UK General Election 2024: The Results & Aftermath

[GRALISTAIR]

Well, Johnson stuffed his cabinet with Brexiteers, and we've seen how well that worked out. Trying the opposite may be no bad thing?

I agree.

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

I agree.

Its also interesting that he has appointed in several people as Ministers of State, who aren't MPs, because of their expertise, although making them life peers to do so doesn't feel right to me

 

[AlterEgo]

Labour's seat targeting was very rigid in terms of how much campaigning was allowed where - my local candidate was obliged to spend some time helping in swing seats. It caused some friction with activists in 'long shot' seats but ultimately paid off.

I heard not a peep in Rugby which was an early projection to swing to Labour.

They only got in because the Tory vote collapsed and was split by reform.

That is not true. Even if Reform didn’t stand a single candidate Labour would have won the election. At most, Reform cost the Tories 80 seats.

How did Labour convince voters to turn away from Conservatives to Reform?

They didn’t, and it is not in any case the reason they won the election. A lot of Reform guff being spouted possibly inadvertently!

I've had enough of this lot already. Starmer didn't accept Brexit result so i don't accept this one... The sooner Suella is named leader of the opposition the better. I can't take five years of these lunatics in charge of the country!!

Glad it’s annoyed the right people. Just 24 hours in.

I also hope Suella becomes conservative leader. Further irrelevance. Enjoy the next five years.

 

[Gloster]

Its also interesting that he has appointed in several people as Ministers of State, who aren't MPs, because of their expertise, although making them life peers to do so doesn't feel right to me

Unfortunately, it is necessary that Ministers are able to answer to Parliament. Normally they are member of the Commons and can stand up in front of the House to reply. If they aren’t MPs because the PM has decided on the novel idea of having people who actually know about what they are dealing with, the only alternative is to make them a Lord. It is far from ideal, but better than nothing.

 

[pokemonsuper9]

That is not true. Even if Reform didn’t stand a single candidate Labour would have won the election. At most, Reform cost the Tories 80 seats.

I think if Reform weren't around Labour would have gotten more votes too.
I know someone who seems to have gotten caught up in their lies, and I think they probably would have voted Labour to get the Conservatives out.

 

[Bald Rick]

Unlike me, you obviously never met George Galloway, an experience you might never forget.

I haven’t.

I've suspected for a while that she's on the autistic spectrum. A lot of her behaviours and mannerisms are typical of someone with an autistic spectrum condition.

Having met her several times, I don‘t think she is. She is, however, a classic example of someone who is very clever at what she has been taught, but completely oblivious to anything going on in the periphery.

 

[Kaliwax]

I'd rather have people who arent MPs allocated and have expertise being appointed secretary of state, than an MP, who doesn't know about the department there in.

 

[Busaholic]

I have tried google but am struggling. What is the safest Conservative seat in the country now please?

You're too late. There are none.

 

[JonathanH]

I have tried google but am struggling. What is the safest Conservative seat in the country now please?

Harrow East - Bob Blackman was the only Conservative candidate who took more than 50% of the vote in their constituency, taking 25,466 votes for a majority of 11,680. Rishi Sunak second, with a majority of 12,185 in Richmond and Northallerton on 47.5% of the vote in that constituency.

Top 5 vote share
Harrow East (53.3%)
Richmond and Northallerton (47.5%)
Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge (46.5%)
Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (45.4%)
Hertsmere (44.7%)

The people of Harrow East don't seem to have got quite the same message everyone else got, although maybe that was down to boundary changes.

 

[Kaliwax]

The last time Sunak's seat had anything other than a tory was in 1906 with Liberal Francis Dyke Acland.

 

[Busaholic]

Standby for Clacton having one of the highest office staffing bills in the country, because the MP will do nothing himself and everything that’s done will have to be paid for by us

Stand by too for the usual Electoral Commission enquiry into Farage's election expenses, this time in Clacton. That Channel Four programme revealed far more than the stuff everyone's focussed on, regarding stuff from the horse's big mouth itself concerning how much was being spent. It makes for very interesting viewing.

Harrow East - Bob Blackman was the only Conservative candidate who took more than 50% of the vote in their constituency, taking 35,466 votes for a majority of 21,680. Rishi Sunak second, with a majority of 12,185 in Richmond and Northallerton on 47.5% of the vote in that constituency.

Then Arundel and South Downs, Tonbridge, Rutland and Stamford.

The people of Harrow East don't seem to have got the same message everyone else got, although maybe that was down to boundary changes.

And a significant well-heeled Jewish population within it?

 

[Irascible]

I've suspected for a while that she's on the autistic spectrum. A lot of her behaviours and mannerisms are typical of someone with an autistic spectrum condition.

