On the Edge

Interpreting the election result, and the future challenges for all parties

Almost exactly a year ago, when the consensus was that the Tories could still recover, I wrote a post setting out why I thought a wipeout result for the party (which I defined as being below 100 seats) was entirely possible. I gave five reasons:

1.      That things would continue to get worse, particularly in the public sector.

2.      That Sunak would prove to be a terrible campaigner.

3.      That the Labour vote was going to be far more efficient than, at the time, was acknowledged, because the swing to them would be much bigger in the areas with the most Tory seats.

4.      That there would be an unprecedented level of tactical voting that would particularly help the Lib Dems and Labour in the south.

5.      That if Farage returned the Reform vote would jump and split the right.

All of these things happened. The Tories ended up with 121 seats. Their worst result, by a distance, in the history of the party, with a vote share 7 points lower than in 1997. They were saved from going under 100, and becoming the third party in Parliament, by three things:

1.      A very late bump of around 2-3 points in the Tory vote share due to reluctant former Tories, who had been saying “don’t know” or “won’t vote”, returning to them at the last minute. This is, essentially, what the “forecast” polls, that have always shown lower Labour leads than “nowcast” polls, assumed would happen, and they were right.

2.      An equally late drop in the Labour vote share, beyond that which had already moved to the Lib Dems tactically earlier in the campaign. I suspect this was driven by a belief that, because Labour was going to win, it was OK to vote for the Greens or Reform or independents or just stay at home. To this extent the “supermajority” campaign worked (and is why Labour’s vote share has to be understood in context, had it been closer they would have got more votes). There was also a small polling miss here, possibly driven by undersampling of minority voters who went for independent candidates.

3.      Continuing inefficiencies in tactical voting. In my seat previews, for many of the seats I had staying Tory my reasoning was that there was a split opposition and so tactical voting wouldn’t work. So it turned out. In just 42 seats in England and Wales was the Tory vote bigger than the combined Lab/Lib one. Senior figures like Suella Braverman and Mel Stride were saved by split votes.

These factors saved the Tory party from complete oblivion, and left Labour with a 1997-type majority rather than one of 250, though in practice that will make little difference to what they can do.

And they can do a lot. It may seem obvious but a lot of analysis seems to be skating over the fact that we now have a Labour government with a large majority, and that it going to feel very different to what we’ve had for the last fourteen years. The Rwanda scheme is already dead. Asylum seekers will not be held in permanent limbo. Any available money is now likely to be directed towards public services not tax cuts. A deal will be struck with junior doctors. Net zero targets will not be further watered down.

A large Labour parliamentary party made up of people who worked, predominantly, for the public and third sector, will generate very different pressures on a government than a large Conservative parliamentary party obsessed with the Daily Mail and GB News. The will be a sense of activity and energy rather than the torpor and drift of the past few years. All this really matters and I suspect will be felt more strongly over the coming months that is currently appreciated, given the generally antiseptic and dull election campaign. I’d be surprised if Starmer doesn’t get some kind of honeymoon.

But there’s also no getting away from the exceptionally tricky context in which the new prime minister and his team will be operating. So in the rest of this post I will look first at the challenges that face the new government, and then the Conservative party as it thinks about how to rebuild.