The Labour party has won over 400 seats (out of 650) in the 2024 UK General Elections, and Keir Starmer is expected to replace Rishi Sunak as Prime Minister. The Conservatives, in power for the last fourteen years, have suffered a rout, losing over two-thirds of their seats. The SNP has collapsed in Scotland, mostly to Labour, and the Liberal Democrats have gained over sixty seats.
Well, at least the was one election where Nazis didn’t win big.
They didn’t do that bad really, it just wasn’t reflected in the results. A new further right party showed up and split the right wing vote, which is largely why Labour won. If you look at the total votes the righter win parties did pretty well (Tories are really all that right wing but they did get the right wing vote).
New party (Reform) skyrocketed in fact. Had the vote not been split, conservatives would have won many more seats. Next cycle will be… Interesting. Especially with Nigel Farage getting a seat (Trump-like, seeded discontent leading to Brexit, who’s never been elected before).
Mind describing to us what you consider a right, but not far right, political stance is? Examples of both economic and social policies would be welcome.
For me I’d say the one-nation part of the conservative party.
I’m not American so I’m not all that familiar with that frame of reference
Among smaller parties, the Liberal Democrats have gained over 60 seats, and Reform, the Greens and Plaid Cymru have also gained seats. Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, now contesting as an independent, retained Islington North. Labour lost another three seats to independents who ran against its inaction on Palestine. The SNP and DUP suffered big losses, while Sinn Fein’s fortunes seem to have remained unchanged.
Very impressed with the Greens - four seats is double what was expected. Great result for them.
The Lib Dems have also come out of this really well.
I voted LD because I had to to ensure the Tory candidate didn’t get in, but I had to hold my nose while doing so. Last time I voted for them nationally was 2010, and we all know how that panned out.
To be fair to them though, after the 2015 election they had so few MPs that you could tag them all in a single tweet. So to have 71 now is impressive.
People will hold their noses just the same for the Tories in 5 years’ time, after them having done way worse things than just not quite holding their coalition partner back a couple of times.
What Clegg conceded was bad, but 14 years might be enough exile and personnel churn for one to give them a new chance.
Yeah, starmer kicked him out for not being centrist enough, which is why he ran independent (and beat the labour candidate)
and now they can kick out Kier and reinstate Jeremy! right!? right?? in my dreams
Murikan here. I really like Corbyn. He feels like your version of our Bernie Sanders.
Not to be nit-picky, but I’m pretty sure they kicked him because they thought he was antisemitic, not because he was too left wing.
Last I checked ~18:00BST
Party Seats Votes %
Lab 412 9,725,117 33.8
Con 121 6,824,610 23.7
Reform 5 4,103,727 14.3
Lib Dem 71 3,501,004 12.2
Green 4 1,941,220 6.8
Indep. 7 841,835 2.9
…
I am personally glad that the next government is not going to be stuffed full with bigoted nationalists from Reform. I can’t help but marvel though at how wonky the system of voting is that let the Lib Dem’s get an order of magnitude more seats than Reform with 600k fewer votes. Reform got just under half Labour’s vote share and only slightly over 1% of their seats.
There was an anti-genocide independent running against Starmer (the new PM) and they came in second. Image if they had won: biggest Labor majority in generations, you are all set to become PM and you loose your seat because you were vague about whether you support or oppose killing innocent women and children.
Yeah, it always kinda weirds me out that “killing women and children” is the rallying cry in most conflicts. Civilians. Killing civilians. That’s what’s bad.
I get what a lot of you guys are saying about Starmer and the Labour government not being as left wing as Corbyn. I would also like someone who would use this majority to implement some really hardcore leftist policies.
But please can we just take a step back and look at what he wants to do:
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Massive amounts of NHS funding
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Nationalised green energy
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Tax private schools
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Allow regulators to hit company executives with criminal charges
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Nationalise the railways
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Increase the minimum wage to a living wage
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Free school meals
I don’t know about you, but that seems at the very least, left of center. Sure, he’s not making drastic sweeping changes right off the bat. But this country needs an era of stability, whilst we make small but consistent steps in the right direction, and that’s what Starmer will give us
Still let’s not forget the right-wing policies from their manifesto:
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Increasing military spending by 13 billion
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Increase police funding
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More border security force to “stop the boats”
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Build more prisons
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Pour money into polluting industries (car gigafactories, steel production, “carbon capture”)
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Keep oil and gas production in the North Sea for decades, with the only focus on jobs and none on environmental issues.
So yeah I guess it’s better to have an authoritarian social-ish democratic state than an outright fascist one but that’s not a very high bar and will only work until the climate crisis boils us all alive :)
That’s a great wish list, but I’m not sure how many of those will happen. Increased NHS funding is sadly unlikely given your economy and xenophobia against immigrants. I’m hoping you get increased support for green energy, free school meals and rail nationalisation, and at least a modest raise in the minimum wage. Cheap, clean energy, educated and healthy children, and an affordable and reliable transport system can do so much for the economy.
Starmer and the Labour government not being as left wing as Corbyn
It goes a lot farther than that. From the Cass Report to the HS2 to the genocidal approach towards migrant refugees (deliberate sinking of boats in the Mediterranean), Starmer’s Labour party has demonstrated very little interest in reversing Tory policy.
They campaigned as moderate administrators of Tory extremist platforms and they are positioning themselves to continue to looting of the UK with a liberal demeanor.
An overwhelming majority by seats but only 33% of the popular vote.
36% voted Tory/Reform so voters have not shifted left but split the more right wing vote
We already have the left wing vote split by Labour, Lib Dem and Green.
If you want to claim the 36%, you’ll need to add up the left wing parties together.
Not left wing. Just left.
None of them are left wing (maybe Green has some left wing stuff?)
green is definately left wing, they’re hardly anti immigration and pro-big business, anti environmental regulation, are they?
I fear that next election reform is going to do much better.
In the mean time, Labor may not have much of a mandate for progressive policies, they’ll be creeping to the right to quell support for reform party.
Or having them in parliament might expose them as the one trick pony that they are.
I think Labour have to have a real effect on things in the next 5 years to show that the system can work. That will take the wind out of the right’s sails more than anything. Most of the reform vote is people feeling ignored, trod upon, thrown away. Labour has to make the people feel supported.
Its missleading to bass too much on that analysis. The parties don’t compete for the popular vote but to concentrate votes within seats they feel they can win.
No one was aiming to win the popular vote. I agree that’s a problem but we can’t really read to much into the split imo.
