UK General Election 2024: The Results & Aftermath

[Thirteen]

That's probably the one seat where I was properly frustrated with Labour HQs approach. It was clearly such a stupid idea to deselect the candidate that close to the election. If they'd backed her she'd clearly have won that seat instead IDS sneaks home again.

24,000 votes between Labour and the deselected candidate is an own goal moment. Reform didn't even keep their deposit.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

To be fair, UK has a history of single issue MP's....think Martin Bell (in Tatton) and the Doctor in Kidderminster (name escapes me) in recent times....just a handful more this election!

Reckon that would have been Richard Taylor (of the 'Independent Health Concern' party or something similar) who was MP for the Wyre Forest constituency (which includes the Kidderminster area) between 2001 + 2010.

 

[DarloRich]

That's probably the one seat where I was properly frustrated with Labour HQs approach. It was clearly such a stupid idea to deselect the candidate that close to the election. If they'd backed her she'd clearly have won that seat instead IDS sneaks home again.

There are several places where parties should have had a conversation. There are several places where people voting green especially but also lib dem have allowed Tories to hang on. It could and should have been worse

In the north Stockton is one. Keighley another. Tatton also.

 

[43096]

No it isn’t, the whole discourse has been to vote tactically, but now people have actually done it it’s somehow bad for Labour.

They have won a monumental landslide despite the electorate having 5 or 6 credible choices on their ballots.

Labour haven't won as such - the Conservatives and SNP got a beating which handed seats to Labour. Labour's share of the vote is pretty much unchanged, and is less than the "did not vote" element.

 

[ainsworth74]

24,000 votes between Labour and the deselected candidate is an own goal moment. Reform didn't even keep their deposit.

Exactly, it wouldn't even have been that close if the vote hadn't been so disastrously split. Really really stupid by Labour HQ.

There are several places where parties should have had a conversation. There are several places where people voting green especially but also lib dem have allowed Tories to hang on. It could and should have been worse

In the north Stockton is one. Keighley another. Tatton also.

Yep there's a few like that around. South Basildon and East Thurrock is another, Reform beat Labour by 98 votes whilst the Lib Dems and Greens got just shy of 3,000 votes between them. Can't help but wonder if there aren't 98 Green or Lib Dem voters who are wondering if maybe they should have held their nose and voted Labour...

That being said it's quite clear that tactical voting in general has been utterly devastating for the Tories.

 

[Arglwydd Golau]

Reckon that would have been Richard Taylor (of the 'Independent Health Concern' party or something similar) who was MP for the Wyre Forest constituency (which includes the Kidderminster area) between 2001 + 2010.

Yes, thanks, that's the one. The issue, I think, was possible closure of the local hospital (or downgrading it) and the campaign caught a great deal of national attention.

 

[Thirteen]

I wonder how things would change if voting was compulsory like in Australia? Of course, they have a different voting system so it probably wouldn't be like for like.

 

[Gloster]

Yes, thanks, that's the one. The issue, I think, was possible closure of the local hospital (or downgrading it) and the campaign caught a great deal of national attention.

It was Dr Richard Taylor, who died just over a week ago. The issue was the downgrading of A&E at Kidderminster Hospital, which was strongly opposed locally (well, it would be, wouldn‘t it), but supported by David Lock, the Labour MP for Wyre Forest. The changes were the first in series planned to be imposed across the country and, if I remember correctly, Lock was being a good little MP in the hope of becoming Deputy Under-Secretary for Paperclips.

 

[PGAT]

Final result: Inverness passed from the SNP to Lib Dems

 

[Gloster]

Final result: Inverness passed from the SNP to Lib Dems

I don’t think it is the ‘final’ result: it won’t be that until the recount tomorrow. But it is a pedantic point, as the SNP candidate has conceded as he describes the recount as a ‘technical‘ one.

 

[takno]

That's probably the one seat where I was properly frustrated with Labour HQs approach. It was clearly such a stupid idea to deselect the candidate that close to the election. If they'd backed her she'd clearly have won that seat instead IDS sneaks home again.

I know what you mean, but they may have made an honest evaluation that they were worried she would be a challenging and counter-productive MP. It's potentially worth them losing the seat and having IDS as part of a small opposition, rather than have a loose cannon firing at them from their own backbenches.

Apart from anything else, maybe the Tories will elect IDS as leader again. That would be a laugh

 

[Cloud Strife]

As an SNP supporter, I'm bitterly disappointed in these results. Not so much with what has happened in places like Glasgow where "beating the Tories" was always going to be the priority, but more about what happened in places like Aberdeenshire and Na h-Eileanan an Iar, where the SNP should have performed far better than they did. The revival of the almost-dead Lib Dems in Scotland is also worrying, as it points at a potential Labour-Lib Dem government in 2026.

However, at the same time, it's clear that the SNP have simply run out of steam, which is natural for every party that spends so long in power. The failure to move the independence issue forward has been a source of great disappointment, especially as the Tories may well have accepted devo-max with full fiscal devolution in order to shore up their support among English voters who feel that they're robbed by Scotland.

 

[Kaliwax]

Im happy Phillip Davies got voted out! I wish his wife did as well.

 

[Purple Train]

Final result: Inverness passed from the SNP to Lib Dems

I don't think that will officially declare until tomorrow, but the SNP candidate has conceded defeat, yes. That would leave the SNP on just nine seats.

72 seats, if that is the case, for the Liberal Democrats - not terribly far off what they would get in the RailUK Parliament Considerably above even the exit poll, which I thought was very much on the optimistic side for them.

