UK ELECTIONS
LABOUR PARTY RIDES TO A LAND SLIDE VICTORY
Saro Thiruppathy reports on the 4 July snap general elections in the United Kingdom – and the end of the Conservative Party’s 14 year reign
The UK may be the only country in the world where the workers’ party is led by a Knight of the Realm. On 4 July, Sir Keir Starmer and his Labour Party rode to victory with a resounding majority in the House of Commons – and ended the Conservative Party’s 14 year rule.
Labour won 412 seats out of a total of 650 against the Tories, who managed to cobble together only 121 seats. The Liberal Democrats followed with 72 seats and now constitute the third largest party in parliament.
Reform UK secured five seats while the Green Party of England and Wales, and Wales’ Plaid Cymru, won four seats each. The Scottish National Party (SNP) meanwhile, which was previously the third largest party in the House with 48 seats, won only nine this time around.
There were political party rumblings soon after the results were out, in terms of the number of votes polled by parties and the unequitable number of seats allocated to them.
For instance, Labour won only 35 percent of the total votes cast but secured 412 seats (64%) in the House. The Tories, who polled 24 percent of the votes, took 121 seats while the Liberal Democrats secured 71 seats after receiving only 12 percent of the votes.
Reform UK meanwhile, which secured 14 percent of the total votes cast, was allotted only five seats (1%) in the House of Commons.
This is because a poor voter turnout and the ‘first past the post’ system tend to generate disproportionate results. The Electoral Reform Society claims that this election was “the most disproportional in British electoral history.”
TORY ROUTE Although election law required that the UK needed to go to the polls only in January 2025, former prime minister Rishi Sunak decided to call an early election in July.
This came as a surprise since the Tories were doing badly across the board, and only beginning to see some light when the UK’s GDP in the first two quarters of 2024 saw an improvement from a poor showing in the second half of last year. Even the Bank of England was quite optimistic about future growth of the British economy.
On the flip side however, unemployment stood at 4.4 percent between February and April (representing 1.5 million people), and the number of food banks in the UK was increasing rapidly.
In 2021/22, 14.4 million people (22%) were living in poverty, which included 8.1 million (that’s two in 10) working age adults, 4.2 million (three in 10) children and 2.1 million (one in six) pensioners.
Social issues such as homelessness and substance abuse are also on the rise, and the picture for the world’s sixth largest economy in terms of nominal GDP isn’t bright.
Nevertheless, the UK has generously funded wars in Ukraine and Gaza over the past few years – to the detriment of its populace. For instance, Ukraine received about UK£ 228 million in 2023/24 from Britain’s Treasury.
In addition to this dismal socioeconomic landscape, the Tories enabled Brexit and faced the COVID-19 blues along with corruption, lies, ‘Partygate’ and the personal protective equipment (PPE) scandal where contracts were granted to Tory buddies.
More recently, the cost of living crisis and migrant issue were front and centre in the minds of voters.
While the government’s mismanagement of industrial action by workers in 2022 in the transport and healthcare sectors wasn’t surprising, it was strange that the elitist leader of the workers’ party had instructed his frontbenchers not to show solidarity by standing in picket lines.
Meanwhile, Larry – who was appointed in 2011 as ‘Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office’ at No. 10 Downing Street – had seen five Tory prime ministers over 14 years, and people quipped that he’s been far more consistent than the Conservative Party!
LABOUR VICTORY The resounding victory of the Labour Party was proportional to the disastrous 14 year rule by the Conservatives.
Starmer gained leadership of the Labour Party when Jeremy Corbyn resigned, following the party’s failure at the general elections in 2019, and proceeded to push him into the political wilderness.
However, Corbyn won his seat of Islington North as an independent candidate with 24,120 votes; and ironically, his nemesis Starmer won only 18,884 votes in his constituency of Holborn and St. Pancras.
The Labour Party’s manifesto (titled ‘Change’) contains a litany of pledges that include bringing economic stability, boosting growth, establishing a National Wealth Fund to invest in jobs, building 1.5 million new homes, devolving power, revising taxation on people and businesses, investing in infrastructure and a transport network, driving innovation through technology, managing immigration and so on.
However, only the future knows if any or all of these promises will materialise – and British voters will learn soon enough that the proof of the pudding is in the eating.
The UK has an impressive welfare system that many European countries envy. The concept of the poverty line varies by country, and the population below the poverty line in the UK is very different from the destitute poor in a third-world country like ours, where people often lack education, employment, or any support. In the UK, no one is forced to seek food from food banks, although some do for various personal reasons. There are also individuals in the UK who have never worked a day in their lives, yet they live comfortably, much like some of the JVP stalwarts here.
For a moment, I thought I was reading a Guardian article. Anyway, the electoral system has always been a topic of discussion among the UK electorate. In the 1997 general election, the situation was quite similar. Tony Blair’s Labour Party won 418 seats with a popular vote of 13 million, while the Conservatives secured 165 seats with almost 10 million votes. Meanwhile, the LibDems won 46 seats despite polling half of what the Conservatives did. Tony Blair’s significant majority suppressed calls for electoral system reforms, but in 2010, when the LibDems entered into a coalition with the Tories, their primary demand was electoral reform. In that election, the three parties (Conservative, Labour, and LibDem) gained 306, 258, and 57 seats respectively, with vote shares of 36%, 29%, and 23%. A referendum was held in 2011, and the country strongly rejected the change. The vote share for an alternative voting system was only 32%, while 67% voted to maintain the status quo. Considering the Sri Lankan experience, which divided the nation along ethno-religious lines, proportional representation is not a system that should be implemented anywhere in the world.