UK Election Night Discussion.

[Wiswylfen]

The 'Gaza Independent' label is really very unhelpful as you're actually talking of a lot of different candidates with quite different views on other issues and often running against each other. For instance, the disgraceful and utterly disgusting Akhmed Yakoob is a fascist of a new type whose core vote is with a younger, more materialistic sub-demographic (which probably helped Shabana Mahmood beat him comparatively comfortably), while Ayoub Khan was a sitting Liberal Democrat councillor until the other month. It's a case of people rushing in to see what they can get out of political turmoil, so the variation is huge.

By 'political turmoil' you mean 'Keir Starmer endorsing war crimes in a pathetic attempt to look tough', right?

[Crumpets]

I missed this whole discussion last night, so apologies if this has already been posted, but I wanted to let BRTD know that it is now possible to drive from Berwick to London and Brighton without going through a single Tory or Reform constituency.

[Oryxslayer]

In general the exit poll was pretty close on the overall seat count. They should really do themselves a favour and not publish the individual seat projections since those are so likely to be hit and miss.

But how on earth did they come up with 13 Reform seats when it’ll end up being more like 4 or 5?

The prognosticators has similar issues in the past with UKIP and the SNP when they first got non-ignorable vote totals. And what they said in 2015 applied again today: we know the rough support trend line, but how that breaks down seat-by-seat is hard without past precedents.

Which is one of the many reasons why I hope Reform stay on 4. All of their 4 candidates were the ones that actually had profiles before mid-May that the voters recognized. Would be a fairly clear indictment that you still need to put in the work locally to reap what the "presidentialized campaign" sows.

Also in terms of Llanelli and other Welsh totals, that was a aspect of the reform campaign.  Build a base that can be exploited later for Sennedd proportional seats and the funding they will bring, like UKIP before them. Maybe that ends up mattering less with 4-5 actual MPs, but it was a hedge-you-bets tactic.

[MillennialModerate]

I do think Labour's final share of the vote is to be considered quite embarrassing, if not for the party itself, certainly for the polling industry. For all the methodological improvements and all our landslide speculation, the party underperformed its final polling average by 5-6 points (and its polling average at the start of the campaign by a dozen points) with predictable effects on the margin of victory. I guess in a way it is the mirror image of 2017, but the circumstances then were completely different.

I feel like the reason why Labour (in seats) ended up on the lower end of most polls and the percentage of the vote was 5-10% less than what polls showed - was because of turnout. The forgone conclusion aspect to it, the “Labour has already won this” voter suppression tactic of other parties has worked. The number of seats the Tories held onto by a a whisker…. imagine if voter turnout was 5% higher…I think Tories would’ve been under 100 and Labour would’ve been around 440 seats  

[Wiswylfen]

You gotta do some mental gymnastics to be upset with this. 410 seats is 410 seats, it’s not like underperforming in the PV is gonna hinder Labour’s ability to declare war on NIMBYs

No, you just 'gotta' actually look at individual seat results. Though it's probably got something to do with the fact that I'm attached to the social-democratic tradition and you're talking about how cool it's going to be when Labour 'declares war on NIMBYs' (who, like Reform, wouldn't be nearly as much as a problem if we stopped letting a MILLION people into the country every year).

[Oryxslayer]

I missed this whole discussion last night, so apologies if this has already been posted, but I wanted to let BRTD know that it is now possible to drive from Berwick to London and Brighton without going through a single Tory or Reform constituency.

A lot of MRPs and predictions had a clearer connection in that line at London then what actually happened,  having to go through a route in surrey and Wales. Leicestershire did not go Labour's way. More importantly though there's a clear London blast radius where the Conservatives held up better than average versus other areas. Maybe calling it the screw ULEZ riing is a little disingenuous, but....

[Germany1994]

A shame that this Bradford seat could’ve easily gone to a Muslim independent if there wasn’t more than one running and dividing the vote.

The success of Muslim Independents this election should make them consider being more organized and creating a party for them in the UK for even improved results. They could have gotten close to 10 seats and become a larger partisan force than Reform in UK politics, drastically shifting the center of discussions you usually see in a very racist UK.

