The Lesser Evil Won Big In The U.K.'s Low Turnout Election
The exit poll (above) was a nightmare-come-true for the Conservatives. But as the votes came rolling in, the nightmare got worse. The first 3 constituencies in, were Labour strongholds in northeast England; the fascists stole second place from the Conservatives, who came in third in each of the three constituencies! And that— repeated over and over— was one of the biggest stories of the night, along with a Labour landslide, a disaster for the SNP and a pitifully low turnout proving, to me at least, that as much as voters hate the Conservatives, many are far from sold on Starmer’s Austerity and corporate-friendly New Labour. Their seat pickups were almost entirely a collapse of support for Conservatives rather than any gain in support for Labour, outside of Scotland, where Labour did experience a considerable growth of support. Still, Starmer is the first PM since Tony Blair to win in England, Scotland and Wales.
Although that outrageously idiotic exit poll predicted 13 seats would go fascist, mostly Conservative seats but a couple of Labour seats too, anyone who didn’t want to sue them for political malpractice hasn’t been paying attention. Nigel Farage’s Reform UK was long predicted to win 3 or 4 seats… and that what they won— 4. [UPDATE: 5, after a recount in Basildon South.] But when they saw the 13 predicted, they all got drunk and started waiting for offers to be in a coalition or a coronation. It was really silly.
The first fascist to win was Lee Anderson, a far right Conservative who jumped the fence and joined the neo-Nazi party in March. He won the Ashfield seat where he had already served as a Tory. Delusional, he called Ashfield the “capital of common sense” and predicted it will have a “massive say” in how the country is shaped; “I want my country back and Ashfield can play their part in that.”
Farage overturned a 25,000 Conservative majority from 2019 to take Clacton in Essex by more than 8,000 votes. It had been the first constituency to elect a UKIP MP in 2014, after former Tory MP Douglas Carswell defected to the party and triggered a by-election, which he won. In a drunken speech after last night’s result was announced, Farage said it was “the beginning of the end of the Conservative Party... [and] the first step of something that is going to stun all of you.” He was incorrect. The party took 2 more seats from the Conservatives— Great Yarmouth (wealthy businessman Rupert Lowe) and Boston and Skegness (Reform UK chairman Richard Tice). All; 4 of the seats went 70% in favor of Brexit.
Their candidates made no headway in any Labour districts, despite the exit poll predicting that they would win several Labour seats. The BBC reported that “In Barnsley North, where the exit poll had forecast a 99% likelihood of Reform taking the seat, Labour held the seat with an increased majority of 7,811… In Hartlepool, another seat forecast to go to Reform, Labour also held on comfortably with a majority of 7,698. Farage has said he is aiming for Reform to become the main opposition to Labour by the time of the next election.” On top of the 4 seats Reform UK won, they came in second 103 constituencies, a dozen very close (after the Brexit Party came in second I only 3 constituencies). The fascist vote cost the Conservatives as many as 180 seats (if we assume that all the Reform votes would have gone to the Tories, a stretch).
Conservative MP Charles Walker, who didn’t bother running again, told the BBC that Reform's share of the vote is going to make a future leadership contest “challenging… It's going to be fiendishly difficult for us to come back from this position. It's not impossible, but the Conservative Party is going to have to show a level of discipline over the next six to eight months that it's not shown over the last four or five years.”
In 2019, the Conservatives won 14 seats in Wales. Yesterday, they lost all 14 of them. Before the votes were even reported, Conservative Welsh Secretary David TC Davies admitted that he’d lost his seat, the first cabinet minister to do so. He's been in Parliament since 2005 and had a majority of over 9,000 in the last election. He was also the only cabinet minister with a seat in Wales. “People wanted a change,” he said. “That's the way it goes in a democracy.” Yep… and Conservatives lost seats that they hadn’t lost in any postwar election, such as Aldershot, Altringham, Chichester, Dorking and Tunbridge Wells.
