While Americans were celebrating the 148th anniversary of our independence on July 4th, our former colonial masters were doing what we rose against them in 1776 to be allowed to do – voting for representation.
Britain had its first election on Thursday in four and a half years, sweeping out the Conservative Party, known as the Tories, and ushering in the first Labour government since 2010. The results were a landslide for the center-left Labour Party, led by new Prime Minister Keir Starmer. They won 412 seats in the 650-seat House of Commons, just shy of the 418 seats Labour won in the 1997 landslide that brought Tony Blair to power. That’s way more than the 326 seats needed for a majority.
Labour picked up seats in all three countries on the island of Britain (Northern Ireland also elects representatives to Westminster, Britain’s Parliament, but they represent specific Northern Irish parties; more on that later.)
What’s notable is Labour did it despite winning fewer votes and a smaller percentage than it did in the previous two elections, when a far-left leader, Jeremy Corbyn, led the party to two consecutive losses. This has irked many leftists who have long felt betrayed by Starmer’s more conservative stances. After progressive activists pushed the Labour Party to the left after Brexit – Britain’s controversial exit from the European Union – Starmer pushed it to the right and finally delivered a victory.
Britain has a “first past the post” system where a plurality is enough to win a seat. Labour was able to win dozens of seats because several minor parties diluted the vote. This was especially true in seats where Conservatives lost votes to the far-right Reform UK Party, which ran primarily on anti-immigrant fervor. Reform only won five seats, all in England and mostly in rural areas, but all were Tory strongholds. Among the new Reform MPs is Nigel Farage, who took a lead role in pushing Brexit. In many former Tory seats, the party finished third behind Reform, allowing Labour to win these seats with roughly the same percentage of the vote they received in 2019.
Here’s a breakdown of how the election played out in various parts of the country and how it all came together for the first Labour landslide in 27 years:
SCOTLAND
The lynchpin to Labour’s victory was its renaissance in Scotland.
Scotland was always a significant support base for Labour and was the home of the last Labour prime minister, Gordon Brown. However, with the rise of the Tories in Westminster and later with Brexit – the UK’s exit from the European Union – Scottish nationalism began to flourish. An independence referendum failed in Scotland in 2014, even before Brexit.
Brexit was highly unpopular in Scotland, and the referendum failed in every constituency. Scotland benefited heavily from European Union policies like structural funds. When the UK voted to leave the union, independence sentiment remained strong, keeping the pro-independence Scottish National Party in power. The SNP won dozens of seats in Scotland that had previously been safe Labour seats, denying the party the base of support they relied on in the 1997-2010 governing majority.
Since the pandemic, however, the SNP has grown unpopular due to its perceived mismanagement of some local issues, including drug addiction and transportation policy, notably inconsistent ferry services to some of Scotland’s remote islands, SNP strongholds. An attempt to push for more rights for transgender people divided the party, which had included socially conservative voters. SNP’s longtime leader and First Minister of Scotland (Scotland’s governor), Nicola Sturgeon, resigned and was replaced by Hamza Yousef, the son of Pakistani immigrants. His appointment cemented that divide in the party, and social conservatives fled, many to Labour due to the sentiment that the Tories weren’t interested in Scottish issues. The death of Queen Elizabeth II in 2022 also undermined the SNP. The queen died in Scotland, which served as a reminder of Scotland’s vital place in the United Kingdom’s history.1 As a result, independence sentiment dipped more, and the SNP lost their signature issue.
On Thursday, the SNP was wiped out in Scotland, losing 39 of its 48 seats, nearly all to Labour, including every seat the SNP held in Edinburgh and Glasgow. The party also lost the Na h-Eileanan an Iar, or Western Isles constituency, covering the islands off Scotland's northwest coast. The islands, where nearly half the population speaks Gaelic, were considered strongholds for the SNP.
In the end, Labour won 37 seats in Scotland, while previously they held just one seat in Edinburgh.
WALES
The story in Wales was less about Labour and more about the collapse of the Tories. Labour picked up seven seats from the Conservatives, but the latter party was entirely wiped out, losing all 14 regional seats. Labour picked up the bellwether constituency of Vale of Glamorgan just east of Cardiff. The constituency has voted for the national winner in every election since 1983. Interestingly, both Labour and Conservative dropped in percentage, with Reform picking up 15 percent of the vote.
The Tories finished way behind in many safe Labour seats in Southern Wales, where the Reform Party did well, finishing second. In the constituency of Llanelli, west of Swansea, Labour held on by about 1400 votes, with Reform nearly winning the seat.
Wales is historically liberal-leaning, but the rise of Reform and the Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru is nevertheless a concerning trend for Labour. Plaid Cymru won several seats that were once Labour-leaning but had gone to the Tories in recent elections, such as Ynys Môn and the new seat of Caerfyddrin, which includes most of the former Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire constituency, a Labour stronghold under Blair. Even though Labour swept all of the urban and suburban seats in Cardiff, Swansea, and Newport, its weakness in rural Wales is worth noting.
