voted LibDem, but it was close between those two. There was an ongoing story about people moving Labour to Green before the election though.) However, the state of the water industry and sewage in the rivers is bad enough and cross-party that I’m sure there are some Tory-Green defectors. The two Green gains in the Tory shires would seem to bear this out. Assuming that Labour get this sorted out over the next 4-5 years I would expect these to revert to Tory votes at the next election. The Labour-Green switchers have the potential to be more long term.

The Reform vote is, personally disturbing, but in the abstract interesting. If you live in the UK and pay attention to politics news, you might remember Johnson banging on about how the Tories are the most successful electoral party in history. Strictly speaking this is true. However, he’s a politician, so we ought to scratch the surface a bit for some context. We call the British parliament the Mother of Parliaments because it’s the oldest, that gives the Tories an advantage over, say, the American parties. Originally the Tories and the Whigs faced off, it wasn’t until the start of the 20th century that Labour replaced the Whigs as the main party of the left. The Tories kept on rolling along. So they are the most successful party but some of that is just their longevity.

In addition, the “progressive alliance”, today that’s Labour, LibDems, Greens, SNP and PC can be regarded as splitting the anti-Tory vote. In recent times that’s been less of an issue - the parties may not formally cooperate, but in most constituencies we have had one or two parties with a realistic chance of winning. Where I live, it’s totally safe Labour. Near me, in former Red Wall seats it’s a Labour-Tory contest. The LibDems and Greens have been nowhere close. In places like Yeovil it’s been a LibDem-Tory contest with Labour and the Greens nowhere close. However, those few thousand votes taken away from the non-Tory party can be the difference between them coming first or second in many seats, and winning or losing overall. What Reform has done, at least at an overview level, is split the right-of-centre vote. It’s done it in single bloc, about the same size nationally as the LibDems, but much more evenly distributed. For example, where I live, Reform came second, still a lon way behind, but demolishing the Conservative vote.

Exactly what that means in the long term is unclear. It was fairly obvious that the Tories were going to get a kicking. We know from previous elections like this, 1997 for example but also huge Labour loses like 2019, that swing voters will move their votes to anyone. Typically the most important movement is between Labour and the Tories, not to be rude to the other parties but that determines who forms the government and how big their majority is. There are definitely voters that move from the big parties to the LibDems, the Greens, and in Scotland and Wales the SNP and Plaid. That can have a huge impact, think 2010 and the coalition, but normally it’s tinkering with the size of the majority rather than anything else. So, the 14% of votes that Reform got. Let’s say, more or less, all of these voters are former Tory voters. That’s probably not true, but close enough for a discussion at this level. The question is, how many of them are going to be long-term Reform supporters and how many are protesting the last 5-14 years? (Probably the last five years or less if we’re assuming they’re disgruntled Tories.) There’s no way to tell really, and what will happen over the next few weeks or months to the Tories as they elect a new leader, how that impacts their national support and support for Reform we just can’t tell.

I would guess that the Tories will lurch even more to the right because most parties lurch away from the centre after a night like this, losing power after a long period in office, and while that will appease their membership it will not appeal to the electorate. So in 2028/9 they’ll do nothing maybe improve a bit if some of the protesters that went to Reform come back, then they’ll elect a more centre-right leader and possibly come back in the mid-2030’s. But there are a lot of hidden maybes in there. If Reform stays attractive, a more right-wing Conservative Party might just not get any votes back. I don’t like Farage at all. But if any of Badenoch, Braverman or Patel is Tory leader, I think they’re actually worse than him.

In Scotland, Labour wiped out the SNP, who lost 38 seats (a few to the LibDems). The Tories were kicked out of Scotland between these two. Between PC and Labour the Tories were also kicked out of Wales.

It wasn’t all rosy for Labour. They lost four seats to independent candidates, standing on a pro-Gaza platform. Rather more predictably, although I’m sure annoyingly to Starmer, Jeremy Corbyn won his seat back as an independent. The Greens took a high profile Labour scalp in Bristol, but also took, more surprisingly two leafy-shire seats from the Tories. But it’s rather small pinpricks in the overall good night. The loss of the Muslim vote is not countered by the return of the Jewish vote, but that return after 2019 does suggest that if Labour handle Gaza well over the next few years and don’t have any other missteps, this might be a temporary issue.

Quite a lot is being made of the small turnout and the small percentage of the electorate that voted Labour. Particularly in safe Labour seats their share of the vote often fell. But in Tory-held seats it rose, and in target seats it rose even more. There are probably at least two things going on here.

Where I voted, and in a lot of seats like that, turn out was really low. I suspect that was largely due to apathy. Why bother to vote in a seat that’s always been Labour, even in the worst years, like 2019, when all the polls are quibbling about the just how big the landslide will be? In other places, lifelong Tory voters will have stayed at home, convinced there’s no point voting this time.

Exactly how many votes that is, I don’t have the time and data to easily estimate. I might estimate 5,000 extra voters here, and it’s probably fair enough to say that almost all of them would be votes for Labour. However, if we look at Godalming and Ash where there was a titanic battle between Jeremy Hunt and his LibDem challenger, there were probably no extra people likely to come out and vote, unless the law was changed to make it compulsory. Equally, there are people in Nuneaton, traditionally a swing seat, where the turnout fell by about 6% (around 4,200 people, it’s hard to be sure because the boundaries also changed). Here, the Labour and Green vote rose, Reform rose massively, and the Tory vote collapsed because of that. But of those ~4,000 voters who didn’t bother this time, how might they have voted? It’s much harder to say there, as here, that they’re all complacent Labour voters, although some probably were. Some are likely “always Tory” voters who couldn’t bring themselves to vote Tory this time, too upset by what the Tories have done or by the polls, unwilling to protest vote for someone else. It might be fair to split those votes, 2,000 to each of the big two, which doesn’t change the result, or the majority, and is possibly about right. In Rishi Sunak’s constituency there was likewise a 5% fall, again a bit over 4,000 people. Here, those people are probably all disgruntled Tories (in 2019 Sunak got over 63% of the vote). So you really have to make the decision on a case by case basis, and it’s made harder by the boundary changes.

While I think the small turnout, whatever the reasons, will have inflated the size of the Reform gains, those gains are still important. I hope they’re temporary. Much as I hoped for the Tories to get a good kicking and fall into third place on the heels of a stronger Labour and a strong LibDem performance, as some of the polls have suggested as an extreme possibility, I hope at the next election the Tories regain some of the vote share from Reform. A right-wing party, rather than a centre-right party, with about 7% of the votes is still too much support for my comfort but it might be closer to reality. Personally I think Reform are closer to a far-right party, and time will show that, 7% will then be too high, just as 1% has been too high for the BNP historically. But they’re trying to position themselves as a centre-right party. Time will tell. Having two right-of-centre parties, if Reform stay functional, will change how our elections work for decades to come. In the swing seats, having votes on both sides of the spectrum split will really change the outcome of elections.

I just want to say a few words about some of the speeches from Tories. Sunak and Hunt were surprisingly gracious in defeat. Many others from the centrist wing were also gracious and polite. Many from the right sounded like the frothing lunatics they are, or launched their leadership bids, before the starting gun has been fired. And they they wonder why their party is in trouble.