Is narcissism on the autistic spectrum now? I have put her rude behaviour at the election down to shock, honestly. I've seen people in shock behave like that too.

Reform may have cost Labour some seats too.

Is the civil service not the place for non-elected government specialists?

 

[takno]

Harrow East - Bob Blackman was the only Conservative candidate who took more than 50% of the vote in their constituency, taking 35,466 votes for a majority of 21,680. Rishi Sunak second, with a majority of 12,185 in Richmond and Northallerton on 47.5% of the vote in that constituency.

Then Arundel and South Downs, Tonbridge, Rutland and Stamford.

The people of Harrow East don't seem to have got the same message everyone else got, although maybe that was down to boundary changes.

Bob Blackman did indeed take more than 50% of the vote in Harrow East, but that was 25466 votes rather than 35466, for a majority of 11680.

 

[cactustwirly]

I heard not a peep in Rugby which was an early projection to swing to Labour.

That is not true. Even if Reform didn’t stand a single candidate Labour would have won the election. At most, Reform cost the Tories 80 seats.

They didn’t, and it is not in any case the reason they won the election. A lot of Reform guff being spouted possibly inadvertently!


Glad it’s annoyed the right people. Just 24 hours in.

I also hope Suella becomes conservative leader. Further irrelevance. Enjoy the next five years.

And the rest of the seats were won because conservative voters stayed at home. It's quite telling the vote share didn't increase, the conservatives dropped dramatically allowing Labour in.

Historically Labour have only won elections when the Conservatives become unpopular. The majority of elections in the last 100 years of so have returned a conservative government

As for the Conservatives, I am confident they will be in power after the next election if they have a credible leader.

The Labour will likely end up like the last Conservative government, they have too big of a majority they'll get complacent and fight internally. It is still a divided party, with a significant amount of very left wing MPs, who won't be happy with the conservative manifesto Keir Starmer has put forward. I understand their biggest donor Unite wasn't exactly thrilled with the manifesto either

 

[takno]

The majority of elections in the last 100 years of so have returned a conservative government

It's 14 - 12 to the Conservatives, so hardly some kind of resounding dominance.

 

[PGAT]

I think if Reform weren't around Labour would have gotten more votes too.
I know someone who seems to have gotten caught up in their lies, and I think they probably would have voted Labour to get the Conservatives out.

I disagree, I think the spoiler effect of voting for Reform definitely benefitted Labours seat count, without it many blue seats would remain blue since majority of Reform voters are ex-tory. And then with a higher vote and seat share in the polls turnout would be higher exacerbating this further. If Reform and Farage didn't make so much noise and a big splash then I'd imagine this result would be similar to 2019

 

[takno]

I disagree, I think the spoiler effect of voting for Reform definitely benefitted Labours seat count, without it many blue seats would remain blue since majority of Reform voters are ex-tory. And then with a higher vote and seat share in the polls turnout would be higher exacerbating this further. If Reform and Farage didn't make so much noise and a big splash then I'd imagine this result would be similar to 2019

It's certainly likely that a number of seats were won by Labour because of "natural" Conservative voters switching to reform. It's less clear whether Conservative would have been their second choice if Reform weren't standing - many would either have stayed at home or voted Labour given how fed up they were with the Conservatives. In addition to that a significant proportion of Reform voters were actually more natural Labour voters who moved over because of the narrative that "mainstream parties are all the same".

It's unlikely that the absence of reform would have resulted in anything other than a sizeable majority for Labour. Until the Tories actually come to terms with the fact that they were set to lose whatever Reform did, then they don't stand much chance of forming much of an opposition, let alone winning an election.

 

[Thirteen]

If Tice and Farage end up not doing any surgeries and leaving it to caseworkers, they'll be booted out at the next election.

 

[JonathanH]

Bob Blackman did indeed take more than 50% of the vote in Harrow East, but that was 25466 votes rather than 35466, for a majority of 11680.

Oops. So that is the third highest majority. Rishi Sunak therefore has the highest Conservative majority.

 

[Pakenhamtrain]

We must be getting laughed at as a nation if we can't have all seats declared by the same day, there cant be any other country that takes well over a day to declare a result like what is happening in a seat in Scotland.

In Australia it can take a few days to provisionally declare seats

Particularly when its close

 

[Purple Train]

The last time Sunak's seat had anything other than a tory was in 1906 with Liberal Francis Dyke Acland.

