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This is part of our UK Election Data Points series
Four and a half years ago, Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party received just over 10 million votes in the UK’s 2019 general election — just a third of the total. That gave Labour 202 seats in the House of Commons, its lowest number since the 1930s.
Yesterday, Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party received half a million fewer votes than in 2019, again just a third of the popular vote. This achievement was rewarded under our plurality electoral system with a huge majority and 412 seats so far, the second highest number of votes in the party’s history.
Fear not: I am not suggesting that Corbyn was robbed of victory and a term in No 10 Downing Street. I am simply stressing that Britain The voting system is increasingly broken. It is possible to construct completely different narratives around the same low level of popular support.
In a sense, all that matters now is that Starmer and Labour are in power. They will have the time and space to pursue their policy agenda and deliver on their promises of change. But if the past four and a half years have taught us anything, it is that fragile alliance Conditional support can be dangerous, creating incentives to say popular things instead of doing unpopular but necessary things.
Beneath the surface of this historic Labor victory, The signs are ominous. The proportion of Britons who think Starmer’s party understands the problems facing the UK is at a record low, as is the proportion who think Labour keeps its promises; both figures are much lower than when Boris Johnson’s government was in power.
Perhaps most notably, a whopping 48 percent of them Those who intend to vote for Starmer’s party say the main reason is to get rid of the Conservatives, while very few give positive motivations related to the Labour Party and its policies.
The number of seats has dominated the narrative of this election more than any before, inviting comparisons with Tony Blair’s landslide victory in 1997. But look deeper, and the similarities with 1997 fade. Starmer has far less public goodwill. than Blair comingand is inheriting a country that is in much worse shape.
All these potential weaknesses mean that if Starmer is to succeed where Johnson has failed, he will have to deliver tangible improvements quickly if he is to retain his broad coalition. On some issues, he may be lucky. Voters’ most pressing demands relate to Cost of living; without lifting a finger Starmer can see inflation continuing to fall and interest rate cut.
Then things get a lot more difficult. One of the main demands from voters is to improve immigration and asylum, and this is where the divisions within the Labor coalition could really come to the fore.
For all the Conservatives’ struggles on the issue, data suggests that a majority of their 2019 voters wanted at least the same thing: less immigration and more control. For Labour, that’s not so simple.
The clearest illustration of the predicament Starmer finds himself in here is the way Labour supporters have split into diametrically opposed factions. About a third are angry that the Conservative government has created a negative environment for migrants already in the country and wants the UK to take in more. But another 40 per cent identified the problem as too much immigration and too many people being allowed to claim asylum.
Almost any position Starmer takes will anger one of these groups. More than 100 Labour MPs now represent constituencies that, if the Conservatives and the UK Reform Party unite or form a coalition, the right would unseat them at the next election. This means that progressive voters in the debate are likely to be the losers. No one should be surprised if the divisions we have seen on the right are mirrored on the left at the next election, with Labour voters splitting into Greens and independents.
The overwhelming Labour majority is now grabbing headlines, but it is built on a weak foundation. As James Kanagasooriam, research director at polling firm Focaldata, puts it, the coalition of voters that put Starmer in Number 10 Downing Street is better understood. not a skyscraper but a sand castle. As the tide rises in the next few years, it could be swept away, as the Conservatives did this week.
