Politics: an historic election

By Richard North - July 5, 2024

One of the first snippets of news coming in, long before the polls closed, was that – in some areas – turnout was higher than usual. This got some confirmation on Twitter, possibly confounding my predictions that we would see a “stay-at-home” election.

Then, bang on-time at 10 pm, to coincide with the polling stations closing, out came the exit poll. This put Labour on 410 seats, the Conservative on 131 and the Lib-Dems on 61. Reform gets 13, the SNP 10, Plaid 4, the Greens 2 and “others” (unspecified) 19.

Using yesterday’s YouGov MRP as a reference, Labour was on 431, the Conservatives on 102 and the Lib-Dems 72. Reform got 3, the SNP 18, Plaid 3 and the Greens 2. The “others” didn’t register.

The latest Survation MRP predicted Labour on 484, the Conservatives 64, Lib-Dems 61, SNP 10, Reform 7, Plaid 3, and the Greens 3.

The differences between the main party results are enough to suggest that the Labour vote might have been overstated, along with the Lib-Dems, while the Tories were understated. Reform does better than predicted, SNP worse, while the “tiddlers” are almost on par, leaving the “others” stronger than predicted, but not massively.

These polls now set the tone for the rest of the day, and will be much debated as the results come in. Already staking his claim is John Curtice, arguing for the general accuracy of the exit polls, not forgetting that in 2015, the prediction was for a hung parliament. Now, it seems, we must expect the much-predicted Labour landslide.

It took until 11:30 for the first result to come in, this time with Houghton and Sunderland South winning the race to be the first to declare. Interestingly, turnout was down, at 52.1 percent compared with 57.8 percent in 2019.

The headline result is that Labour won – as expected – polling 18,837 votes, compared with 16,210 last time. But the big change was Reform, taking 29.1 percent of the vote with 11,668 votes to come second, displacing the Conservatives who came a poor third with a mere 5,514 votes polling 13.8 percent.

This compares, incidentally, with the May local elections, when the Redhill ward gave Reform a 32.3 percent share, while the Tories gained a pathetic 8.7 percent of the vote.

The second result, 20 minutes before midnight, is Blyth and Ashington. With major boundary changes, there is no direct comparison with previous elections. However, as expected, Labour wins with 20,020 votes. And again, Reform and the Tories swap places, with 10,857 and 6,121 votes respectively. Turnout is relatively low, on 53.5 percent.

Sunderland Central now briefly takes the limelight with a repeating pattern. Labour comes first, picking up 16,852 votes, Reform is second on 10,779 and the Tories trail on 5,741 votes. Turnout is 52.6 percent, well below the 2019 figure of 59.8 percent. Some 4,000 people have stayed at home.

At 12:20 we have the first Labour gain of the night as the Party takes Swindon South with 21,676 votes, wresting it from the Conservatives who come second with 12,070 votes. Reform does not deliver a spectacular performance, coming third with 6,194 votes (close to Ukip’s 2015 performance of 5,920 votes), taking 13.8 percent of the vote. Turnout is 61.7 percent, down from 69.4 percent in 2019.

Just past 12:30 and Washington and Gateshead South declares. This is a new constituency so there are no comparable records. However, Labour was expected to win, as indeed it does with 17,682 votes. Reform comes second with 10,769 votes and the Tories perform badly with 4,654 votes, taking a mere 12.6 percent of the vote. Turnout is low, at 52 percent.

Now along comes Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West, another new seat. It keeps the Labour MP from the former area, with 18,875 votes. Reform comes a poor second with 7,815 votes, on an 18.9 percent share, while the Tories perform terribly, with 4,228 votes. Turnout isn’t brilliant, on 54 percent, down 9.3 percent on a notional comparison.

Labour party sources suggest that Reform will not win many of the seats the exit poll suggests. “They will get less than 13 seats”, says a highly-placed official.

The BBC says Labour is nervous about 20 stronghold which have large Muslim populations where a protest vote on Gaza crisis could spoil the party for some Labour candidates, including a few big names.

Polls, it says, have been tight in Rochdale, where George Galloway is looking to defend his February by-election win. But seats in various Birmingham, Lancashire and Bradford constituencies, as well as Luton North and South, Slough and Leicester South, may be at risk. Some independents standing on a Gaza platform are a threat and so is Galloway’s Workers Party of Britain in Rochdale.

The seventh seat to declare is Gateshead Central and Whickham where Labour gains 18,245 votes, and Reform 8,601. Here, the Lib-Dems come third, with 4,987 votes, relegating the Tories to fourth place on 4,628 votes.

The BBC is having second thoughts about Chingford and Woodford Green. Although the exit poll earlier suggested that Iain Duncan Smith had a 99 percent chance of losing his seat, the BBC’s Emma Simpson, faced with the situation on the ground, now thinks it’s a much tighter race “thanks to a big potential split in the Labour vote”.

The original Labour candidate, Faiza Shaheen, was deselected eight days into the campaign and is standing as an independent. The feeling, says Simpson, is that it looks increasingly like a three-way split.

Cramlington and Killingworth, another northern seat, now comes in. It returns the Labour MP with 22,274 votes. Reform comes second on 9,454 votes, taking 20.8 percent of the vote share, leaving the Tories trailing in third place with 8,592 votes. Turnout is 61.9 percent.