Tangentially related to this, but nevertheless interesting - I believe that Sidmouth has no Conservative MP for the first time in 189 years. The abolished East Devon seat's predecessors, which were generally roughly aligned with the current Honiton and Sidmouth seat, had had at least one* Conservative MP since 1835. Sidmouth, I think, lies within those boundaries, although of course Honiton went orange as Tiverton and Honiton in the by-election a couple of years ago.

Another little factoid - some fuss was made about the Conservatives losing the highest number of seats of any party at any general election in modern history, beating Arthur Henderson's Labour in 1935. Labour lost 215 seats then, having undergone a bitter split of half the party what with Ramsay MacDonald's National Labour grouping. I was initially rather sceptical of this statistic being used - it was a 615-seat parliament in 1935 - but, in percentage terms, 35% of seats were a Labour loss in 1935, while 38.6% of seats were a Conservative loss in 2024. Admittedly the Tories lost a smaller proportion of the seats they started with (though not all that much - 68% as opposed to 81%), but it's still a monumental turnover, despite being nowhere near the scale of the opinion polls. I have to confess that my interest in politics is much like my interest in cricket - totally statistics-based - so I apologise for being boring, but digging into the statistics really shows how different it is even to 1997.

*when it was a two-member constituency, it seems to have been generally one Conservative and one Liberal/Whig

 

[GusB]

They should give up, but they won't; Treating the General Election as a de facto Independence Referendum (copyright N.Sturgeon) is for them only a thing when it returns the correct outcome.

I don't know why you keep saying that the SNP should give up on independence; that's why it exists! I'm more than happy to say that treating a Westminster election as a de facto referendum was a stupid thing to do - I wouldn't treat any election as a de facto referendum, to be honest.

My perception (fwiw) ... the SNP are finished; they've lost the audience and the brand is tainted beyond redemption. I anticipate much fragmentation, in-fighting (some very public) and whistleblowing to come, and major financial problems for them. Given time though another independence party will coalesce from the shrapnel and set up shop, but it won't be the SNP.

I wouldn't say that the SNP is finished. It lost out this time around because of exactly the same system that gave it so many seats in the last few elections; the same system that killed off the Tories in 1997 and almost made Labour MPs exinct - First Past the Post. In terms of share of the vote, it wasn't that far behind Labour, but our voting system distorts things so much.

The SNP has issues that it needs to work through, I don't doubt. As far as independence-supporting parties go, I had a choice this time around (I could have voted Green) but if I thought that Labour had a decent chance of taking the seat, I may well have held my nose and voted for that party in order to get rid of the Tories.

The brand is certainly tainted - that's one of the reasons why I thought twice about voting SNP. However, political parties can turn things around relatively quickly - just look at how quickly Labour expunged the Corbyn factor!

 

[nw1]

I think i'd rather meet Trump

Not so sure. Bad though Galloway is, I'd still prefer him to the Orange Thug if forced to meet one of them...

 

[birchesgreen]

Not so sure. Bad though Galloway is, I'd still prefer him to the Orange Thug if forced to meet one of them...

Let's split the difference and meet Vlad the Impaler instead.

 

[nw1]

There is an undertone of a Labour to Green shift on the left which partially explains it.

And indeed Labour to Independents in the big cities.

I do think Labour perhaps made a mistake, in some ways, on Gaza - though it had little effect on the result thanks to the Tories being so unpopular.

I think also that people felt they could risk voting for Greens or Independents this time under FPTP, in the knowledge the Tories wouldn't get in.

Somewhere like Chingford perhaps illustrates how, in FPTP, you're really voting for the Government and not the MP. Doubtless a lot of left-leaning people there were quite happy to risk another 5 years of IDS as their MP in the knowledge that they sent a clear message to Labour by voting for Faiza Shaheen.

The people of Harrow East don't seem to have got quite the same message everyone else got, although maybe that was down to boundary changes.

I presume Harrow East is at least partly ULEZ again. The Tories do seem to be doing disproportionately well in Outer London, witness also the tiny Labour majority in Hendon (and the Tory holds in South Croydon, Orpington, Bromley and Bexley though that area was true-blue even in the Blair years, so less surprising).

Even still the Tory majority in Harrow East is enormous, and quite atypical for that part of the country in general, both within and outside of London. Interestingly Labour did hold the seat in the Blair/Brown years too, so it's defied the overall trend of Labour winning back their 1997 gains. There must be some peculiar local factor causing the seat to so spectacularly buck the trend.

I note that Harrow East and Hendon are adjacent. That said, Chipping Barnet, in the same general area, went Labour, and that was Tory throughout the Blair/Brown years. The mystery deepens...

As for the Conservatives, I am confident they will be in power after the next election if they have a credible leader.

