Conservative mistakes helped Labour win UK election

LONDON: The British Labour Party has wiped out the Conservative Party by winning 412 seats and a majority of 170 seats. Most of the seats won by Labour were extremely marginal Conservative seats. Labour knows that its victory is not a victory, but a Conservative defeat. In 2019, Boris Johnson thanked the Red Wall MPs for lending him their vote, on July 4, these MPs withdrew their vote.

The Tories’ relentless taxing, poor performance, dishonesty and internal dysfunction have given Labour its mantra of Tory chaos and division. The electorate voted for the change proposed by Sir Keir Starmer. It is reported that 72% of those who voted for Labour did so to punish the Tories, not because they believed in Starmer. These people have no idea of ​​Labour’s ideology. The anti-incumbency sentiment is not all directed at former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. The electorate has not forgotten or forgiven the Tories’ Covid-era revels, profligacy and perfidy.
Sunak retained his seat of Richmond and Northallerton in Yorkshire with 23,059 votes, or 47.5% of the vote. Other Conservative MPs of Indian origin who retained their seats were Claire Coutinho, Priti Patel, Suella Braverman, Gagan Mohindra and Shivan Raja; and honorary Indian Bob Blackman retained his seat in Harrow East, while Shailesh Vara and Ameet Jogia lost their seats.

It appears that the disunited Conservatives have allowed the Liberal Democrats to win 71 seats and the Reformists 4 seats. This is a great achievement for Nigel Farage, as the Reformist party is in its infancy, has no structure and a very limited budget. The Reformist campaign dominated social media and received support from Generation Z. Some Conservative MPs praised the importance of the Reformists during their campaign to try to retain their seats. The Liberal Democrat revival is a reaction against Brexit and it appears that the Conservative campaign was not aware of this change. It appears that other small Conservatives drifted to the Liberal Democrats, and many others stayed home. Turnout was low at 60%.

It is worth noting that the centre-right Conservatives and Reform parties together won 38% of the vote, or around 11 million votes, while Labour won only 34%, or just over 9.5 million votes. Reform won 14.3% of the vote nationally, making it the third largest party by vote share. It therefore has support in areas where it failed to elect an MP. Clearly, the centre-right is still the home of the democratic majority in the UK. The UK is lagging behind the European curve in terms of its shift towards right-wing politics. Labour’s honeymoon is likely to be short-lived once the stressed Conservatives reorganise.

The only seats where Labour has traditionally performed well and which did not go to the party's standards were five constituencies where its candidates campaigned on pro-Gaza platforms; four seats went to independents and one seat to the Conservatives.
Farage and the Reform Party have defined the election debate around immigration and will be haranguing the new government on the issue in the Commons.

Labour's manifesto is ambitious but does not give details. It is possible that Labour will claim to have stopped the boats by agreeing to take in 100,000 illegal immigrants a year as part of a new free movement deal with the EU. This means that illegal immigrants will arrive via EU countries from the Mediterranean shores where they landed. To secure its large majority, Labour has said it will include 16-year-olds in its electorate.

Furthermore, the CCHQ’s process for selecting Conservative candidates resulted in a poor selection of candidates who were out of touch with the country’s Conservative ideas and ideals, which contravened the 2019 manifesto. One indication that Conservative support had waned was that many Conservative MPs were struggling to rally members and activists to campaign on the ground.

So is this result proof that democracy is at work? Yes and no! Yes, because voters want to get rid of a party that has not given them what they wanted. No, because they have elected a party that will do the opposite of what they wanted.

Boris Johnson appeared to unexpectedly support the Conservative campaign and his own wishful thinking about returning to politics. He smugly referred to the Roman statesman and consul Lucius Cincinnatus, who was brought back to Rome as dictator after his retirement to stop a coup by the Aequi. Johnson is thought to be hoping to win a by-election in the next two years and then run for the party leadership with a view to contesting the 2029 general election.

The UK is currently experiencing the largest exodus of start-up millionaires, many fleeing to Dubai, which offers excellent private British education for their children, a safe society and no taxes.

It is worth noting that Jeremy Corbyn retained his Islington North seat as an independent.
Labour scored major successes with its candidates of Indian origin: Seema Malhotra, Preet Kaur Gill, Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi and Navendu Mishra all retained their seats with convincing majorities. The new Labour candidates of pan-Indian origin did the Republic proud: Jas Athwal, Baggy Shanker, Valerie Vaz (sister of Keith Vaz), Satvir Kaur, Harpreet Uppal, Warinder Juss, Gurinder Josan, Kanishka Narayan, Sonia Kumar, Sureena Brackenbridge, Kirith Entwistle, Jeevun Sandher and Sojan Joseph, an NHS mental health nurse from Kottayam in Kerala.

Jeremy Hunt, Suella Braverman, Priti Patel, James Cleverly, Tom Tugendhat and Robert Jenrick, all three Conservatives, are expected to be among those vying for the leadership of the party. The big question is who will command the respect needed to decide the future of the party.

What next? Sir Keir is expected to call Parliament back from recess to take the oath of office and deliver the King's Speech by 17-19 July. After a shortened summer recess, Parliament will be recalled in early September to announce Labour's first 100-day plan.
Starmers' new cabinet has announced Angela Rayner as deputy prime minister, Rachel Reeves as chancellor, Yvette Cooper as home secretary, David Lammy as foreign secretary, Pat McFadden as chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Shabana Mahmood as justice secretary, Wes Streeting as health secretary, Ed Miliband as energy secretary, Jonathan Reynolds as business secretary, John Healy as defence secretary and Bridget Philipson as education secretary. The impressive role of Morgan McSweeney, Starmers' election brain trust
has not yet been declared but will certainly be in the thick of things in issue 10.