ELECTION ROUND-UP by STEVEN DOWNES
As Rishi Sunak arrived at Buckingham Palace to see the King and resign as Prime Minister, outside it was time for the changing of the guard.
On Whitehall a little later, there was one of those unseasonal downpours, the likes of which Sunak got drenched in when announcing July 4 as General Election day six weeks before.
Let us go forward together: Starmer borrowed phrases from Churchill in his first speech as PM
His successor, Labour’s Keir Starmer, was not going to make the same mistake. His departure from the Palace was delayed, his arrival on Downing Street paused just long enough so that he would not need any of the union jack umbrellas on stand-by, to avoid a Sunak soggy mess.
Already, there was a sign of better judgement, a little more common sense. Certainly, a little more common.
Sunak made a notably graceful concession speech. Starmer, in turn, paid tribute to his predecessor’s “dedication and hard work”. We were witnessing a peaceful and civilised transfer of power going on before us.
Starmer, the son of a tool-maker, in his first speech as Prime Minister, on the steps on No10, echoed Churchill (“Let us go forward together”) and Herbert Morrison (“brick by brick”), though Labour supporters in Croydon may well have winched when he said that.
“Our country has voted decisively for change, national renewal and a return to the politics of public service,” Starmer said.
“This wound, this lack of trust can only be healed with actions, not words,” he said. “I know that, but we can make a start today with the simple acknowledgment that public service is a privilege and your government should treat every single person with respect.
“Whether you voted Labour or not, especially if you did not, I say to you directly, my government will serve you. Politics can be a force for good. We will show that. We changed the Labour party, returned it to service and that is how we will govern.”
In bullet points, with all but two of the 650 constituency results declared, we can summarise the outcome of the 2024 General Election as follows:
- Labour has won 412 seats in a devastating landslide
- The 2024 Labour majority in the Commons is slightly less than Tony Blair’s from 1997
- Labour in 2024 had a smaller vote share than they enjoyed in 2017 under Jeremy Corbyn
- The Conservatives lost 250 seats – the party’s worst General Election result since 1832
- The Liberal Democrats have 71 seats – up 60 – for their best ever General Election result
- The LibDem vote share is roughly the same as in 2019, when they won 60 fewer seats
- The Greens have won four seats – just as they targeted
- Nigel Farage’s dog-whistle Reform UK also won four seats – several fewer than had been predicted in the exit polls, about one seat per 1million votes
- While Reform took tens of thousands of votes off the Tories, the collapse of the troubled SNP in Scotland – down to nine seats – also helped Labour’s surge to power
- Former PM Liz Truss, as well as Penny Mordaunt, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Grant Shapps among the Tory “big bests” to lose their seats
- Labour lost four seats to independents – including Corbyn – where the protest vote over Starmer’s stance on Palestine took a little off the gloss of their victory. Starmer polled fewer votes in his north London constituency than his former leader did in Islington North
- Jonathan Ashworth, a member of Starmer’s shadow cabinet who in the week before polling day had said that Labour would “send them back”, referring to Bangladeshi immigrants, lost his Leicester seat in a backlash
In the New Statesman, distinguished commentator Andrew Marr issued a post-election warning.
“If Keir Starmer doesn’t deliver the improvements that voters expect, the backlash could be ferocious,” read the Stagger’s online sub-head.
Before and after: The Guardian’s graphics department illustrates the 2019 and 2024 parliamentary map of the country
The brooding presence of neo-Fascists Racist UK, with Farridge now an MP (at the eighth time of trying) could be a sub-plot to the new Parliament.
“For the defeated Conservatives, it could have been worse: they merely suffered a shellacking, not a fatal wipeout. They, not the Liberal Democrats, are the official opposition. It was only a disaster, not a catastrophe,” Marr wrote.
“But as they try to rebuild they have an almost impossible, and perhaps existential, dilemma: do they fight Nigel Farage or embrace him?
“As the night wore on, it became increasingly clear there was another story, and an unsettling one. The surge of Reform wasn’t just limited to a few coastal seats or a few high-profile candidates, but gave the insurgent party second place in huge swathes of Labour England…
“… If the British electorate had an identity and personality, which of course it doesn’t, it would be saying to Labour: this is your huge builders’ mandate; here is your five years to prove yourselves. But take nothing for granted. Don’t swagger, stop listening or go back to top-down Westminster politics as usual. We have had enough.
“And if you don’t notice that message, you will come to regret it.”
It was a theme not dissimilar to that adopted by Andrew Fisher, the Inside Croydon columnist writing on this occasion for the i newspaper.
Champion of the people: Corbyn at a Trafalgar Square rallyaccompanied by iC columnist Andrew Fisher (centre) and union leader Mark Serwotka
The policy director in Corbyn’s Labour Party wrote that his former boss “wasn’t supposed to win in Islington North in 2024… His victory shows that there is an appetite for a more radical policy agenda.”
Fisher wrote: “Little could be more emblematic of Starmer’s leadership than a socialist being blocked from standing under the party’s banner, and a millionaire owner of a private healthcare company imposed… Dozens of party members in Islington resigned in protest…
“… Just as they did when he was leader, the Labour Establishment threw everything they could at stopping Corbyn.
“As an independent standing against the official Labour candidate, Corbyn gained over 5,000 more votes than the Labour leader did in the neighbouring constituency. And that tells us something else. Both Corbyn and the policy agenda he spearheaded generated enthusiasm, passion and inspiration.
“Starmer will need that if he is to succeed in government. He has become prime minister in a landslide but with far fewer votes than Labour received in 2017.”
In his election speech this morning, Corbyn said, “The hope for a better world can never be extinguished.”
And Fisher writes: “If he is to succeed, our new prime minister must harness that hope, or he will surely fail. He may not realise it yet, but Starmer needs the left.”
Read more: The fundamental dishonesty around this dog-whistle election
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Read more: #TheLabourFiles: MP Reed, Evans and the Croydon connection
Read more: Voters being taken for granted as ‘battleground’ moves south
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