South Shields comes next, a Labour stronghold which delivers its MP 15,122 votes, down from the 2019 figure when the incumbent gained 17,272. Reform comes second, on 8,469 and, in a surprise development, the Greens come third, more than quadrupling their 2019 vote from 1,303 to 5,433, pushing the Tories into fourth place, with 4,128 votes. Turnout is 52.8 percent.

Results are starting to come in faster. The Lib-Dems gain Harrogate and Knaresborough from the Tories. Labour takes Stroud from the Tories and holds Jarrow and Gateshead East. But the Tories hold Rayleigh and Wickford, keeping Mark Francois in a job. Each constituency has a story to tell and the devil is in the detail.

Rayleigh and Wickford, for instance, is staggering. In 2019, Francois took 39,864 votes, giving him an unassailable lead over his Labour rival of 31,000. Now, with Reform contesting the seat, taking 12,125 votes, and Labour adding 3,000 to its score, Francois is down to a mere 17,756 votes, with a majority of 5,621. But there is also a hidden element. Turnout is down from 69.5 to 63 percent. Seven thousand voters stayed at home.

Two more results coming in make bad news for the Tories. Labour gains both Nuneaton and Darlington from the Tories. And there is a recount in Basildon and Billericay, where there is said to be a mere 20 votes between Tory chairman Richard Holden and the Reform candidate. Meanwhile, Labour holds Knowsley (hardly a surprise there) and Barnsley North.

Labour also keeps Leeds West and Pudsey, the domain of putative chancellor Rachel Reeves, and takes Telford from the Tories. The latter is an example of the “Ukip effect” at play, in a convoluted manner. The 2019 Tory vote drops from 25,546 to 8,728, while Labour adds 4,000 votes to take the seat on 18,212 votes with a majority of 8,102. Reform comes second, with 10,110 votes. If they came from the Tories, that cost them the seat.

Results are now coming in too fast to analyse. The Lib-Dems take Eastleigh from the Tories, Labour swipes Bridgend and Swindon North, as well as the Vale of Glamorgan, inserting Kanishka Narayan, who becomes Wales’ first MP from a minority ethnic background. Colchester also falls to Labour as does Cannock Chase, and Leigh and Atherton.

In the first success for Reform of the night, Lee Anderson retakes his Ashfield seat, while Labour wins Blackpool South, holds Tynemouth, takes Redcar from the Tories and holds Middlesborough and Thornaby East. Meanwhile, the Tories hold Broxbourne, their 30,6631 vote in 2019 cut in half and the majority sliced from nearly 20,000 to less than 3,000. But, with only 8,782 votes, Reform could not take the seat.

Coming up to 3 am, when the results start flooding in, it is now only possible to capture the highlights. One of those is Galloway losing his seat to Labour in Rochdale. He’s pipped to the post by former political journalist Paul Waugh, who wins 13,027 votes to Galloway’s 11,587. Reform is in there, with 6,773 votes and even the Tories have a slice of the action with 4,273 votes. Turnout is 56 percent, down from 60.1 percent in 2019.

Doubtless with a sense of relief, Angela Rayner keeps her seat in Ashton-under-Lyme. Presumably, the Labour deputy leader will now have to make good her promises on Palestine. Certainly, there is a Gaza effect to deal with.

On the BBC’s team, John Curtice remarks that, in the five seats that have been declared so far where more than 10 percent of the population identify as Muslim, the Labour vote is down seven points on average. This, he says, might be an indication of Labour’s perceived weakness on Gaza among these voters.

The Gaza effect might be at play in Leicester East where, completely against the grain, the Tories take the seat from Labour, where the Moslems have fielded so many Gaza supporters that the vote has been irredeemably split.

Leicester South, though, has succumbed to The Muslim Vote, with Labour’s Jonathan Ashworth losing to independent Shockat Adam, a Muslim endorsed by TMV. Adam gets 14,739 votes to Ashworth’s 13,760 – dropping from 33,606 in 2019.

Finally, the BBC wakes up, its chief political correspondent, Henry Zeffman, calling this “the most shocking result of the night so far”. “I think it also does suggest that in parts of the country politics is re-orientating around religious and cultural divides”, he says, “and I think a lot of people in a lot of the main parties will be very concerned about that”.

And, with more of the same, Iain Duncan Smith gets to keep his seat in Chingford and Woodford Green, as the Muslim Vote deprives Labour off an easy victory.

With that, Curtice was observing that the overall turnout could fall to 61 percent, which would make it the lowest since 2005, only for the BBC to report that, with 100 seats declared, this election sees the lowest turnout on record, at 57 percent. Despite the early indications, therefore, the “stay-at-home” vote has had its influence.

Despite this, two “big beasts” have made their mark. Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has won his seat as an independent in Islington North, with 24,120 votes, beating Labour’s Praful Nargund by about 8,000 votes. And, on the eighth time of trying, Farage has at last won a seat, taking Clacton also with a majority of about 8,000 votes. Maybe he can sit next to Corbyn in the Commons.

One “big beast” to fall is defence secretary Grant Shapps, who has lost his seat, becoming the most high-profile casualty so far. Ousted by Labour in Welwyn Hatfield, a constituency he has represented since 2005, he came second with just over 16,000 votes to Labour’s 19,877.

Great Yarmouth, on the other hand, has fallen to Reform and the Greens have taken their target seat of Bristol Central. And, at 4 am, Labour is now expected to win 405 seats, with the Conservatives on 154. This is slightly better than the exit poll which, in turn, is better than most of the MRP analyses.

As the dawn peeps over the clouds and greets a new morning, in a very different country, now is as good a time as any to take a break. I will resume later in the day.