Labour and Keir Starmer are the big winners of the House of Commons election with 412 out of the lower chamber’s 650 seats. However, in reality, Labour and Keir Starmer have not won, the Conservatives and Rishi Sunak have lost.
Labour only won 1.6 pp more than in 2019. Nevertheless, Labour has managed to win 64% of the seats with only 34% of the vote thanks to the first-past-the-post electoral system which, in just one round, awards the candidate with the most votes in single-member districts with the one and only seat. No absolute majority of votes is needed.
The other big winner, when it comes to seats, are the LibDems. With 72 MPs, they have now 61 members of the House of Commons more than in 2019. But they only increased their share of the vote by 0.6 pp. Like Labour, they ran an intelligent campaign to win as many seats as possible.
The former UKIP leader, Nigel Farage, who had only announced his intention to lead the Reform UK party and run for the Claxton (Essex) constituency seat on June 3, 2024 was the bigger winner when it comes to the share of the vote (+12.3 pp). But this did not translate into seats. Because of the first-past-the post electoral system, with 14.3% of the vote, Reform UK, founded in November 2018, advocating a no-deal Brexit, ended up with only 5 of the 650 MPs in the House of Commons, less than 1% of the seats.
Nigel Farage and Reform UK managed to win over voters who still believe in the Brexit fantasy, which led to lower growth, lower exports, etc. At the same time, in their 14 years governing the United Kingdom, the Conservatives have left the NHS in ruins, cut down the welfare state, inflicted pain on the most vulnerable, with 30% of the children living in poverty in 2024. Especially the governments of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss managed to undermine the confidence in the Tories being able to govern. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was a bit more reasonable, but could not turn around the boat. He is still running around telling the lie that the decision for Brexit was a great one. An Omnisis poll of July 2-3, 2024 says that 47% of British voters think that the UK should rejoin the EU, only 35% think that the UK should stay out of the EU.
In the 2024 House of Commons election, the Conservatives, rocked by many scandals in the past 14 years, only managed to win 23.7% of the vote (-19.9 pp). The Tories ended up with 121 seats (-244 seats).
The other party suffering a major setback were the Scottish nationalists (SNP). Rocked by many scandals and several leadership changes, they ended up with only 9 seats in the House of Commons (-38 seats in comparison with 2019). The Conservatives could not profit from the SNP disaster; Labour did.
When it comes to votes (not seats), Labour led by Keir Starmer has not won, the Conservatives led by Rishi Sunak have lost.
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Official portrait of Keir Starmer. Photograph taken by Chris McAndrew in June 2017. Public domain.
Article added on July 7, 2024 at 11:42 German time. Last sentence added at 14:12 to make the point once again.
