The table of results is getting very much misinterpreted by the media in general. They see just the chart above and talk of historic Labour victory when that isn't quite the full story. It's more of an accidental win.
Look, instead, at the percentage vote for each party.
Now things look a bit different. There's simply no way that Britain has voted with any enthusiasm whatsoever for a Labour government for the next five years.
Not only have 40% of the electorate not voted so one could say that None Of The Above won. It is also clear that, amongst those who bothered to vote, the total Conservative and Reform vote was 38%, much higher than Labour's 33.7%. Even adding Conservative and Liberal exceed Labour's very modest vote.
Take into account the poor 60% turn-out and Labour's 33.7% becomes a sad 20%. So just 1 in 5 of the electorate actually wanted a Labour government. 4 out of 5 of the people you see on the street, in your office, in the shops, on the bus, in traffic most definitely did not. But the top chart says it all - a majority of 170 or thereabouts will make opposition to what they propose to do very weak and ineffective. Indeed, I doubt anyone will be trying particularly hard for a long time. What's the point?
I do wonder, however, how the country will respond to Reform's 5 seats from over 14% of the vote while the Liberals have over 70 seats from just 12% of the vote? That clearly is not right. So many voters will feel disenfranchised. Indeed, Conservatives can be quite understandably annoyed to have a mere 120 seats from 24% of the vote whereas Labour get 412 from 33%.
The fact is that Conservative supporters lost the election by voting for Reform. Some kind of deal should have been done and, preferably, Rishi Sunak should have allowed much more time to plan a joint campaign with an Autumn election.
I will end by saying that I do appreciate only too well why the Conservative vote was fractured - Reform did have a point, the last few years have not been good government in many areas. Rishi Sunak made good progress in some but there were many errors before he took over that no-one was about to forget in a hurry. They really didn't deserve to win but then we didn't deserve the result we've got. I would have settled for a Conservative - Reform - Liberal government which would, at least, have represented more than half the people who bothered to vote.
