In politics, you’ll always take a win and grab a landslide. The headlines today are all about what matters most immediately to the country: a new prime minister, forming the first Labour administration in 14 years.
Under the bonnet, something else is going on which I can’t help think might ultimately matter. The leading Labour figures who have, with astonishing apparent success, spent the last four years making their party more “electable” have persuaded fewer people than in 2019 to turn out and elect them individually.
Sometimes, particularly in inner-London, the drop was very substantial: David Lammy in Tottenham shed 12,555 votes; Wes Streeting in Ilford North, 9,676; and Keir Starmer himself 17,757. Elsewhere, Rachel Reeves also fell back in Leeds (down 3,210) as did Angela Rayner in Ashton-Under-Lyne (down 2,676), and—in fighting a recast seat—Yvette Cooper polled 1,208 fewer votes than amid the party’s infamous nationwide disaster in the last general election.
This seeming paradox—dwindling votes for candidates of a resurgent party—is explained by three things: Labour doing worse in the seats it already held (the flipside of overperformance in those it needed to win); a stagnant vote share in England (which crept up by only 0.6 points on 2019); and, sinking turnout.
But does this, ultimately, matter? The case for complacency brushes off the drop in turn-out: the stakes are lower when parties compete in the centre-ground, and voters are especially unlikely to bother when a landslide is forecast. Even during the initial Blair surge of 1997, before the real apathy set in, turnout was down on the closer and more ideological contest of 1992. Besides, it’s hardly fair to blame politicians for playing by the rules they face. Starmer has shrewdly targeted Tory-held smalltown England with pinpoint precision. His cautious positioning has further swelled Labour ranks by making it a “safe” respository for Lib Dems voting tactically.
Look nationwide, though, and Labour is balancing one of the greatest majorities of modern history on the narrowest-ever winning share. It has got more seats than Margaret Thatcher after the Falklands with fewer total votes than Jeremy Corbyn after the Skripal poisonings. Most worrying of all is that the chief “victims” of the electoral system’s oddities are no longer the rule-respecting Lib Dems, who—after 100 years of hurt, were finally rewarded by a clutch of seats to match their votes. Instead, it is the chauvinist-populist Reform UK, which could only convert votes into seats at a ratio of a million to one.
The year after Ukip was dramatically short-changed in 2015 we got the Brexit vote. This time, the international context could embolden Nigel Farage to flirt with outright sedition. Across the Channel, the French Fifth Republic is about to descend into precisely the sort of crisis of governability that Charles De Gaulle invented it to prevent. Across the Atlantic, Donald Trump has poisoned American political culture to the point where the losing side is unlikely to concede with grace in November.
The most precious feature of this week’s election—more precious, even, than the real hopes of new and progressive policies—is the fact that everyone accepts the results. Everybody thanked their returning officer; nobody accused them of being a traitor. That might seem like a nicety, but the moment it didn’t happen we would see our democracy imperilled. After an election that has exposed some votes as being so much more equal than others, it is more incumbent of politicians on all sides to be vigilant to the dangers.
