Election round-up

It’s all over. Thank God for that. And it looks like my credibility is mostly intact. I was right about MRP polls being off. Several of them massively overstated Labour's lead and the scale of the Tory defeat. From the outset my gut instinct told me that Labour simply wasn't that popular, and that the Tories, as part of the establishment duopoly, would hold at least a hundred seats. The Lib Dems seem to have been the chief beneficiary of the Tory defeat by mounting an entirely apolitical campaign.

The surprise to me was the low turnout. Six months ago I was saying this was going to be a record low turnout, but in recent days I expected it to recover some out of a general fear of a Labour government. I should have trusted my first instinct. This was a stay at home election. As such, Labour's win is threadbare, polling less overall than in 2019, and that increases the likelihood of a one term government.

As to Reform, I was grudgingly predicting 2-3 seats, so they've exceeded my expectations by two. I expected Lee Anderson would lose but he's popular with the locals, it seems. Usually ex-Tories standing on a different ticket don't win. There were some notable second places for Reform, but in this game there are no prizes for second place.

The note of caution for Reform is that they are the main beneficiary of the low turnout. They are the only party with an enthused base. Should Tory momentum improve even marginally, then Reform's vote share is way down next time. They've secured their party big beasts, save for Habib, and won where they've had a strong local presence. Building effective local machines is now a make or break issue for the part. Given the lack of preparation, Farage must be breathing a sigh of relief this morning that he doesn't have to share the green benches with any of their unvetted weirdos.

I haven't yet seen the final tally but Muslim independents have at least matched Refrom's performance, and will have cost Labour several seats.

As to the Tories, this (predictably) has not been the cleansing ritual many hoped for. It is still a party of wildly contradicting values which will see them fighting like rights in a sack for the next five years. This may make it difficult to capitalise on Labour disarray in 2029. If anything hands labour a second term, it's that. They will learn all the wrong lessons.

What will make the next five years interesting is that this will be the first spell for Labour in government where they have to live alongside social media, which wasn't really a thing during the Blair regime. As much as Starmer's honeymoon will be measured in days rather than weeks, it will be a rough ride for them throughout.

The genuinely positive outcome of this election has been the SNP wipeout. Nobody will miss them. I'm also glad to see the back of of Tobias Ellwood and Jacob Rees-Mogg.

As to the outsiders, ethno-nationalist parties are electorally insignificant, while the SDP managed to save some deposits, scoring a respectable 1960 votes in Doncaster North. This outperforms some of Ukip's earlier efforts. There is the basis for growth there if they keep playing the game as they have. They should be congratulated.

As to what we’re in for from Labour, it is likely that Starmer's government will be hamstrung on a great many issues, not least because the country is broke. Many headline policies will simply hit the barrier wall of reality. Miliband's Net Zero fantasies cannot be realised. There is no green jobs revolution. Starmer is going to need oil and gas revenues. Meanwhile, the ICE ban will depend more on decisions made in the EU than the UK.

On immigration, I do not see Starmer reversing Sunak's watered down changes to study visa conditions, and Starmer will be keen to wrongfoot the Tories by bringing overall immigration down. This doesn't take much doing from previous Tory highs. His achilles heel will be the dinghy problem, for which he has no answers, and could easily incentivise more of it. This could be the catalyst that moves the Tories to an ECHR exit stance. That will shoot Farage's fox.

On wokery, I think Starmer will steer clear of pissing off women. This is a man who knows he has sandcastle majority and will tread very carefully, knowing that a misstep could cost him a second term. As to Reeves, if she clobbers the middle classes for extra revenue, she will seal Starmer's fate as a one term PM.

Meanwhile, I'm not yet sure what the numbers say, but Starmer may also have to worry about Reform. That could influence Labour decision making. The furore over Gaza may dissipate by the next election, as the current conflict will probably have abated by then. Without a focal point for their antisemitic bile, there is nothing much else that unites Muslims.

In the round, all the roadblocks to policy will leave Labour without much room to manoeuvre, which is why we can expect this administration to concentrate on constitutional tinkering. That is not to say that Labour won't find new and inventive ways to be horrifying, but the worst of their agenda may be contained either by reality or the political reality of having a threadbare mandate and an easily overturned majority.

We should also take into account that Labour has as many, if not more, internal contradictions and schisms as the Tories. The new intake with career ambitions won't want to rock the boat too much, but there will be a fair share of mischief makers. Starmer will have to work hard to keep a lid on the molten box of crazy on his back benches. A veritable jack-in-the-box of left wing lunacy.

As such, fears of a Labour "supermajority" will prove to be overblown in many respects. Starmer has a majority, but lack the electoral authority to use it to its full potential. His popularity will rapidly plummet and if turnout in 2029 recovers even by five per cent, he's in hung parliament territory.

