Angry side of the pond here. Did the good guys win?
The much less bad guys won. They still have some unacceptable policies, for example on trans rights and Palestine.
In addition to what Skua said, it’s also worth pointing out that Reform, the main far-right party, led by the repulsive Nigel Farage (Brexiteer, friend of Trump, and so on), also made major gains, and came second in many constituencies. So although Labour has a majority now, things could get very ugly next time around if they don’t do a good job.
Reform is the 4th-largest party in Parliament. If the UK had a law requiring mouthpieces of foreign powers to register, that would affect Reform, which repeats Russian talking points verbatim. Better, such mouthpieces should be banned from office.
That should apply to those who repeat verbatim the positions of the Israeli governing party as well.
No they’re not:
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1st Labour 412
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2nd Conservative 121
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3rd Liberal Democrats 72
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4th SNP 9
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5th Sinn Fein 7
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6th= Left-wing pro-Gaza Labour defectors (not a party as such but they are pretty well aligned) 5
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6th= DUP 5
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6th= Reform 5
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9th= Greens 4
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9th= Plaid Cymru 4
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11th SDLP 2
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12th= Alliance 1
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12th= UUP 1
6th largest, with only five seats out of the Commons’ total 650 compared to the SNP’s nine and Sinn Féin’s seven. I suppose you could argue that they are 5th largest since SF don’t take their seats. They did get the third-highest vote share though, just got absolutely fucked by FPTP. And hey, if anyone had to get fucked by FPTP, I’m glad it was them. But the number of votes they got is pretty alarming.
So although Labour has a majority now, things could get very ugly next time around if they don’t do a good job.
And that’s the worry - people were highly-motivated to get the Tories out, so there was a lot of tactical voting, plus Reform split the right wing vote. Next time around, Labour are the incumbents and they’ll have to convince the electorate to explicitly vote for them (and if Reform and the Tories merge, that could be a major problem). However, Starmer is a smart guy who has demonstrated that he is prepared to think tactically and play the long game. So I bet that, as well as the first 100 days, he’ll have the start of a plan that aims to get them to the point that they can demonstrate improvements in everyone’s lives by the next election. I suspect a Green New Deal may be key to that.
Of the two big parties, yes, without a doubt. There’s plenty to criticise Starmer’s Labour for but they’re a hell of a lot better than what we had before this election. Starmer is certainly not an inspiring candidate and has given a lot of ground to the Conservatives on policy positions, but we can probably at least look forward to a lot less random lashing out at whichever vulnerable group looks like a useful target this week