Hopefully the 3 that were elected form this alliance or party for future elections. This could be the beginning of something really great.

Of course, of all the things UK needs at the moment a muslim splinter party is the most important thing. 

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

This campaign worked!

[King of Kensington]

What percentage of the popular vote did Reform get?

[Compuzled_One]

What percentage of the popular vote did Reform get?

I think a bit above 14%. Not that good but still third, and Farage's best project so far.

Honestly, if Farage was leader from the start and they didn't have the most dogsh**t selection process of any party, I think they'd have passed the Tories in aggregates by the halfway point and had a chance to be the Official Opposition.

A LibDem opposition was even more plausible, all that was needed was some more Sunakrashing and maybe slightly better targeting by Davey.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

It isn't really, as 2019 showed by the time the genuine heartland (as opposed to the "red wall" seats that have always been marginal like Batley & Spen or Darlington) starts cracking the Tories already have a stonking majority.
For all your moaning the Labour heartland vote has held up far far far better than they have in the vast majority of western democracies. Look what's happened in old working class strongholds across the continent! Or the annihilation in the United States!
It's a lot harder to maintain vote shared in the 60s and 70s when the pits are closed, the factories are abandoned, the union membership has vanished and the economy has changed. There simply isn't the societal structure to generate such loyalty anymore. And what modern industrialisation you bring back there is is much higher skilled and niche, and simply doesn't generate the mass solidarity you once could.
And frankly, the modern working class doesn't have that geographical concentration anymore. It's not mining towns and factory towns and working towns. It's Nurses and Teachers and etc who live everywhere because they're needed everywhere.

I am well aware of the Easington-Darlington distinction! No need to lecture me on it.

The pits were closed and the economy in 2005. We still got 71.4% in Easington. I am also well aware of the role that changes in society and the economy have played: and I have said before, and not just last night, that the answer needs to be reindustrialisation and reunionisation.

Also teachers aren't working-class.

I just preemptively instinctively mention the distinction in case an American quotes me and calls Shipley red wall.
There's certainly something interesting about just how late the Labour vote held up in the Northeast, particularly given how poor and out of touch some of the local MPs were at the time like Mandelson parachuted in Hartlepool. The generational trauma of Thatcher's Britain certainly played a part imo, and it still does in Merseyside with the legacy of managed decline. I think as we move further from those experiences and Tories get better at pretending to invest in the north with Levelling Up it's hard for younger generations to hold the same loyalty.
I can't see deindustrialisation really reaping dividends because new built factories will be highly automated and staffed by lean workforces. Just look at Nissan Sunderland vs old Leyland factories. Or compare modern automated Steel Mills vs the labour heavy old fashioned plants. The practical reality of "reindustrialisation" is just a couple factories full of robots and big industrial parks full of small niche manufacturers.

I don't buy it.

Social democracy became happy to live in the world created by its enemies: a world that was never inevitable, no matter how much it is insisted that it was. That has been a disastrous decision, as everything around us shows. There is neither dignity nor future for England (let alone social democracy) in its most miserable trading estates.

Also younger generations do not vote Conservative.

Social democracy does not live in a world created by its enemies, it lives in a world created by the necessity of moderating enough that the middle class don't kick them out like they did in 1951.

Though really I'd say that *British* social democracy is especially living in a world created not by its domestic enemies but by the tyranny of foreign competition and mismanagement that failed to address it. British Leyland was tied up in the political debate but ultimately the Tories didn't kill it, cheaper (and better quality) Japanese and European cars did. British Steel was killed by cheaper european imports, the British Aerospace industry was killed by poor exports, the British coal mining industry was killed by advanced technology eliminating the need for coal in factories, home heating, gas generation, railways etc and finally much cheaper imports from open pit mines, the British stevedores were killed by containerisation etc

And by younger generations I mean Baby Boomers/Gen X vs their parents, not actual young ppl lol.

