Apathy Reigns: Deconstructing the Results of the 2024 UK General Election
While voters may have rejected the Conservatives, they did not openly embrace the Labour Party. Instead, Thursday's election produced one of the most disproportionate results in recent history.
The tectonic plates of British politics shifted once again as voters resoundingly rejected 14 years of Conservative rule by electing Keir Starmer’s Labour, gifting the centre-left party one of the biggest parliamentary majorities in history.
Despite its triumphant victory, however, Labour should not rest easy. The party’s support may be broad but it’s also shallow, a House of Cards that can easily crumble over the coming years, especially as the now-incumbent government is tasked with navigating a volatile global backdrop.
One only has to dig below the surface to see that the election results offer a damning indictment of the UK’s archaic voting system, exemplifying a dissatisfied and fragmented nation. Just 60 percent of voters participated in the democratic process, close to a record low and a possible sign that some voters had checked out after years of political dysfunction. The combined vote share won by the two established parties, Labour and the Conservatives, fell to a record low of 57.5%, the lowest since 1922. Smaller parties and independent candidates meanwhile saw their support surge, and Reform U.K., the new anti-immigration party led by Nigel Farage, became Britain’s third biggest party by vote share, winning 14 percent of the vote. Yet, this momentum did not translate to seats.
The story of the 2024 general election is of voters turning away from a deeply unpopular governing party. What parties they turned to and how that interacted with the electoral system is a more complex story that may take some time to fully grasp.
Labour’s monumental victory rests on tenuous foundations
The flaws in the UK’s electoral system have never been more pronounced. With only 1/3 of the votes, Labour won over 2/3 of the seats, the most effective vote distribution in the party’s history. That disparity between votes and seats is larger than in 2005 when Tony Blair’s Labour Party won 355 seats on only 35% of the vote share, a result that was blasted at the time as insulting to democracy. Yet, the media apparatus seems to be gaslighting people into believing that Thursday’s election represents a strong mandate for Starmer to do as he pleases, despite the fact he won almost twice as many seats as Corbyn did in 2017 with 6% less (34% vs 40%).
Let’s get back to reality, though. While there are significantly more safe seats now for the party and the machinery has inherited several marginals to contest in the forecomthing elections, the best way of interpreting the results is that Labour in 2024 has great spread, but no deep roots. The party’s advances in Conservative battlegrounds came in almost exactly the way forecasted. Meanwhile, the party benefited from well wrought tactical voting by unionists in Scotland. The Scottish National Party were tipped to win around 20 seats. Instead they came away with 9. In Wales Labour advanced, but they saw little improvement in overall support. Their gains were thanks to Tory collapse rather than Labour surge. In fact, with the exception of East Clwyd, Labour’s vote retreated across the constituent nation.
Resting at 60%, turnout dropped to its lowest level since the 2001 election. For all the discussion about how Labour’s victory signals a broad enthusiasm for the style of politics championed by Starmer, that narrative did not translate to additional votes. In fact, the party received fewer raw votes than it did under Jeremy Corbyn in 2019. There are several factors behind this. All of the talk of a large Labour majority – especially in the last week of the campaign where the Conservatives introduced the term “supermajority” – may have caused undecided voters from thought there was little point voting, just as it did in 2001. Elections with foregone conclusions always deflate turnout. But more importantly, this election lacked a salient issue that galvanised the masses. Unlike 2017 with austerity or 2019 with Brexit, this election lacked a coherent narrative.
As Labour sweeps away fourteen years of Conservative government, many within the party will be wondering how sustainable this new, robust majority really is. On the surface, the scale of Labour’s win suggests it can surpass just one term. The Conservatives are too incapacitated to appear threatening for now. But the dramatic swing from the Tories’ Thatcher-esque win in 2019 to the Blairite surge in 2024 should be evidence enough alone that it can always go the other way. Too many seats were won on middling support for the party to rest easy on the next election: those won with a margin of five points or less has doubles since 2019; the number of seats won with a majority of less than a few hundred votes has tripled; a litany of newly-minted Labour MPs will go to parliament with the support of just three in ten of their constituency electorate. There will be many sweaty brows in Labour HQ tonight.
Reform is a growing threat to the Tories. And Labour.
The other big surprise of the night was Reform’s performance. Having only been established in 2021, the new right-wing party secured 14% of the vote share and 5 seats, becoming the 3rd largest by vote share and fifth by seat total. While this is insignificant in a parliament including as many as 650 seats, Reform also came 2nd in 103 seats, of which 93 were held by Labour, mostly concentrated in the Red Wall.
