LONDON: The Labour Party in the UK exterminated the Conservative Party, by winning 412 seats and a majority of 170. Many of the seats captured by Labour were extremely marginal Conservative seats. The Labour knows that its victory is not a win, it is a Conservative loss. In 2019, Boris Johnson had thanked the Red Wall MPs for lending him their vote, on 4 July those MPs took that back.
The Conservatives’ continuous taxing, poor performance, dishonesty and internal dysfunction gave the Labour its mantra of “Conservative chaos and division”. The electorate voted for the “Change” that Sir Keir Starmer offered. It is being reported that 72% who voted for Labour did so to punish the Conservatives, and not because they believed in Starmer. These folks are oblivious of Labour’s ideology. The anti-incumbency sentiment is not entirely directed at former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. The electorate has not forgotten or forgiven the partying, profligacy and perfidy of the Covid era by the Conservatives.
Sunak held onto his Richmond and Northallerton seat in Yorkshire with 23,059 votes, which was 47.5% of the vote share. Other Indian origin Conservative MPs who held their seats are Claire Coutinho, Priti Patel, Suella Braverman, Gagan Mohindra and Shivan Raja; and honorary Indian Bob Blackman held on to Harrow East, whilst Shailesh Vara and Ameet Jogia lost their seats.
It seems the disunited Tories allowed the Liberal Democrats to take 71 seats and Reform 4 seats. This is a huge achievement for Nigel Farage as the Reform party is only just emerging and has no structure and very little budget. Reform’s campaign dominated social media and received support from Generation Z. Some Tory MPs complimented the significance of Reform during their campaign in an effort to keep their seats. The LibDem revival is a backlash against Brexit and it seems the Tory campaign was unaware of the shift. It seems other small conservatives drifted to the LibDems, and many others stayed home. The turnout was low at 60%.
It is worth noting that the “right of centre parties” of Conservative and Reform together collected 38% of the vote, approximately 11 million votes, while the Labour managed only 34%, just over 9.5 million votes. Reform collected 14.3% of the national vote, the third largest party by vote share, thus they do enjoy support in regions where they did not get an MP elected. Evidently, the “right of centre” is still the home of the democratic majority in the UK. The UK is behind the European curve of leaning to right wing politics. Labour’s honeymoon is expected to be short lived once the concussed Conservatives reorganise themselves.
The only seats where Labour has traditionally done well that did not deliver for the party were five constituencies where independent candidates were campaigning on pro-Gaza platforms; four seats went to independents and one seat went to the Conservatives.
Farage and Reform defined the election debate around immigration and in the Commons will harangue the new government on this issue.
The Labour manifesto has bold ambition but withholds the details. Possibly Labour will claim it has stopped the boats by agreeing to take 100,000 illegal immigrants a year under a new “freedom of movement” negotiation with the EU. This means the illegal immigrants will be arriving via EU countries from the Mediterranean shores where they have landed. To secure its vast majority Labour has said it will include 16-year-olds in the electorate.
Additionally, the Conservative candidate selection process led by CCHQ resulted in delivering a poor selection of candidates who were out of touch with conservative ideas and ideals in the country, and that reneged on the 2019 manifesto. An indication that Conservative support had waned was that many Tory MPs found it difficult to gather members and activists to campaign on the ground.
So is this result proof of democracy in action? Yes and no! Yes, because the electorate wants to get rid of a party which has not delivered what they want. No, because they have elected a party that will do the opposite of what they want.
Boris Johnson unexpectedly appeared to support the Tory campaign and his own wishful thinking of returning to politics. He conceitedly referenced himself to the Roman statesman/consul Lucius Cincinnatus, who was brought back to Rome as Dictator after retirement, to end a coup by the Aequi. It is speculated that Johnson hopes to win a byelection in the next couple of years, then make a leadership bid with the goal of contesting the 2029 general election.
The UK is now experiencing the biggest exodus of start-up millionaires, who are mostly fleeing to Dubai, which offers great British private education for their children, a safe society and no tax.
Of note is that Jeremy Corbyn retained his Islington North seat as an independent.
Labour had great successes with their candidates of Indian origin: Seema Malhotra, Preet Kaur Gill, Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi and Navendu Mishra all retained their seats with convincing majorities. The new Labour candidates of pan-Indian origin made the Republic proud: Jas Athwal, Baggy Shanker, Valerie Vaz (sister of Keith Vaz), Satvir Kaur, Harpreet Uppal, Warinder Juss, Gurinder Josan, Kanishka Narayan, Sonia Kumar, Sureena Brackenbridge, Kirith Entwistle, Jeevun Sandher and Sojan Joseph, a mental health nurse in the NHS, originally from Kottayam in Kerala.
Jeremy Hunt, Suella Braverman, Priti Patel, James Cleverly, Tom Tugendhat and Robert Jenrick all who retained their Tory seats, are expected to be amongst those who will contest for the Tory leadership. The big question is who can command the respect necessary to decide the future of the party?
What next? It is expected that Sir Keir will recall the parliamentary recess for swearing in and to deliver the Kings speech by 17-19th July. Following a shortened summer recess, Parliament will be recalled in early September to announce Labour’s first 100-day plan.
Starmer’s new cabinet announced Angela Rayner as Deputy PM, Rachel Reeves as Chancellor, Yvette Cooper as Home Secretary, David Lammy as Foreign Secretary, Pat McFadden as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Shabana Mahmood as Justice Secretary, Wes Streeting as Health Secretary, Ed Miliband as Energy Secretary, Jonathan Reynolds as Business Secretary, John Healy as Defence Secretary and Bridget Philipson as Education Secretary. Starmer’s impressive election mastermind Morgan McSweeney’s role
has not yet been declared but is sure to be in the thick of No. 10.