[beesley]

What an amazing performance by the Lib Dems to get 71 (maybe 72) seats with that vote share under FPTP. It looks to me as if they won everywhere they were seriously targeting from the Tories and SNP, except for Hunt's seat.

Greens also played the same game effectively to win (reasonably comfortably) in North Herefordshire and Waveney Valley.

Romsey is perhaps another one. Though Noakes is pretty centrist and it wouldn't shock me if she defected if the Tories go the reform-esque route post election.

As much as I would've loved this (personal connection to the seat) the Lib Dems were probably being overhyped here - losing your best and highest turnout ward is a challenge.

[Red Velvet]

You gotta do some mental gymnastics to be upset with this. 410 seats is 410 seats, it’s not like underperforming in the PV is gonna hinder Labour’s ability to declare war on NIMBYs

Please. There’s a difference between being upset and just pointing out that Labour + Lib Dem absurd growth has mostly to do with the Reform surge prejudicing Tories by dividing the right-wing vote.

Why do you think Labour and Lib Dem seats grew so much even if they practically had the same numbers as 2019??? Reform Party was the chaos element that allowed all this to happen by getting a significant chunk of Tory vote but not being able to get as many seats as their vote intention represent as them and Tories often got the 2nd + 3rd places, giving space to Labour or Lib Dem be 1st only by default even when Labour underperformed in comparison to 2019.

Which is why people are pointing out this supermajority isn’t sustainable as you just need the Tory+Reform vote to unite - which CAN easily happen if Reform absorb Tories voters or goes back to not existing.

That’s why the conclusion from analysts is that an embrace of Labour didn’t happen this election, what we saw was a rejection of the Tory party + a larger embrace of Populist and more “radical” options on both the Right and Left contributing for increased fragmentation of the vote.

Right-Wing vote fragmented into 60% Tory and 40% Reform and it screwed them everywhere nationally, making their seat numbers not reflect their actual vote share.

In the Left this happened only in very Left-Progressive urban centers,  where usually safe-Labour constituencies went to Pro-Gaza protest candidates and Labour also further lost votes to Greens and other Socialist candidates. Workers Party was very close from getting a seat from Labour in Birmingham.

There’s a difference between saying “Terrible” results for Labour and simply pointing out that this was a tepid and weak performance from them, outside maybe only in Scotland where Labour clearly was the main beneficiary from SNP fall.

ACTUAL 2024 VOTE SHARE WITH SHIFTS FROM 2019

1. Labour 33,8% (+1,7) - 412 seats
2. Conservative 23,7% (-19,9) - 121 seats
3. Reform 14,3% (+14,3) - 4 seats
4. Lib Dem 12,2% (+0,6) - 71 seats
5. Greens 6,8% (+4,1) - 4 seats
6. Independent Candidates 2,9% - 7 seats
7. SNP - 2,5% (-1,3) - 9 seats
8. Sinn Fein - 0,7% (+0,2) - 7 seats
9. Workers Party - 0,7% (+0,7) - 0 seats
10. Plaid Cymru - 0,7% (+0,2) - 4 seats
11. DUP - 0,6% (-0,2) - 5 seats
12. Alliance - 0,4% (no change) - 1 seat

Other parties individually got less than 100k votes so I didn’t list them.

[vileplume]

Funnily enough Liam Byrne may well have lost in Birmingham Hodge Hill (or come very close to) without the boundary changes shedding some traditionally monolithically Labour areas (heavily Muslim) and bringing in Tory areas around Castle Bromwich (likely to be a dire area for the Workers Party).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Funnily enough Liam Byrne may well have lost in Birmingham Hodge Hill (or come very close to) without the boundary changes shedding some traditionally monolithically Labour areas (heavily Muslim) and bringing in Tory areas around Castle Bromwich (likely to be a dire area for the Workers Party).