NORTHERN IRELAND
Perhaps the most notable result of Northern Ireland was that Sinn Fein, the left-wing Irish Republican party that has long argued for Northern Ireland’s reunification with Ireland, now has the most seats in Westminster from the region for the first time. However, it isn’t because they picked up any seats. They held on to the seven they already had. The reason was a split in the Unionist vote.
The Democratic Unionist Party, or DUP, the center-right party that supports Northern Ireland’s continued union with the rest of the UK, lost three seats in part due to a sexual assault scandal that took down its former leader, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson. His constituency of Lagan Valley was lost to the left-wing Alliance party. One of the seats DUP lost was North Antrim, which went to the Traditional Unionist Voice, a far-right anti-immigrant party with an informal alliance with Reform. The Ulster Unionist Party, the right-wing pro-union party that once dominated Northern Ireland politics, also took advantage of the DUP’s struggles, winning the South Antrim constituency and sending their first member to Westminister since 2015.
However, there are some consolations for the DUP: Alex Easton, a former DUP member, managed to win the constituency of North Down as an independent after being unable to win it for the DUP in previous elections.
ENGLAND:
THE NORTH
Contrary to popular opinion, Labour’s political base was never London; it was the industrial north, especially in industrial cities like Manchester, Birmingham, and Leeds. They also historically performed well in Yorkshire. Much like the Rust Belt in the United States, the industrial North has shifted to the right in the last 10-15 years over issues like immigration and was the most pro-Brexit region, voting by a reasonably large margin to leave the European Union in 2016.
Besides the collapse of manufacturing in the north, and perhaps partly due to it, the area has been a destination for immigrants from South Asia and the Middle East in the last few decades, which has sparked anti-immigration ire in the region. It was in this part of the country, in Birstall in West Yorkshire, where a far-right anti-immigrant extremist, on the eve of the Brexit vote in 2016, assassinated former MP Jo Cox.2
While the Tories had been able to take advantage of that, their perceived indifference to the issue has shifted voters back to a more moderate Labour and the new Reform Party. As a result of the split between the Tories and Reform and a noticeable increase in support for Labour. The winning party picked up dozens of seats in the regions and won 134 of the 154 seats in the North and Yorkshire.
Labor rebuilt the so-called “red wall,” winning every seat between the Irish and North Seas in the North.3Many of the seats were won with a plurality of the vote, with Reform outpacing the Conservatives. That could give Labour some trouble in the future if the economy in the region does not improve or the immigration issue isn’t handled to the constituents’ liking.
LONDON
Despite the reputation of big cities as liberal bastions, that wasn’t true in London until recently. The city had liberal-leaning parts, notably on the East End, but much of Greater London was conservative. Slowly, though, the Tories watched their strength dwindle in the capital. Already having lost many former strongholds in London in past elections, including Putney and Enfield, the Tories lost nine London seats to Labour last week and three to the Liberal Democrats. Among the seats lost to Labour were Finchley and Golders Green, a part of London once represented by Conservative icon Margaret Thatcher, prime minister from 1979 until 1990. Uxbridge and South Ruislip also flipped to Labour even though the Tories held it in a by-election last year. The constituency was represented by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, one of five prime ministers the Tories have had since they took control in 2010.
Interestingly, the former seats of Thatcher and Johnson weren’t the only ones once represented by a Conservative prime minister to flip on Thursday. Maidenhead, the Berkshire seat of Theresa May, prime minister from 2016 until 2019, flipped to the Liberal Democrats, as did Whitney in Oxfordshire, the seat once represented by David Cameron, the Conservative leader who led his party to its 2010 win. Liz Truss, whose rather disastrous six-week tenure as prime minister in 2022 – during which Queen Elizabeth II died – began the Tories’ death spiral, was defeated in her South West Norfolk district herself.
For the first time in London, Labour took the constituency of Cities of London and Westminster, which includes much of Central London, including the Palace of Westminster, Buckingham Palace, Piccadilly Circus, and Trafalgar Square. A longtime Conservative stronghold, Labour brought it to within single digits in 2017. The Liberal Democrats tried to flip it in 2019 with former Labour rising star Chuka Umunna (once called Britain’s Obama) as their candidate. It finally fell out of Tory hands on Thursday.
Other former Tory strongholds in Inner London also fell: Chelsea and Fulham, a Conservative stronghold in the West End, went to Labour, and Lib Dems won Wimbledon, home to the famous tennis tournament. Labour won Kensington and Bayswater, a new constituency that includes most of the previous Kensington seat. That constituency flipped back and forth between Labour and Conservative in the 2010s and is home to some of the wealthiest parts of London.
TORY LEADERS DOWN, LIB DEMS UP
As is typical of opposition landsides, many high-ranking government members were defeated on Tuesday, but this election was especially brutal for the cabinet of outgoing Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. While Sunak held on to this seat in North Yorkshire, Grant Shapps, Sunak’s defense minister; Alex Chalk, the justice minister; Thérèse Coffey, the environmental minister; Gillian Keegan, the education minister; Mark Harper, the transport minister; and Penny Mordaunt, the Conservative Party floor leader and a potential successor to Sunak, were all defeated.
