As today’s ballot approached in the United Kingdom, the word “historic” was increasingly being used about the 2024 election. Commonly, the importance of this election has been defined around the potentially huge size of the probable Labour victory forecast by opinion polls. There may be an ever bigger, longer-term reason why this year’s election is historic, however.
For the first time in more than a century, it looks likely that the UK will experience back-to-back landslides, albeit in opposite directions. The last general election in 2019 resulted in a big Conservative win; 2024 is predicted to be a huge Labour victory. This hasn’t happened since 1900, when the Conservatives won with a landslide, and 1906, which was a monumental Liberal win.
The Liberals’ 1906 victory helped catalyse an era-defining realignment that led to the modern electoral system. Indeed, the 1906 win was the last time that the Liberals won an absolute majority in the House of Commons. It was also the last election in which neither Labour nor the Conservatives won the popular vote.
Almost 120 years on from then, many headlines are focused on polling which indicates that Labour could win its biggest ever majority, larger than 1945 and 1997. Yes, this would be historic—but there are signs that such a result may bring greater disequilibrium in the political system.
For one, despite Labour generally polling some 40 per cent in recent surveys, the collective share of the vote won by Labour and the Conservatives on 4th July could be around 60 per cent. This would be the lowest share for the two main parties since the current two-party system emerged after the First World War, replacing that of the Liberals and Conservatives.
A second indication of potential disequilibrium is the parlous state of the Conservatives. Some polling indicates that the party might receive a lesser share of the popular vote than the upstart, populist right-wing Reform. Some pundits have even indicated that the 2024 election could be a so-called “extinction level” event for the Conservatives, as the 1993 ballot was for their former sister party in Canada.
The Tories may have been polling at their lowest levels in history, but the party’s demise has been called out prematurely at other times in the last couple of hundred years. It has always bounced back—so far—earning the moniker of the “world’s most successful party”.
In the volatile UK political landscape of 2024, however, there is a significant possibility of major political change. Rather than giving rise to a new two-party system, this might instead be the entrenchment of an evolving multi-party system akin to countries across continental Europe. This would herald a more unpredictable era for our politics.
The decay of the two-party postwar system is not new. In the period from 1945 to 1970, Labour and the Conservatives collectively averaged in excess of 90 per cent of the vote between them—and also more than 90 per cent of the seats—in the eight UK general elections during this period.
Yet, from 1974 to 2005, over the nine general elections in this period, the average share of the vote won by the both parties fell significantly. This trend has brought about political change that is still unfolding.
It is the centrist Liberal Democrats, not Reform, which have probably done more to break the hold of the two major parties in power. From 1974 to 2005, the average Liberal vote-share in general elections was just below 20 per cent, although the party slumped in the polls after joining the Conservatives in coalition from 2010 to 2015.
Beyond the Liberal Democrats, several other parties have come to prominence too, including the Scottish National Party (SNP) which governs in the Edinburgh parliament and the Greens.
The apparent decline of the two-party system may make for a less predictable politics because it is harder for any one party to secure a majority in UK general elections. This is despite our first-past-the-post voting system, which tends to provide the leading party with a significantly larger number of seats in the House of Commons than would be given by a more proportionate electoral system—as polls indicate will be the case on 4th July for Labour.
Coalitions and the sharing of power have long been a feature of local government in Britain, as well as in devolved parliaments and assemblies outside of Westminster. This same dynamic may now become a significantly more regular feature at the heart of central government in London.
Until 2010, when the Cameron-Clegg coalition government was formed, Labour and the Conservatives had won overall majority governments at every election since 1945. (That is, except for the very brief interregnum between February and October 1974, when Labour won the most seats, but was 17 short of an overall majority. In the subsequent October snap election, the party consolidated this total, winning a slim overall majority of three seats.)
And, lest we forget, in 2017 too, the Conservatives failed to win an overall majority. This necessitated a co-called “confidence and supply” agreement with the Democratic Unionist Party from Northern Ireland.
Taken together, the UK’s long-standing two-party system may therefore be giving way to a more unpredictable political landscape. Labour is likely to win big, but Britain’s politics is increasingly fragmented. We are in an era where other parties—the Lib Dems, Reform, SNP, the Greens, and potentially others yet to be formed—are increasingly competing for prominence.