The effect of the boundary changes was to shuffle around the MP who lost (so Khalid Mahmood rather than Byrne; Phillips was also put in danger, whereas before she'd have been fine) and therefore also the identity of the winning Independent/WP candidate. As stupid as the new boundaries are, it is probably not unreasonable to say that this worked out for the best...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I think some of the discussions above suffer from the fact that, bluntly, everyone here is a hyper-political nerd (myself included, and worse than most of you). To ordinary people an election is not a census or a statement of identity, but a choice. And they respond to the options given. This is a perfectly democratic outcome as most people hated the now - thank God! - former government and wished it to suffer pain in its demise. The People got what they wanted.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

Former MPs who will be returning:

*snip*

...and those who tried, but failed:

ALBA
George Kerevan (2015-2017 as SNP, defeated in 2017 as SNP, same constituency)
Corri Wilson (2015-2017 as SNP, defeated in 2017 as SNP, same constituency)

ALLIANCE & LIBERAL DEMOCRATS
Allliance
Naomi Long (2010-2015, defeated in 2015, 2017, 2019, same constituency)
Liberal Democrats
Matthew Green (2001-2005, defeated in 2005, same constituency)
Parmjit Singh Gill (2004 [by-election]-2005, defeated in 2005, different constituency)
Andrew Pelling (2005-2010 as Conservative [independent after suspension in 2007],  defeated in 2010 as independent, same constituency)
Alan Reid (2001-2015, defeated in 2015, 2017, 2019, same constituency)
Gordon Birtwistle (2010-2015, defeated in 2015, 2017, 2019, same constituency)
Mark Williams (2005-2017, defeated in 2017, 2019, same constituency)

CONSERVATIVE
Tania Mathias (2015-2017, defeated in 2017, new constituency)
Luke Graham (2017-2019, defeated in 2019, new constituency contains some of the old)
Stephen Kerr (2017-2019, defeated in 2019, different constituency)

INDEPENDENT
Emma Dent Coad (2017-2019 as Labour, defeated in 2019 as Labour, same constituency)

LABOUR
John Grogan (2017-2019, defeated in 2019, same constituency)

ONE LEICESTER
Keith Vaz (1987-2019 as Labour, suspended and resigned in 2019, same constituency)

TUSC
Dave Nellist (1983-1992 as Labour [independent from 1991-1992 after expulsion], defeated in 1992 as independent Labour, 1997 as Socialist Alternative, 2001 as Socialist Alliance, 2005 as Socialist Alternative, 2010 as Socialist Alternative/TUSC, 2015 as TUSC, 2022 [by-election] as TUSC, different constituency)

WORKERS PARTY
Chris Williamson (2010-2015 as Labour, defeated in 2015 as Labour, 2017-2019 as Labour, suspended and defeated in 2019 as an independent, different constituency)

[Wiswylfen]

A shame that this Bradford seat could’ve easily gone to a Muslim independent if there wasn’t more than one running and dividing the vote.

The success of Muslim Independents this election should make them consider being more organized and creating a party for them in the UK for even improved results. They could have gotten close to 10 seats and become a larger partisan force than Reform in UK politics, drastically shifting the center of discussions you usually see in a very racist UK.

Hopefully the 3 that were elected form this alliance or party for future elections. This could be the beginning of something really great.

Of course, of all the things UK needs at the moment a muslim splinter party is the most important thing. 

Actually I think you will both find that in a 95.4% White British, 0.4% Muslim, and 92.1% owner-occupied ward near me there was 14.2% of the vote for an anti-genocide independent in the locals earlier this year.

[Wiswylfen]

It isn't really, as 2019 showed by the time the genuine heartland (as opposed to the "red wall" seats that have always been marginal like Batley & Spen or Darlington) starts cracking the Tories already have a stonking majority.
For all your moaning the Labour heartland vote has held up far far far better than they have in the vast majority of western democracies. Look what's happened in old working class strongholds across the continent! Or the annihilation in the United States!
It's a lot harder to maintain vote shared in the 60s and 70s when the pits are closed, the factories are abandoned, the union membership has vanished and the economy has changed. There simply isn't the societal structure to generate such loyalty anymore. And what modern industrialisation you bring back there is is much higher skilled and niche, and simply doesn't generate the mass solidarity you once could.
And frankly, the modern working class doesn't have that geographical concentration anymore. It's not mining towns and factory towns and working towns. It's Nurses and Teachers and etc who live everywhere because they're needed everywhere.