(Link should be to the "Who are you voting for?" thread also linked in post #1, but I hope I've done it right!)

 

[Mcr Warrior]

Exit Poll:
Lab 410
Con 131
LD 61
Ref 13
SNP 10
PC 4
Grn 2

Why did Reform get substantially less than the number of seats originally forecast in last night's exit poll?

 

[AndyPJG]

So quite a few surprises with this election, perhaps the biggest one for me being Labour's victory in Chelsea and Fulham. Awful night for the Conservatives and SNP, and on a personal note the Independents were kind of annoying but not really a big deal. But on the downside, it really exposed the issues with our electoral system more than ever. Just a 1% increase in the vote for Labour took them from a 1935 level defeat to 2001 level victory.
/....

More like a 20% drop in the Tory vote lost them 250 seats?

 

[brad465]

It's worth noting that the reform vote isn't that much different to the UKIP vote in 2015.a couple of percent more of the vote share, a couple of more MPs but 2nd place in a lot fewer constituencies and if you add Reform and Tories together you get less than the UKIP / Tory combination from 2015. So maybe it isn't that much of a change / shock, just the "new" norm?

Yes they are not as popular a force as is made out in the media. Farage also isn't overly popular as a whole either (he even lost a head-to-head on opinion polling with Sunak), he just has a very vocal core support.

Why did the Reform party get nothing like the number of seats originally forecast in last night's exit poll?

Huge margin of error in their polling.

 

[PGAT]

Why did Reform get substantially less than the number of seats originally forecast in last night's exit poll?

Because 13 was an absurd over-estimation, 5 was more in line with what was being predicted by other pollsters

 

[johnmoly]

You might not know that Reform came second in 92 seats. Not bad for a party that's only four years old.

 

[Kaliwax]

I imagine some reform supporters would have gone back to Tory or other parties, after horrific comments by a few candidates of theirs.

 

[takno]

Why did Reform get substantially less than the number of seats originally forecast in last night's exit poll?

I think they predicted slightly too high on the Reform vote share overall, and got the distribution a bit wrong. Most of the predicted 13 seats were pretty close, so it's not really surprising when that many go the other way.

I suspect they got a lot of the individual seats wrong for other parties as well, but when there's a larger number of seats being talked about they tend to average out.

 

[Sorcerer]

More like a 20% drop in the Tory vote lost them 250 seats?

That's probably a more sensible way of putting it since the election was more of a Tory loss than Labour win. But regardless I think it's still telling that Labour can have a lower share of the vote with a landslide than it did in 2017 while falling 74 seats short of a majority.

 

[takno]

You might not know that Reform came second in 92 seats. Not bad for a party that's only four years old.

They do trot that brand new party thing out rather a lot. Reform are basically all the same people as the Brexit party and UKIP. The fact that they got a new logo, a new limited company and yet another round of willy-won't-he-stand from big Nige doesn't make them a new party in any meaningful sense.

Moreover, if they genuinely were a new party then the amount of attention and coverage they got in the press was outrageous. It's only reasonable because they actually have a bunch of recent history

 

[AndyPJG]

That's probably a more sensible way of putting it since the election was more of a Tory loss than Labour win. But regardless I think it's still telling that Labour can have a lower share of the vote with a landslide than it did in 2017 while falling 74 seats short of a majority.

Probably the proportion of the votes distorted by the low turnout (60% ish) compared to the usual GE turnout of 70%; lots of Tory voters abstaining accounting for the bulk of the drop?

 

[Sorcerer]

Probably the proportion of the votes distorted by the low turnout (60% ish) compared to the usual GE turnout of 70%; lots of Tory voters abstaining accounting for the bulk of the drop?

Turnout was quite low across many constituencies throughout the night. I think many Tory voters or floating voters just decided to stay home thinking a Labour win was a foregone conclusion while the determination to get the Tories out got the Labour and Lib Dem voters out to the polling stations.

 

[brad465]

This may well be the best Ministerial appointment of the new government, James Timpson as Minister for Prisons, Parole and Probation. Given his role in getting former prisoners rehabilitated through employment, it is a strong statement about taking prison reform seriously:

x.com

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James Timpson OBE @JamesTCobbler has been appointed Minister of State (Minister for Prisons, Parole and Probation) in the Ministry of Justice @MoJGovUK.

 

[Thirteen]

This may well be the best Ministerial appointment of the new government, James Timpson as Minister for Prisons, Parole and Probation. Given his role in getting former prisoners rehabilitated through employment, it is a strong statement about taking prison reform seriously:

x.com

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He's not a MP so I assume he's in the Lords in order to get that role.

 

[WelshBluebird]

You might not know that Reform came second in 92 seats. Not bad for a party that's only four years old

Again compare that to UKIPs result in 2015 (as they aren't really a new party, they are a continuation of UKIP) and all of a sudden it doesn't look as great (they managed to get 2nd in about 120 constituencies back then).

 

[brad465]

He's not a MP so I assume he's in the Lords in order to get that role.

Yes he appears to have just been given a peerage to take the position up.

 

[Gloster]

A point that I don’t think has been mentioned is that Reform have an alliance with the Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV). As TUV took one seat, that puts the grouping on six seats.

I wonder if the overestimation of the Reform vote in the exit poll was because the pollsters thought there might be a lot more people who were too embarrassed to admit that they voted for Reform than actually were embarrassed. The same might be true of the overestimation of the Conservative seats.