Though Labour took out most of them, some Tory ministers, including Chalk, Coffey, and Keegan, were ousted by Liberal Democrats, who had a massive night. After being reduced to only 11 MPs in 2019 and after much of their support strategically shifted to Labour, the party underwent a reorganization. With Labour guaranteed a big win, the Liberal Democrats, led by Sir Ed Davey, focused their campaign on Conservative seats in Southern England, where Labour has never been strong. As a result, they picked up 60 seats, 59 of which were from the Conservatives, and are now the third-largest party in Westminster.
The Liberal Democrats will likely be allies to Labour on many left-leaning issues, but they could also be thorns on Starmer’s side if he tries to steer the majority part too much to the center. Ideologically, the Liberal Democrats are closer to Labour than the right-wing parties, which will further isolate the Tories and Reform.
THE MUSLIM BACKLASH
Labour fell six seats short of the landslide majority they won under Tony Blair in 1997 and would have surpassed that if not for an uprising against them in several major cities and towns with large Muslim populations. Five Independents won safe Labour seats, including in Leicester South and Blackburn, with large Muslim populations. This is due to staunch opposition to Israel’s war on Gaza among Muslim Britons, something that puts them at odds with Starmer. Labour members Wes Streeting and Shabana Mahmood, both high-ranking members of Starmer’s incoming cabinet, only narrowly held their seats in London and Birmingham, respectively, due to independent candidacies of pro-Gaza candidates. The Tories even picked a Labour seat – Leicester East – because of the split caused by the former Labour incumbent, who was expelled due to harassment allegations and ran as a pro-Palestine independent.
Among the five independent candidates who ran and won was former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. Corbyn had been deselected as a candidate from the Labour Party due to allegations of antisemitism but won reelection as an independent in his constituency of Islington North anyway.
While the backlash among British Muslims did affect Labour in safe seats, it did not do any damage generally, as the party could make up those lost votes elsewhere. The results also led many to refocus on the Labor Party's failed strategy in the 2017 and 2019 elections: to run up the numbers in safe Labour seats and marginal seats in the hope they could pick off just enough for a majority. Labour went into this election focusing solely on marginal and reach constituencies, aiming for a vast majority so that left-wing members in safe seats wouldn’t have a lot of influence, as they would in a small majority situation or a hung parliament.
LESSONS TO LEARN
Of course, the circumstances that won Labour control are not applicable elsewhere. Labour had been out of power in Britain since 2010. All that has conspired since—Brexit, the Pandemic, immigration issues, inflation—happened under a Conservative government where Labour had zero power and little influence. That allowed them to seize the mantle of change.
In the United States, Democrats have controlled at least one of the three branches of government for 12 of the last 14 years, with only 2017-2019 being under a Republican trifecta. In Canada, the Liberal Party has been in power since 2015. France's center and left parties have governed the country since Nicholas Sarkozy’s fall in 2012. It’s much harder to make a compelling case against the right when they haven’t had complete power like in the UK.
Nevertheless, by moving to the center, the results show that Labour successfully co-opted many disenchanted Conservative voters. With Reform forcing the Conservatives to the right on immigration, Labour could define itself as the big tent center-left party. It did come at a cost. Besides the revolt from Muslim Labour voters, numerous left-wing-leaning areas like Bristol saw a rise in votes for the Green Party, which got nearly 2 million votes nationwide.
Starmer’s strategy may lead to a short honeymoon, as policy fights may divide the coalition. If Conservatives begin to move to the right to consume Reform’s vote, they could become formidable again so long as they don’t lose any voters who voted Tory last week. However, Britain’s next election isn’t scheduled until 2029. Starmer has too large a majority for a vote of no confidence that would trigger an earlier election, barring a massive scandal. Parties in the UK have had long periods in power: Conservatives for 18 years between 1979 and 1997, followed by 13 years of Labour and 14 years of Conservatives again, so it is unlikely Labour will lose power at least until the next decade. Labour has plenty of time to work out any kinks.
Scotland and England had two separate monarchs until 1603 when King James VI of Scotland inherited the English crown through a claim from his great-grandmother, Henry VIII’s sister. His ascension united the countries and set the stage for establishing the United Kingdom. Also, Elizabeth II is a Scot on her mother’s side; her maternal lineage stemmed from Clan Lyon, a prominent Scottish dynasty that dates back to the Eleventh Century.
Cox’s constituency, Batley and Spen, was later won by her sister Kim Leadbeater. The constituency was abolished in this election and split between Spen Valley, won by Leadbeater and Dewsbury and Batley, one of the seats Labour lost to a pro-Palestine Independent, Iqbal Mohamed.
Besides the apparent political connotation, the “Red Wall” refers to Hadrian’s Wall, the Roman-era barricade that spanned the same territory, meant to defend Roman Britain from the Scottish Celts.