I am well aware of the Easington-Darlington distinction! No need to lecture me on it.

The pits were closed and the economy in 2005. We still got 71.4% in Easington. I am also well aware of the role that changes in society and the economy have played: and I have said before, and not just last night, that the answer needs to be reindustrialisation and reunionisation.

Also teachers aren't working-class.

I just preemptively instinctively mention the distinction in case an American quotes me and calls Shipley red wall.
There's certainly something interesting about just how late the Labour vote held up in the Northeast, particularly given how poor and out of touch some of the local MPs were at the time like Mandelson parachuted in Hartlepool. The generational trauma of Thatcher's Britain certainly played a part imo, and it still does in Merseyside with the legacy of managed decline. I think as we move further from those experiences and Tories get better at pretending to invest in the north with Levelling Up it's hard for younger generations to hold the same loyalty.
I can't see deindustrialisation really reaping dividends because new built factories will be highly automated and staffed by lean workforces. Just look at Nissan Sunderland vs old Leyland factories. Or compare modern automated Steel Mills vs the labour heavy old fashioned plants. The practical reality of "reindustrialisation" is just a couple factories full of robots and big industrial parks full of small niche manufacturers.

I don't buy it.

Social democracy became happy to live in the world created by its enemies: a world that was never inevitable, no matter how much it is insisted that it was. That has been a disastrous decision, as everything around us shows. There is neither dignity nor future for England (let alone social democracy) in its most miserable trading estates.

Also younger generations do not vote Conservative.

Social democracy does not live in a world created by its enemies, it lives in a world created by the necessity of moderating enough that the middle class don't kick them out like they did in 1951.

Though really I'd say that *British* social democracy is especially living in a world created not by its domestic enemies but by the tyranny of foreign competition and mismanagement that failed to address it. British Leyland was tied up in the political debate but ultimately the Tories didn't kill it, cheaper (and better quality) Japanese and European cars did. British Steel was killed by cheaper european imports, the British Aerospace industry was killed by poor exports, the British coal mining industry was killed by advanced technology eliminating the need for coal in factories, home heating, gas generation, railways etc and finally much cheaper imports from open pit mines, the British stevedores were killed by containerisation etc

And by younger generations I mean Baby Boomers/Gen X vs their parents, not actual young ppl lol.

Middle-class backlash to the post-war Labour government was always going to happen. The circumstances wouldn't have allowed for anything else. Our 1951 result was deeply unfortunate and very, very narrow.

A large part of the England that exists is the direct, deliberate creation of the Thatcher and Major governments. I'll add that the death of the coal industry in the manner in which it died (phasing out coal gradually and with industry replacing it being the NUM strategy) was a grotesque, politically-motivated decision that even Norman Tebbit in his dying years admitted was a catastrophe that never should have happened.

[DL]

I really can't for the life of me understand why the transition of power in the UK has to happen quite so quickly as this. The results came in overnight and now Starmer is supposed to take power and name his entire cabinet the very next day (today) without even having a good night's sleep.

Obviously, they have transition people who work on cabinet appointments etc...during the campaign - but you never know who will be elected and who might lose (2 members of the Labour shadow cabinet unexpectedly lost their seats). Would it kill them to wait at least until Monday for the new government to be named?

For the sake of comparison, in Canada where we have exactly the same parliamentary system as the UK has - when we have a change of party in power after an election, there is usually a transition period of at least three or four weeks before the new PM and cabinet is sworn in. Not saying the UK needs that much time but surely there is a middle ground between transition the morning after the election and waiting a month for the transition to be completed.

[Ethelberth]

I really can't for the life of me understand why the transition of power in the UK has to happen quite so quickly as this. The results came in overnight and now Starmer is supposed to take power and name his entire cabinet the very next day (today) without even having a good night's sleep.

Obviously, they have transition people who work on cabinet appointments etc...during the campaign - but you never know who will be elected and who might lose (2 members of the Labour shadow cabinet unexpectedly lost their seats). Would it kill them to wait at least until Monday for the new government to be named?

