Everyone should learn something from the General Election result

Overnight we have seen a large Conservative majority, to an even larger Labour one. Hundreds of former Conservative MP's are now looking for jobs, hundreds of Labour and dozens of Lib Dem MP's are waking up to new jobs. In Scotland, the SNP has gone from being the top dogs to the also rans, with independence being off the agenda. Reform supporters now have representation in Parliament, albiet not in the numbers they believe they deserve. Supporters of all of these strands need to adapt to the new normal, which will be the status quo for the next few years. Given that when Boris was elected, we all thought we'd see ten more years of the Tories, we can take nothing for granted, but whatever may or may not happen, I don't expect a Starmer government to be derailed by parties in Downing Street. 

There are several ironies of the new parliament. Perhaps, to me, the funniest is to see everyone on the right whinging about the number of MP's the Lib Dems have relative to all of the other parties. Reform especially are screaming "It's not fair". Clearly they are niot mathmaticians. The Lib Dems got more or less exactly the number of seats that their percentage of the vote warranted. The Lib Dems have suffered the fate of Reform in just about every election. Moaning that the Lib Dems got the number of seats that their share warranted is a bit silly to me. Of course it is ridiculous that Labour get twice the number of seats that their market share warranted. I won't argue with that. I don't think Reform has thought this through though. If we had PR, then we'd see a coalition of Labour, Lib Dems and Greens, that would take the share to 53% which would be a working majority. I doubt too many Reform supporters would genuinely prefer this to Labour. Given that Reform is very anti Woke, I think this becomes 'careful what you wish for' If you look at the right of centre vote The Conservative and Reform joint vote is 38%. This would be nowhere near enough to vote in a Right wing government. To get any where near winning, the right needs to find another 12-13%. That is the real problem of the Right. 

Reform may wish to consider the 2019 result. Under PR, Boris Johnson would not have been PM unless he did a deal with the Lib Dems and Brexit would not have been done. I doubt that the Lib Dems would ever have got into bed with Boris and they'd certainly have scrapped Brexit as the price. Boris would never have done that. Jeremy Corbyn could have become PM with the support of the Lib Dems, SNP and Greens.  The turnout in 2019 was 67.3%. The 2024 election saw a 59.9% election. It is clear that people were far more energised by the choice between Johnson and Corbyn than they were by Starmer and Sunak. It is my contention that this rather uninteresting choice massively bolstered the Reform vote, but all that happened was the right wing vote shifted between Tories and Reform and a lot of both Labour and Conservaative voters stayed at home.

It would be truly ironic if the contribution of Reform was to permanently exclude the right from power, as we moved to a generation of Rainbow coalitions under PR. Of course, what Reform really want is a situation where they are in power with 14% of the vote. They don't want to empower the Greens or the SNP. They just haven't thought this through.

The Conservatives have lessons to learn. I suspect the first lesson is that you have to give people some sort of reason to vote for you. The reason they shed loads of votes to Reform was quite simply because they had nothing to offer. There were plenty of claims that Labour would ruin everything, but the electorate are not stupid. When governments run out of steam and have nothing to offer, they get booted out. When the Tories meet to discuss the replacement for Sunak, the question they should ask the candidates is "what do you have to offer voters that will bring them back into the fold?". There are two areas they need to address. The first is the huge numbers who defected to Reform. Whatever you think of Reform, they have a clear, simple message. They have no credible economic policies that the Tories can nick. Their position is all about immigration. Even Farage admitted that his sums don't add up. What the Conservatives need to bear in mind when they pick a new leader is that the election is in four or five years time, not tomorrow. There are a string of elections across Europe. The French vote today. It is possible that a right wing French government might force through draconian immigration rules in France and The EU that mean the issue of 'Boats' goes away. The French right is anti immigrant and it as France is where the boats originate, they may shoot Farage's fox. I suspect that Starmer will be more effective at dealing with the French than previous Tory PM's. He understands the law and is not someone to hector our partners in these matters. When Starmer was chosen, Labour sensibly chose someone with a plan to transform Labour over four years. The Tories would do well to look at this and say "Where do we want to be in four years, what are the challenges likely to be and how can we beat Labour". If they indulge in navel gazing and infighting, they could easily end up in the wilderness for a generation. If I were in  their shoes, I'd try and pick someone not too closely associated with the last few years and someone who can lay out a vision of where the party will be at the next election. 

Perhaps the most intersting lessons may be those learned by the Lib Dems. Ed Davey was ridiculed for his "Jumping in a lake" strategy of stunts. As the Lib Dems look at their record haul of seats, even bigger than when Nick Clegg was in his pomp and everyone wore "I agree with Nick" badges, Davey can sit back and smile. He seems to have, rather uniquely, identified a way for a third party to connect with voters. I suspect that the focus on a few issues that voters get was perhaps as potent. I suspect that third parties across the globe will be taking note of Davey's antics. As an aside, I believe that Trump won in 2016 because his face was known, through is role on "The Apprentice". It seems to me that being on Telly helps you no end. I suspect that people chucking coffee over Nigel Farage did him more good than harm at the ballot box. It made him top story on the news. Farage isn't stupid and I think, out of all of the party leaders, he will be the one asking himself hardest "what can I learn from Ed Davey". The question for Ed Davey though is where to from here. How do the Lib Dems stop this from being a one term wonder and hold on to the seats, when the Tories get their act together. They will have the benefits of incumbancy, which will make things easier, but they must realise that it will be hard for the Tories to be as useless again. 

And then there is the SNP.. The dream is in tatters. Independence seems further away than it has done for years. Things really couldn't have gone worse for them over the last few years, Whatever they do, they most certainly need to get their act together quickly or they will simply become irrelevent.

And finally, there is Labour. Whatever you may think of SIr Keir Starmer, he is blessed with the most important gift of any leader. He is extremely lucky. Sometimes the stars just line up for you. When he took over, he had been dealt a very poor hand. A party riddled with divisions, demoralised, in the centre of a crisis about anti semitism. Starmer spent his first two years simply dealing with sorting his own party out. He sensibly realised that unless the party worked properly, it would fail. He brought in discipline and a sound strategy. By the time the party was ship/shape, he was facing Rishi Sunak, who had inherited a trashed economy from Liz the Lettuce.  Sunak was great with spreadsheets, but useless as Prime Minister. It seemed that every decision he made was the wrong one. The biggest mistake was the timing of the election. No one really understood why it was called in July. Starmer couldn't believe his luck. Then Farage threw his hat in and nicked millions of grudging Tory votes. This delivered a massive majority. Starmer now has the tools to push through whatever programme he likes. I suspect that Starmer will follow his tried and tested strategy, do the difficult stuff in the first two years, then spend two years building a platform for re-election. I suspect that his first briefing of Civil Servants will be to find things that they blame on the Tories, so they can pass unpopular measures. So long as economy is growing strongly in 3/4 years time and people have more cash in their pockets, he should be OK. So what can he learn? Well look at Boris. He was undone by world events. When he won in 2019, he seemed unassailable. I doubt Starmer will make the same sort of mistakes that Boris Johnson made, but he does need to convince all of the Labour supporters, who sat on their hands, that he has something to offer. What is crystal clear is that there is no cash to splash. If there had been, the Tories would have done just that. Starmer needs to find a way to energise voters. My one criticism of his team is they are all a bit dull. Given the Boris years, with the likes of Nadine Dorries on the sauce as culture secretary, that may not be such a bad thing, but I can't exactly see politics being much fun.