We should recall that Cameron didn't win a majority in 2010 and had to come up with a convincing offer to deserve office in 2015. The Brexit referendum was enough to momentarily unite the right, but I struggle to imagine an equivalent offering for Starmer. Meanwhile, all the Tories have to do is decide to be conservatives again. It's all there for the taking, if the Tories have the wits to realise it.

About Reform…

As anticipated, today we get the ritual complaints about FPTP. The Lib Dems score 3,499,969 votes, returning 71 seats, while Reform scores 4,092,209 votes, returning just 4 seats. Reform becomes the third largest polling party. The lesson, though, is pretty obvious. Reform scored where they had an established name and a decent ground campaign. Pretty much everywhere else, they had paper candidates.

That's what you have to build up in order to win. No party is entitled to seats on the back of national polling. Our politics is built on local representation, and if you want power, you have to earn it. You have to put the work in. PR is a cop out.

As such, if Refrom wants to capitalise on its gains, it will have to build local associations, with credible, vetted candidates, and will concentrate resources in places where they came a close second. If they do this, they can win a dozen seats in 2029. There's no point whining about FPTP. No government is going to switch to a system that enables challengers.

To that end, the leadership will have to encourage local autonomy, but support their efforts from the centre, sending big name speakers to local events.

It would be a mistake to think Reform is poised for a big breakthrough into Westminster. It should limit its ambitions to scoring a dozen strong seats with strong candidates who will be taken seriously.

Still, though, Reform is limited by the inherent ceiling that goes with generic populism. It will have to win over opinion influencers by developing credible and detailed policy. This, I believe, is where the whole effort will fall over or stall. You can offer simplistic "solutions" from the outside, but if you're serious about becoming a party of government, you have to establish credibility among critics.

Such activities will take Farage well outside of his comfort zone, and requires self-discipline to stick to an agreed party line. That's the weak point. Farage doesn't work collaboratively, and is reluctant to cede authority. I've seen no evidence of personal growth recently, thus Reform will struggle to make the transition from a cult of personality to an actual party.

In its current form it still cannot withstand the departure of its leader, and has only enjoyed success on the back of a low turnout. This underscores the necessity to build local strongholds as the Lib Dems do.

I think it's actually a shame that Ben Habib didn't win a seat as his would have been a useful voice in making the transition into a more democratic organisation, but now he's not in the gang, he won't have the same influence. Internal debates on next steps will no doubt produce friction between Farage, Tice, and Anderson. I predict a fallout between at least two of them.

Overall, I don't think last night changes anything. The Tories will learn all the wrong lessons, there is no chance of defections to Reform, talk of a merger is for the birds, and the lack of an intellectual foundation will continue to cause avoidable problems. Tubthumping speeches in television studios is one thing, but proving yourself in Westminster politics is another.

Ultimately, Reform's future prospects are contingent on which way the Tory party jumps. I suspect though, with its irreconcilable internal differences, the Tory party may bury the hatchet, recognising that 2029 is winnable, and keep it low key, allowing Labour enough rope to hang themselves. They will look for a middle of the road leader, and as such, they will reject a figure of the right such as Braverman, and will seek to win back votes they lost to the Lib Dems.

That plays well for Reform, who (if they play their cards right) can win that dirty dozen, but at that point Farage will have lost his shine, and if they haven't developed a successor, and a coherent policy platform, 2029 will be peak Reform. That may be enough to drag the Tories to the right in 2034, but still falling far short of what is necessary and desired.

In the meantime, I suspect Starmer will attempt to wrongfoot the Tories. Very little action is required to substantially reduce immigration from Tory levels, and at no electoral cost to Starmer. Starmer's vulnerability will be on dinghy migrants because the left have no answers to this problem. They can speed up asylum applications, but then they're going to have to find somewhere to put them. Distributing them around the country, making demands on broke councils to house them, will go down like a bucket of cold sick with working class voters.

The next five years will be make or break for Reform. If it does the necessary work, it can make a limited breakthrough in 2029, but this election conclusively makes the case that a campaign run through the media, generating voluminous hype, does not translate into seats. Reform came second in Bradford South, with 7,441 votes – which not bad for a paper candidate, but not matching the 2015 Ukip score of 9,057. The lesson is that ground game matters. You cannot win from the centre through media alone.

Without old-fashioned shoe-leather politics, Reform does not have a future, nor does it have a future if it remains a generic populist outfit with no policies to speak of. It's all contingent on whether Farage can make the personal journey from maverick outsider to party leader. This will be his test, and much will depend on how he adapts to life in the viper's nest of Westminster.