For the sake of comparison, in Canada where we have exactly the same parliamentary system as the UK has - when we have a change of party in power after an election, there is usually a transition period of at least three or four weeks before the new PM and cabinet is sworn in. Not saying the UK needs that much time but surely there is a middle ground between transition the morning after the election and waiting a month for the transition to be completed.

Canada is a vast country, and it takes time to ride from provines to Ottawa.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

It isn't really, as 2019 showed by the time the genuine heartland (as opposed to the "red wall" seats that have always been marginal like Batley & Spen or Darlington) starts cracking the Tories already have a stonking majority.
For all your moaning the Labour heartland vote has held up far far far better than they have in the vast majority of western democracies. Look what's happened in old working class strongholds across the continent! Or the annihilation in the United States!
It's a lot harder to maintain vote shared in the 60s and 70s when the pits are closed, the factories are abandoned, the union membership has vanished and the economy has changed. There simply isn't the societal structure to generate such loyalty anymore. And what modern industrialisation you bring back there is is much higher skilled and niche, and simply doesn't generate the mass solidarity you once could.
And frankly, the modern working class doesn't have that geographical concentration anymore. It's not mining towns and factory towns and working towns. It's Nurses and Teachers and etc who live everywhere because they're needed everywhere.

I am well aware of the Easington-Darlington distinction! No need to lecture me on it.

The pits were closed and the economy in 2005. We still got 71.4% in Easington. I am also well aware of the role that changes in society and the economy have played: and I have said before, and not just last night, that the answer needs to be reindustrialisation and reunionisation.

Also teachers aren't working-class.

I just preemptively instinctively mention the distinction in case an American quotes me and calls Shipley red wall.
There's certainly something interesting about just how late the Labour vote held up in the Northeast, particularly given how poor and out of touch some of the local MPs were at the time like Mandelson parachuted in Hartlepool. The generational trauma of Thatcher's Britain certainly played a part imo, and it still does in Merseyside with the legacy of managed decline. I think as we move further from those experiences and Tories get better at pretending to invest in the north with Levelling Up it's hard for younger generations to hold the same loyalty.
I can't see deindustrialisation really reaping dividends because new built factories will be highly automated and staffed by lean workforces. Just look at Nissan Sunderland vs old Leyland factories. Or compare modern automated Steel Mills vs the labour heavy old fashioned plants. The practical reality of "reindustrialisation" is just a couple factories full of robots and big industrial parks full of small niche manufacturers.

I don't buy it.

Social democracy became happy to live in the world created by its enemies: a world that was never inevitable, no matter how much it is insisted that it was. That has been a disastrous decision, as everything around us shows. There is neither dignity nor future for England (let alone social democracy) in its most miserable trading estates.

Also younger generations do not vote Conservative.

Social democracy does not live in a world created by its enemies, it lives in a world created by the necessity of moderating enough that the middle class don't kick them out like they did in 1951.

Though really I'd say that *British* social democracy is especially living in a world created not by its domestic enemies but by the tyranny of foreign competition and mismanagement that failed to address it. British Leyland was tied up in the political debate but ultimately the Tories didn't kill it, cheaper (and better quality) Japanese and European cars did. British Steel was killed by cheaper european imports, the British Aerospace industry was killed by poor exports, the British coal mining industry was killed by advanced technology eliminating the need for coal in factories, home heating, gas generation, railways etc and finally much cheaper imports from open pit mines, the British stevedores were killed by containerisation etc

And by younger generations I mean Baby Boomers/Gen X vs their parents, not actual young ppl lol.

Middle-class backlash to the post-war Labour government was always going to happen. The circumstances wouldn't have allowed for anything else. Our 1951 result was deeply unfortunate and very, very narrow.

A large part of the England that exists is the direct, deliberate creation of the Thatcher and Major governments. I'll add that the death of the coal industry in the manner in which it died (phasing out coal gradually and with industry replacing it being the NUM strategy) was a grotesque, politically-motivated decision that even Norman Tebbit in his dying years admitted was a catastrophe that never should have happened.