Vowing to build a “mass national movement” that could mount a “proper” general election challenge in 2029, Farage said: “This is just the first step of something that is going to stun all of you.” This result was remarkable enough. Though the shocking initial exit poll prediction of 13 seats for the populist hard-right party did not, in the end, materalise, its final tally of five seats still represents a big advance. Even Ukip at its apex in 2015 failed to win more than one seat.
Reform will undoubtedly cause much of the handwringing over the next parliament. The party’s voters are not coherent – their manifesto views pinball from Thatcherite libertarian to hardline protectionist nationalist, but the cohort behind Reform’s insurgency is looking to rally against the political orthodoxy and shake things up, a call-to-arms that may resonate with a disillusioned electorate. Following the rise of Ukip (but its failure to return seats) and Brexit (mainly the glut of the electorate that still feel betrayed by its delivery) it is not hard to understand why there is antipathy to the establishment, represented by the Cameroons and now Keir Starmer’s Labour.
Reform can be an everything-on-the-right party. There are 155 Labour seats which were won thanks to the Tory vote being gutted by more than 60 per cent by an ascendant Reform. How much would it take for the party to wrap up what remains of the Tories to organise and push out a Labour incumbent at the next election? It is, perhaps, not that much. Reform received about as many votes in the so-called Red Wall as the Conservatives did in 2019. If one becomes (or continues to become) an imitation of the other then it is clear that the split right-wing vote will not be forever.
Depending on who the Conservatives choose to lead them after Rishi Sunak, their very existence may be threatened by this new burgeoning political movement. And the threat is just as tangible for Labour. Reform is breathing down their necks, namely in less-affluent constituencies in the urban north, a sign that the political fissures Ukip unleashed nearly a decade ago never went away. These are future anxieties. Labour is strong for now, on a tall and impressive base. But the party faces fresh threats. How it approaches them – most concerning is Farage’s impertinent and looming presence – will define the currents of British politics for the foreseeable future.
The surprise election of Independent MPs illustrates how sectarianism is seeking into British politics.
The less discussed story of the night may perhaps be the surprise victory of several Independent MPs, who won election running on a pro-Palestinian message against the backdrop of the Israeli invasion. Analysis shows that Labour’s vote fell the sharpest in areas where Muslims made up a greater share of the electorate.
Jon Ashworth’s shock loss to independent Gaza campaigner Shockat Adam in Leicester South was the most high profile but there were three other losses to independents standing on a similar platform. Khalid Mahmood, a Labour MP who has campaigned against Islamist extremism, was beaten in Birmingham Perry Barr by an independent, Heather Iqbal was beaten in Dewsbury and Batley, and Kate Hollern lost Blackburn. All three seats now have an independent MP. Jeremy Corbyn was returned as an independent in Islington North, referencing Gaza in both his campaign literature and acceptance speech.
Wes Streeting and Jess Phillips, two high-profile Labour MPs, narrowly won re-election in their own constituencies as they fended off challenges from similar candidates running on the issue of Gaza. Representing two areas with a predominant Muslim population, Streeting and Phillips suffered vitriolic abuse throughout their campaigns as their constituency offices were vandalised and their campaigners were verbally harassed in the street.
Labour and the Conservatives’ traditional voting coalitions may be breaking away.
While much has been talked about Reform’s surge, Labour and the Conservatives also face threats on their other sides. For the Conservatives, they risk being squeezed by the more moderate Liberal Democrats in the so-called Blue Wall, a collection of affluent, Remain-voting seats in the South-West and South-East of England that began drifting away from the party following Boris Johnson’s election as party leader in 2019. With 72 MPs, this will be the largest Liberal Democrat parliamentary grouping in the party’s 30-year history, surpassing the 62 won by Nick Clegg in 2010. Depending on how the Conservatives respond to their crushing defeat, Davey may be in a prime position to continue making inroads into this demographic and solidify the Liberal Democrats’ foundations.
The Greens also came out of this election in a much better shape, winning three additional seats while retaining Brighton Pavillion, albeit by a significantly smaller majority. Bristol Central, their first gain of the night, had always been expected since its demographics provided fertile ground for a left-wing insurgency - young, urban and highly educated voters - however, one of the biggest surprises of the night was when the Greens made inroads into traditionally conservative terrain, picking up the rural seats of Waveny and North Hertfordshire. The party now has a solid base to catapult itself with into becoming a major political player over the coming years.