John Jefferson
The Labour party won a massive governing majority Thursday in Britain’s general election. Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party won 412 seats, a gain of 214, while Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party lost 251 seats, falling to 121, the lowest seat count in the party’s history. Two seats are still tabulating votes.
Voter enthusiasm was anemic. Starmer’s party won only 33.8 percent of the vote, up from Corbyn’s 32.1 in 2019. Furthermore, as turnout was down 7.4 percent, Labour won fewer votes than it did in 2019. At the same time, the Tory party collapsed from 43.6 percent of the vote to 23.7.
Third parties made their best showing for them in over a hundred years. This did not necessarily translate to seats, owing to Britain’s first-past-the-post system, which favors large and well-established parties. Reform UK, a right-populist party led by the Brexit mastermind Nigel Farage, came in third with 14.3 percent of the vote. This performance exceeded expectations, but scored only four seats, including Farage’s seat of Clacton. The Liberal Democrats came in fourth for total votes, with only 12.2 percent of the vote, but managed to win 71 seats.
The election saw the collapse of the separatist Scottish National Party, which fell from 48 to 9 seats with 2.5 percent of the vote, down from 3.8 percent last time. One seat in Scotland, which was competitive between the SNP and Labour, is still counting votes.
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