2024 UK Election Postmortem

A friend of mine wrote right after the 2024 election results were declared: 

“It is good that the UK swung left given other elections in Europe.”

A cartoonish interpretation would be as this reworked old Larson picture.

It is true that the UK *has* swung left, but by how much?

Consider the resulting number of seats

So, the Labour Party has 412 seats after gaining a whopping 211 seats. The Conservatives have lost 251 seats. But if you look at the vote share, Labour Party has gained 1.6 percent and the Tories have lost 20 percent of the voters.

Executive question: Where did all the Conservative voters go? 

Executive answer: They went to the *extreme* rightwing Reform UK Party of Nigel Farage. Mr Farage won a seat in the parliament. It is noteworthy because he tried seven other times and failed. Perhaps he took the maxim from the story of Robert the Bruce (by Sir Walter Scott) seriously. [No, not really. Instead, he was fully backed by the US rightwing network of Trump and their UK counterparts.]

Executive implication: Rightwingers have found that becoming more extreme to the right pays. That will dissuade future Tories to tow a moderate line and become extreme right.

Tom Calver has a great illustration of how the voter spread has changed since 2017.

The winning margin had a much larger spread even in 2019. The median margin of a Tory win was 14,500 votes in 2019. In 2024, it is down to 3,500. This produces a great incentive for the Tories to move to the right hoping to increase that margin.

A conspicuous number of Labour candidates used to win by 30,000 or more. In 2024, not a single Labour candidate won by more than 23,000.

Executive summary: There has been a great compression of voters. The number of marginal winners has grown exponentially.

Executive postscript: Sadly, people are no longer voting much for the Monster Raving Loony Party. They used to routinely get over 10,000 votes nationally two decades ago.

Aussie comedian Adam Hills has it right.