("if" is my bold)

If, indeed. They could win with someone like Hunt if Labour slip up. They will absolutely not win with a Braverman, a Badenoch, a Jenrick or a Patel unless the very worst happens and Reform take say 100 or more seats next time, and Reform and the Tory right create an alliance and rule in coalition. (This is why we need to be constantly on our guard, IMO, for playing into Reform's hands).

 

[DynamicSpirit]

One little remarked aspect of the election is that the opinion polls just before the election appear to have been almost universally spectacularly wrong: Right through the campaign they were predicting a Labour lead over the Tories of around 20%. On the day it was 11%. That's a massive error, which has been largely hidden by the fact that, in part because of tactical voting, that much smaller Labour lead gave a landslide in terms of seats anyway. 11% vs 20% makes no difference to the fact that Labour are going to win.

But if Labour hadn't been so far ahead and the Tories so unpopular, a 9% error could have been enough to make the difference between a Labour Government and a Tory Government - for example it's the difference between Labour being 5% ahead and the Tories being 4% ahead. I think the polling companies need to do some soul-searching about what went so wrong in their figures.

Looks like the exit poll on the other hand was fairly accurate.

 

[nw1]

One little remarked aspect of the election is that the opinion polls just before the election appear to have been almost universally spectacularly wrong: Right through the campaign they were predicting a Labour lead over the Tories of around 20%. On the day it was 11%. That's a massive error, which has been largely hidden by the fact that, in part because of tactical voting, that much smaller Labour lead gave a landslide in terms of seats anyway. 11% vs 20% makes no difference to the fact that Labour are going to win.

But if Labour hadn't been so far ahead and the Tories so unpopular, a 9% error could have been enough to make the difference between a Labour Government and a Tory Government - for example it's the difference between Labour being 5% ahead and the Tories being 4% ahead. I think the polling companies need to do some soul-searching about what went so wrong in their figures.

Looks like the exit poll on the other hand was fairly accurate.

I wonder whether one factor was that left-leaning voters saw the opinion polls and recognised that they could "get away" with voting for Greens, Independents and Lib Dems if they fundamentally preferred them to Labour, in the knowledge that a Tory victory was off the table. So essentially, the opinion polls were actually influencing how people voted.

If the opinion polls had been closer throughout the campaign, I suspect a lot of left-leaning voters would have been unwilling to take the risk in voting for their ideal party, and would have plumped for Labour instead.

Were remainers at the time of the referendum. You can't really be a remainer in the present tense.

Except it's a word which clearly states a particular belief, even if it's technically incorrect right now. If someone declares that they are a remainer, I think we would all understand what it means.

 

[tommy2215]

Its amazing the sheer number of Tory seats Labour won which have never voted for them before, thinking especially of seats like Bury St Edmunds, South East Cornwall, Suffolk Coastal, Aldershot, Poole, Folkestone & Hythe, Ashford (Kent), South West Norfolk, Aylesbury etc. Also the huge swings from SNP to Labour in Scotland. I don't think any Labour supporter is going to get tired of watching the election coverage on repeat!

Even still the Tory majority in Harrow East is enormous, and quite atypical for that part of the country in general, both within and outside of London. Interestingly Labour did hold the seat in the Blair/Brown years too, so it's defied the overall trend of Labour winning back their 1997 gains. There must be some peculiar local factor causing the seat to so spectacularly buck the trend.

I note that Harrow East and Hendon are adjacent. That said, Chipping Barnet, in the same general area, went Labour, and that was Tory throughout the Blair/Brown years. The mystery deepens...

Harrow East and Hendon have huge Hindu populations, and its clear Hindu voters swung very hard to the Tories in this election. The Tories even gained Leicester East which is the seat with the highest Hindu population of all.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Anecdotally the rural Green vote is more old school Tories (who often like conservation and clean rivers) and the urban one more from voters to the left of Starmer. So the two seats you mentioned are not the same as their other two in Bristol and Brighton.

I wonder whether this might put more pressure on the Greens to become more of a conventional Green party and less of a left wing/socialist-utopia party. I'm sure all the left wing stuff in the Greens' manifesto goes down well with the student populations in Brighton and Bristol, but I doubt it will be very popular with the farmers and rural residents in Waveney and Herefordshire, who I would suspect voted Green based on general perception plus local issues. But it's going to be tough for them to sustain all the left wing stuff if half their MPs represent seats where the feedback they'll be getting from their voters is likely to be that nationalization and Corbyn-style 'student' politics is not what they want.

 

[oldman]

Except it's a word which clearly states a particular belief, even if it's technically incorrect right now. If someone declares that they are a remainer, I think we would all understand what it means.

Perhaps you should refer back to the context in which I made that remark and the post I was responding to.