Thread by @lewis_goodall

IF YOU'RE JUST WAKING UP 🧵

LABOUR LANDSLIDE.

THE WORST TORY DEFEAT IN HISTORY. COLLAPSE EVERYWHERE

LIB DEMS REVIVE BEST RESULT FOR THIRD PARTY SINCE 1923

SNP IMPLOSION. LABOUR DOMINANT IN SCOTLAND AGAIN.

MUSLIM VOTE FOR LABOUR COLLAPSES

INDEPENDENTS ELECTED IN SAFE SEATS

Labour first

Keir Starmer is a huge election winner. Becomes only the fourth Labour leader to win a majority for his party.

Will be just shy of the 97 victory..

Party result the northern wall in its entirety, in Wales and in Scotland and won dozens of new seats in the south.

Labour will be dominant in the next parliament. Starmer will be the most powerful prime minister we've seen since Blair in 2001-05.

The vote was perfectly distributed across the country. Labour is the biggest party in England, Scotland and Wales.

But the vote was thin. Starmer may come to office on the smallest share of the vote of any winning party in history- less than 35%.

They pulled it off by having a highly efficient vote distribution. They got the right votes in the right places (as opposed to piling votes up in the same places, a la Corbyn in 17)

In many places Conservative vote collapsed and Reform was the beneficiary. Labour didn't necessarily gain that much but came through the middle.

In fact Labour barely put on any vote share at all. It's up by 1-2% from Jeremy Corbyn in 2019. This is a story about Conservative collapse.

Nigel Farage made it into Parliament. But Reform is in second place in 98 seats, many of which in northern England to Labour. That is going to be Farage's focus and it's going to change politics and spook those Labour MPs. Immigration is going to become an even bigger issue.

But it's not just Reform. Labour has lost a clutch of safe seats to independent candidates in heavily Muslim seats. They ran in opposition to Labour's policy on Gaza. And they've triumphed in safe seats like Leicester South (prev maj 22000), Birmingham Perry Bar (15000), Blackburn (18000) and more besides.

They ran Labour very close in Birmingham Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood), Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips) and more besides. They did, however, win back Rochdale from Galloway.

Labour's relationship with many Muslim voters is in tatters.

Corbyn also retained Islington. And Labour lost Bristol Central to the Greens.

Labour's victory is broad but potentially fragile. It is going to require profound political skill to keep this coalition together when the adhesive of being the anti-dote to the Tories is taken away. Starmer is going to have to look in multiple directions with different opponents in second seats in different places. It's a deeply fragmented political picture and political geography.

Rishi Sunak meanwhile becomes the biggest loser in British political history. He has lost more Tory seats in one election than any election in history, more even than the Liberal landslide of 1906.

The Tory vote share is easily the lowest in history at 24%. That's down 20%pp since 2019. It's lower than Major's 30% of 97.

His decision to fight the election now, with the strategy he chose was catastrophic.

Conservatives will have

0 seats in Wales
1 seat in the North East
1 seat in the North West

Four of the five of the Tories' Prime Ministers' seats of the last 14 years have been lost (Witney, Maidenhead, Uxbridge and South West Norfolk).

The Conservatives have never been so marginal or unimportant to British politics as they are right now.

What has happened in the south of England to the Tories is a reconfiguration of our electoral geography is way beyond anything we saw in the red wall. Demographic change has punished the Tories.

There is no easy way back. A bloody war for the soul of the party comes next. Most likely candidates who have survived are from the right: Badenoch, Braverman, Jenrick. Atkins and Tugendhat have survived too and will give it a go from one nation wing but I suspect will get nowhere.

Feels to me inconceivable that stung from defeat, with Reform splitting the vote in so many places, and the Tory membership moving to the right in recent years, the members won't choose the most right wing candidate available.

Btw will only take about 20 MPs to trigger a leadership contest on these numbers. Good luck to the new chair of the 22.

The Lib Dems have had their best night in history. They've won dozens of new seats. They've returned in their old south west heartlands. They've won new seats in teh south east, including in Tory fortresses like Oxfordshire.

Ed Davey is the most successful Liberal leader since Asquith.

But like Labour, the Lib Dems have achieved it on a slim share of the vote. They've won about 12% vote share. That's up less than 1% on 2019. But again, the Conservatives have collapsed in so many places PLUS Lib Dems have put on votes where it matters. Clear beneficiaries of v efficient tactical voting.

Either way the Lib Dems are back as a serious force in British politics. They'll have more than half of the Tory seat number. We'll be seeing much more of Ed Davey, and not always on a bungee jump.

The SNP have had their worst election result for over a decade. They have largely dominated in each and every election they've contested in Scotland since 2015. No longer. Labour has had their best performance anywhere in teh country in Scotland. SNP are exiled back to their historic heartlands. They will be irrelevant in Westminster.

They will of course still be in office in Holyrood. A 2026 election there against a potentially unpopular Labour govt in Westminster will be to their advantage. Independence is also still polling well and Labour, for the first time, will have to navigate having a significant number of Yes voters in their coalition. But this is the biggest setback for independence, in the short term, for a long time.

In Northern Ireland Sinn Fein will be the biggest party for the first time (of course, they don't take their seats).

Is Sinn Féin's third electoral victory in two years in NI.

Bad night for DUP. Ian Paisley Jr loses North Antrim to hardline TUV's Jim Allister.

BIG story of the night is turnout. The second lowest EVER at only 60%- about 7.5%pp down on the last election. Has driven all sorts of odd results. The public, in many cases, have either felt apathetic or disinclined to choose between what was put before them.

In sum. This was a deeply odd set of results. A triumph for Labour but on a low turnout and thinly spread. A Tory catastrophe. The Tory/Labour vote share at the lowest in history. 35% of the vote for Labour rewarded with 65% of the seats.

How robust is the coalition? Starmer is in Johnson's 19 position but x10. An odd patchwork of seats which does't necessarily cohere, where he will have to look left and right, liberal and conservative. It is gong to require some political magic to keep them together. . Starmer made few political arguments in teh campaign. He's going to have to make some now, in order to sustain his majority. And Labour has to deliver- because if if it doesn't it's easy to see this triumph quickly eroding.

Because if we've learned anything in recent years it has to be that there's no permanent settlements left in British electoral demography. The SNP hegemony- gone. The Tory hegemony- gone. The electorate is more volatile than ever. What they give, they can take away more quickly than ever.

Because with these results Britain is more marginal than ever. At the constituency level seats are tighter than any point since 1945. There is no such thing as a safe seat any more.

But all that is for another day and another election. Today the triumph is Keir Starmer's. No-one would have thought this were possible in 2019. It is the first change of party in government for 14 years. The first majority for a Labour govt in 19 years. He promised little but has complete power to do what he wants.

The question is, what will he do with it?

END AND SLEEP

Oh and btw- voter efficiency is everything in the British system. If you master that you win. And Labour did.

AND I'm all for talking about Reform. It's going to be a massive part of the next parliament. But we also need to talk in the same way about the Greens, who won the same number of seats and who also pose a long term threat to Lab and Tory.

Best way of understanding this result (in England and Wales). Labour may not be loved but the Conservatives, in many cases, were despised. And the voters were willing to vote for anyone best placed to remove them. All adding up to ruthless vote efficiency for Labour & Lib Dems.