The Election That Everyone Lost

Craig Dalzell

It is almost unnecessary to observe that the British Government had for more than a century been and could only be a Whig Government; and that the present administration is, as every administration in this country must necessarily be, a Whig administration. - UK Government Ministerial Memorandum to the Prince Regent, 1812

Who were the winners from last week’s election? I can tell you who won power for the next few years, but it’s harder to find who actually won rather than just who lost less hard than everyone else. This is a major problem for democracy in the UK and one that needs to be fixed before the next election or we’re going to be put in a potentially very dangerous situation. The low turnout and catastrophically unfair First Past The Post voting system we have has resulted in a government with massive power, almost no possible accountability but simultaneously the most brittle mandate for that power possible.Keir Starmer won power, but his “Changed Labour Party” certainly lost a lot of their voters. Despite (read: because of?) his purge of everything even remotely Left in the party, Starmer fell far short of Corbyn’s record in terms of voting support, shedding half a million votes since 2019 and more than 2.6 million votes since 2017. Many of those votes went to smaller parties such as the Greens but many more simply didn’t turn out to vote. Given that in many cases, the first election victory marks the high point of a government and given that Starmer isn’t promising that we’ll feel the impacts of his proposed changes in this Parliamentary term (I actually give some credit to a politician willing to think longer term than the next election, but still) then it’s going to be hard for him to increase his voter number going into the 2029 elections.The Conservatives obviously lost badly and face a literal existential crisis in that they could well go the way of the Whigs as a major political force in Britain. They were out-triangulated by Reform who stole around half of the voters that abandoned the Sunak plan, though the other half also largely joined the disenfranchised Labour voters on the sofa of disillusionment.You might think that Reform would be considered a big winner and they were in terms of voting numbers, however they also lost as a result of the FPTP voting system. If the UK had a proportional parliament (like the German system I advocated for in my article just prior to the elections) then instead of 5 MPs, they’d now have 93 MPs. Reform would likely still attempt their “reverse takeover” of the Conservative party as Nigel Farage has made no secret of his desire to be Conservative PM in 2029 but for those who dislike Reform as a party, there would be much greater scope within a proportional system to beat them with a democratic mandate and a credible alternative rather than just hoping they don’t break through the wall of FPTP.Similar to Reform, the Greens lost almost as badly and would have gained 44 seats from the Green Party of England & Wales plus another 2 for the Scottish Greens (the Northern Irish Greens likely wouldn’t have won a seat) instead of their actual tally of four for the GPEW and zero for the Scottish Greens. This is a massive setback for climate politics in a UK that is already falling far behind in its obligations and now ruled by a party that isn’t as openly in climate denial as the previous one was but still has a history of backing away from climate pledges. As I write this, new Chancellor Rachel Reeves is promising to reopen planning permission for English onshore wind, but with GB Energy being shown to be the minimum promised deliverable version of public energy and the infamous £28 billion per year pledge on climate policies firmly in the bin, it remains to be seen what substantial improvements will actually be delivered.In terms of losing least, that title probably goes to the Lib Dems who “only” shed around 180,000 votes compared to 2019 and massively increased their seats to the best in their history (and, thanks to a powerfully targeted campaign, managed to beat FPTP to win almost as many seats as they would have been “due” under a proportional system) but the binary nature of UK politics makes that win a bitter one too – like all other “opposition” parties, they lack any power against the Starmer landslide. Had the UK run a proportional election, instead of an unassailable majority, Starmer would likely be negotiating either a Labour/Lib Dem/Green coalition or, perhaps inspired by the Spanish Socialists, may be considering bringing the left-leaning nationalist/regionalist parties into government as a sign of true cross-Britain governance.Which brings us, finally, to the SNP – They haven’t had an election as bad as this since the 2014 independence referendum (9 seats in 2015 would have been an improvement over their 6 seats in 2010, but subsequent precedent and direction of travel are important). They shed almost 4 in 10 of their 2019 voters and it seems likely that around half of them went to Labour (unlike the UK as a whole, Labour won more Scottish voters than they did in 2019) plus a few to other parties but once again, the sofa of disillusionment seems to have gained a few hundred thousand more followers.And that sofa of disillusionment has rarely been less crowded. Turnout for this election was less than 60%. Four in ten eligible voters did not cast a vote for anyone (never mind the folk who are actively disenfranchised by the UK’s archaic approach to who should be allowed to vote). There has been talk of nominally allied but rival parties “splitting” their vote (whether this is Conservatives and Reform, SNP and Green, Labour and Lib Dem or whatever) and there may be some merit to that, but a bigger issue is that if the “Didn’t Vote Party” existed it wouldn’t just have swung almost every seat in the election but would likely have WON almost all of them. The fact that so many people could not be persuaded by anyone to vote for anyone is a serious concern for the robustness of our democracy.This all leaves the UK in a perilous position. Reform look intent on trying to take over or otherwise further radicalise the Right of UK politics, the Left remains largely locked out of power and – as with France this week, the forces of Centrism have been left as a hollow shell. It might not look like Labour lost this election, but only because everyone else took two steps backwards compared to their one. Even at this stage, I fear a reunited Right coming back in 2029. I don’t know if this will take the form of Reform devouring the Conservatives or the Conservatives reabsorbing Reform but being internally taken over by them but the outcome would be much the same. That there were more voters combined for the Conservatives and Reform than there were for Labour sets the country up for just that kind of alliance. In Scotland, the campaign for independence has all but lost its main party political “vehicle” and a continued doubling down of the kind of Centrism that got them into this mess isn’t likely to get them out of it come the Holyrood elections in 2026. Other pro-indy parties like the Scottish Greens and especially Alba and the Socialists foundered and underperformed on any reasonable metrics.The UK needs an electoral system that represents rather than ignores too many voters and we need political parties to offer a vision that people can vote for, rather than just one to vote against. YouGov found that the primary reasons that people voted for Labour were to “get the Tories out” and a vague notion of “change” but only 5% of their voters voted because actually believed in the version of “change” Labour offered. Thus, even if the party delivers on what they have promised in their manifesto, people might not like what they see.As Robin mentioned in the Policy Podcast this week, the problem goes much deeper than merely the voting system though and affects all levels of UK politics including candidate selection, party ideologies and unequal media coverage of issues. The UK is past a political breaking point and change must come. If the UK won’t save itself from the radicalised right-wing government that looks fairly certain to succeed Keir Starmer then Scotland must do what it needs to do save itself from that fate. Five years of a manifesto literally fronted by a grey man and a blank slate won’t cut it but neither will other parties if they are unwilling to do anything different from what got us into this current mess.Common Weal will continue to be here advocating for a radical Scotland that puts All of Us First and we’ll do our utmost to push every political angle we can to achieve that. Your support is vital to make that happen so please donate and help us keep Scottish politics from collapsing in on itself the way that it has at Westminster. If the parties can no longer provide the hope that people need, then those of us in the non- and cross-party political space should be prepared to step up – not necessarily to become a political party, but to act as a common point of interest that would allow parties and other organisations to rally around common causes. Two parties might not agree on independence, but could they both support Common Weal’s land reform campaign? They might not agree on post-indy economic policy, but might they agree on our plan to win independence?Everyone might have lost in the UK General Election this year but it needn’t mean that we wallow in that collective defeat. As the UK's political structures fall apart at the seams, maybe it’s time to build something better instead – something where the winners are All of Us.