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At 8.20am this morning Financial Times updated election page was showing that with 644 of the 650 seats declared in the UK general election that Labour had secured an overwhelming majority with 409 seats.
The Conservatives had just 119 seats, a loss of 248 since 2019. Former Prime Minister with the Tories, Liz Truss, lost her seat.
The Liberal Democrats has taken 71 seats, an increase of 63 on their total. Reform led by Nigel Farage had been forecast on the BBC exit poll to take 13 seats, but ended up with just 4 including the seat won by Farage himself in Clacton.
Good morning London. If you're just waking up, here's what the #GeneralElection2024 results look like so far: https://t.co/Qd3LfpmAW6 pic.twitter.com/7v2IRqO3Au
— Financial Times (@FT) July 5, 2024
The other main story of the election was the collapse of the Scottish National Party who lost 38 seats and were reduced to 8 following scandals over alleged financial irregularities and surrender to transgender ideology.
The vagaries of the first past the post-election system are illustrated by the fact that Labour’s landslide in seats was based on a relatively small percentage increase in votes; from 32.1% under Jeremy Corbyn in 2019 to 33.8% under Keir Starmer.
Corbyn – re elected as an independent in the north London constituency of Islington – may have pondered on the fact that he was considered to have been a monumental loser who was eventually forced out, while Starmer has won one of the largest majorities in UK electoral history.
That would have been impossible of course had it not been for the collapse in the Tory vote from 43.6% to 23.7%. Much of that due to the 14.3% of the votes taken by Reform. The latter might also feel aggrieved at the fact that they polled higher than the Lib Dems who took a smaller percentage – 12.2% – but 67 more seats than Reform.
Reform has so far won four seats, including leader Nigel Farage’s seat in Clacton as well as gains in Great Yarmouth, Ashfield, and Boston & Skegness. The party has come second in a further 89 seats https://t.co/clAzket7gT pic.twitter.com/yUWoOrnrRs
— Financial Times (@FT) July 5, 2024
That will lead to some debate over the merits of proportional representation but the fact that it has been Farage who has lost out and not as normal the Liberal Democrats will mean that is unlikely to gain traction. A similar % vote for Reform under PR would have led to the sort of gains we have seen for other anti-establishment parties of the right in the rest of Europe.
Reform polled well across all of England and beat the Tories into second place in a large number of constituencies especially in the north of England where Reform also in some places took significantly from the Labour vote even where Labour retained seats in places like Sunderland and Gateshead but with reduced majorities.
In the north of Ireland, meanwhile, crucial seats remained to be filled but Sinn Féin was already destined to replace the Democratic Unionist Party with 7 seats. The DUP had obviously been hugely damaged by the criminal rape charges against former leader Jeffrey Donaldson and look almost certain to lose the Paisley seat in Antrim to the leader of Traditional Unionist Voice, Jim Allister.
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