It was a terrible night for the Scottish separatists (SPN) and for the Northern Ireland extremists (DUP), who lost out to an even more extreme bunch. The SNP shed 38 seats and is left with just 9. There’s one Highlands constituency that hasn’t reported yet (Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire) and it’ll either go SNP or Labour). Although the SNP’s Seamus Logan beat Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross in Aberdeenshire North and Moray East. Labour won 37 of the 57 Scottish seats
The BBC reported that Labour was extremely nervous about 20 stronghold constituencies with large Muslim populations where a protest vote against the way Starmer has dealt with the Gaza crisis. In fact 2 shadow cabinet ministers were defeated, paymaster general Jonathan Ashworth in Leicester South (to independent— and pro-Palestine— Shockat Adam) and culture minister Thangam Debbonaire in Bristol Central (to Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer). Former Green leader Baroness Natalie Bennett told the BBC that “It has been disappointing that what Labour presented has essentially been to follow the Tory spending plans.” Labour seats in Blackburn and Dewsbury and Batley also fell to independents because of Starmer’s anti-Palestine approach. Labour also failed to retake the former Labour MP Claudia Webbe’s Leicester seat— which was won by a Conservative— or win in Chingford and Woodford Green. A Sky News analysis has shown that the Labour vote is down by more than 14% in areas with a Muslim population above 15%.
Labour’s 170 seat majority is bigger than anything in our lifetimes other than Tony Blair’s 1997 win (178 majority). It beats Thatcher’s majorities and Blair’s second win (166 majority), not to mention Boris Johnson 81 seat majority in 1997. Still, with independents winning anti-Conservative votes, compared to 2019, Labour stagnated in southwest England and the West Midlands and lost votes in London. Like this one:
A Conservative Party leader and ex-Chancellor, Robert Buckland, who was one of the first Conservatives to lose last night attacked the extreme right of his party, saying he’s “fed up of performance-art politics. I've watched colleagues in the Conservative Party strike poses, write inflammatory op-eds, and say stupid things they know they have no evidence for, instead of concentrating on doing the job… I’m fed up of personal agendas and jockeying for position,” adding that the Conservative Party was facing an “electoral armageddon” and would “be like a group of bald men arguing over a comb.”
The Conservatives lost every seat where their lead over Labour (or the Lib-Dem) in 2019 was less than 30%. Both Labour and the Lib-Dems ate deeply into traditional Tory territory and in the end the party has lost 250 seats and will go into the new parliament with just 121, even fewer than the exit poll had predicted.
The BBC reported that “Commons leader Penny Mordaunt and former minister Jacob Rees-Mogg are among senior Tories to have lost their seats, as the party suffers a heavy election defeat. Mordaunt, who was tipped as a future Tory leadership contender, saw her majority of more than 15,000 overturned in Portsmouth North. Rees-Mogg, a former business secretary, lost in North East Somerset and Hanham, with Labour overturning his 16,000 majority. He told the BBC he wouldn't ‘blame anybody other than myself’ and that it had been ‘a very bad night for the Conservatives. Defence Secretary Grant Shapps, Justice Secretary Alex Chalk and Michelle Donelan are among a clutch of cabinet ministers to lose their seats… Mordaunt said her party had ‘taken a battering because it failed to honour the trust that people had placed in it’ [and warned against] ‘talking to an ever smaller slice of ourselves,’ adding, ‘if we want again to be the natural party of government, then our values must be the people’s.’”
Other top Tories to lose their seats include former Prime Minister Liz Truss, Veterans Minister Johnny Mercer, Education Secretary Gillian Keegan, Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer and Chief Whip Simon Hart.
I made a big deal out of Basildon (Depeche Mode’s hometown) on Twitter yesterday, predicting that it would be the first district report in where a shift would predict the size of Labour’s national win. Instead, they’re having a full recount and the district could well flip to the fascists, giving them an unexpected 5th seat! It appears that Conservative Stephen Metcalfe, who represented the area since 2010 came in third and the tightness of the race is between Labour’s Jack Ferguson and James Murdock, a fascist. And that's exactly what happened: Murdock took the Conservative seat, beating the Labour candidate by 98 votes, Metcalfe in 3rd place.
ReformUK- 12,178 (30.79%)
Labour- 12,080 (30.54%)
Conservative- 10,159 (25.69%)
Independent- 1,928 (4.87%)
Green- 1,718 (4.34%)
Lib-Dem- 1,071 (2.71%)