I don't necessarily disagree, imo Thatcher/Major government accelerated the inevitable and enacted it in the most vindictive and ruthless way to generate as much profit and cause as much damage to Labour towns as possible.
Even at the time Labour clearly wasn't on board with the NUM strategy, they always concentrated new industry in deprived urban areas in most desperate need of redevelopment. And ultimately much of the government driven new industry set up in the 70s failed and went under, so I can't see the NUM strategy truly succeeding.
(Though frankly the NUM strategy still seems a mile more realistic than the strategies of British Leyland at the time, so it had some snowball's chance at least.)

And really I'm skeptical any Bennesque strategies for Industrial Policy could've ever really reaped dividends as Britain simply didn't have the pounds to pay for it and Labour could never stop the Tories ripping it to shreds as soon as they came to power.

[kia boyz '24]

You gotta do some mental gymnastics to be upset with this. 410 seats is 410 seats, it’s not like underperforming in the PV is gonna hinder Labour’s ability to declare war on NIMBYs

Snip

So Tories in disarray and the hard left did well enough that the Labour majority feels pressure to deliver during the next 5 years? Even better.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Far Left? Where? I'm not a Corbyn fan but he's no further than Hard Left.

[beesley]

Some remaining unvoiced ramblings from me.

When making seat predictions in future one thing I learnt - I predicted seats that did not switch by relying more heavily on thinking whether my predicted victor could amass votes, than I did on circumstances that might make the therefore second placed candidate lose votes. In hindsight this was rather foolish given the number of seats won with low vote shares and the narrative of the election - and perhaps explains why e.g. I and others unsuccessfully predicted a seat like South West Wiltshire for Labour where I had been informed of or decided on credible voters to 'allocate' their way - but didn't consider the effects of poor Tory incumbents in other areas, that might accentuate people's frustration with the Tories. I think some of us are guilty of this because of the final Labour vote share relative to the polls.

My 'seats visited' map provided a few good signs of correlation - Sunak visiting easy LD targets at the beginning but harder ones as the campaign went along including (the unexpected gain of) Witney, plus a few standouts where Tories were a bit closer like the Tees Valley, which he visited at the end, and both party leaders visiting Harrow East at the end of the campaign. Though more of a fun and confirmatory exercise than a revealing one I think - how is one meant to deduce these correlations at the time.

On the note of LD targets we should still emphasise the 'local' as there are a number of pieces of evidence that give us reason to do so - the good performances of Andrew George and Tessa Munt and the 'local' line coming to fruition against Chris Clarkson in Stratford on Avon, and to a lesser extent Stuart Anderson, the dichotomy of local Lib Dems against incumbents like Ian Liddell-Grainger and Kevin Foster, a good result in Tewkesbury being portended by the local PCC vote showing how these brands can become established in a way not entirely expected (though I will feel smug for predicting the latter).

The 'Gaza Independent' vote will rightly be looked at as what its main factors were - an understandable loss of support for Labour over the issue, with voters switching to those candidates - and I think they should be grouped in that way because there are more parallels than nuanced differences, including on the issue itself and also the way . However I also think we should look at 'Labour struggling to outvote said candidates' as a valid phenomenon too, though not in a way that takes any agency away from the victors - just because that is what they would've had to have done to win. I just would be interested to know how the campaigns in each seat were framed and how much guiding Labour volunteers got - was there particular emphasis on convincing those people for whom the issue mattered a lot why they should vote Labour, or did they hope to turnout enough other voters, or as I suspect an optimistic (and indicative) attempt at both?

Because of the collapse of the SNP it looks as if they have a base level of support in the Central Belt that is correlated with the independence vote and many of its hallmarks - 'new town SNP cred' still slightly apparent even though the outcome was the same in Livingston as it was in Bathgate and Linlithgow, or Glenrothes and Dunfermline for example. Similar to my first point, we were too busy asking if Labour was able to win in e.g. Alloa and Grangemouth rather than thinking about the distribution of the SNP vote - Labour got a bigger %majority there than in Glasgow East for example.