By Frank Wright
Britain’s Labour Party has achieved a historic majority of over 150 seats, following a general election with the second lowest voter turnout in almost 140 years, while Nigel Farage’s party took 4 million votes but only 4 seats in Parliament.
Britain has a Labour government with a historic majority of over 150 seats, following exit poll projections of the U.K. general election. Thursday’s July 4 vote saw the second lowest voter turnout since 1885, with only an estimated 60 percent of registered voters taking part.
Former lawyer Sir Keir Starmer is set to become prime minister when announced by King Charles today, having purged his party of left-wingers in a successful move to mimic the electoral success of Tony Blair.
4 seats for 4 million votes
Current projections say the Labour Party won 9.6 million votes and an estimated 412 seats, with the Conservative Party second with 6.6 million votes and 120 parliamentary seats. Nigel Farage’s Reform UK took over 4 million votes, making his insurgent populist party the third force in U.K. politics by the popular vote.
Due to the workings of the British electoral system, however, Reform gained only four seats at the time of writing. This result still sees Nigel Farage finally enter Parliament as the MP for Clacton, having failed to win in previous elections.
Hopes for “zero seats” for a Conservative Party widely acknowledged to have conserved nothing were dashed, yet the Labour landslide – the greatest since 1945 – sees the Tories lose over 250 seats in what could be their worst result since their party was founded in 1830.
Winner takes all
Many constituencies saw Reform overtake the Tory vote. Conservative voters who turned to Reform have cost the Tories an estimated 124 seats in splitting the vote. This follows changes to election boundaries made last year.
The U.K.’s constituency boundaries were changed in 2023 to reflect population growth within them, and to arguably “equalize” the numbers of people voting per MP. The causes and demography of this population growth were not explained in reports, nor did any address the obvious mismatch between Welsh, Scottish, and English constituencies.
While the extreme left-wing Scottish National Party lost 37 seats, the eight it held onto were returned by only 666,000 votes. In Wales, the equally progressive Plaid Cymru won four seats with only 194,000 votes cast for the Welsh “nationalist” party.
As a result of this system, the liberal-globalist Labour Party will enjoy a record majority on a vote share lower than their right-liberal “conservative” and right-populist opponents.
Lower vote share, record low turnout?
The former leader of the Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn won his seat as an Independent in Islington. In the last election he contested as leader, he won 40 percent of the vote – but narrowly lost to Conservative leader Theresa May in 2017.
The current Labour vote share is expected to be lower than that won by Corbyn, at around 36 percent of votes cast. Yet the overall number of votes is, according to one expert, expected to be one of the lowest in decades.
As the Hindustan Times reported, “Prof. Sir John Curtice, the psephologist who led the team that produced the exit poll, indicated that early results align with expectations of a low voter turnout.”
Speaking to the BBC, Curtice explained: “We may discover we are heading towards one of the lower turnouts of general elections in postwar electoral history.”
Curtice warned that the low turnout he expected was due to voter indifference – to what George Galloway has called the “uniparty” politics of the U.K.
“The Left are globalists now” said Galloway in a March 22 podcast, in which he called for an exit from NATO and condemned the U.K.’s involvement in the wars in Ukraine and in Gaza.
Curtice appeared to agree with the sentiment about establishment politics, concluding there was “not that much difference between Conservative and Labour in much of what they were offering the electorate.”
In recent days, former U.K. Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary David Cameron admitted on camera that the British policy on the Ukraine war was “fixed,” and that no change would come with a Labour victory. The power to change foreign policy is clearly outside that offered to the British by liberal democracy.
Whilst Galloway himself certainly offered a different choice, he lost his Rochdale seat to the Labour candidate. Parliament will be far less interesting due to his absence.
Notable losses
Parliament has lost its champion of the vaccine injured, however, as Andrew Bridgen lost his seat in a four-way race won by Labour. Other absences include former ministers and high profile Tory MPs.
Former Prime Minister Liz Truss lost her seat, as did Zionist Defence Minister and former B’nai B’rith youth leader Grant Shapps. Well known Catholic Jacob Rees-Mogg was defeated in Somerset. Many high profile Tories are now out of Parliament, with the former Northern Ireland Minister Steve Baker saying “Thank God I’m a free man” on losing his seat in Wycombe.
What the future holds
Labour under Starmer has promised a “mission-driven” government. This mission appears to be strongly globalist in flavor.
Starmer has removed candidates from his party who held strong left-wing and Israel-critical positions. He is widely believed to have moved the party to the “center” to secure a mandate to govern.
The program he has in store does not resemble an abrupt transition to socialism. There is talk of taxing non-state schools, and rumors Starmer will increase income and inheritance tax – to redistribute the wealth of the British to a voter base expanded by over 11 million immigrants since 2011.
A further 6 million are expected in the next 10 years.
The Labour Party under Starmer has a plan to “Change Britain.” This plan is expected to go beyond its 10 headline promises to transfer state power to globalist-aligned NGO-like structures and other bodies independent of Parliament, providing for a permanent continuity of policy. Labour under Starmer has been as fastidious in “purging” anyone who stands for its founding principles, as has the defeated Conservative Party.
The uncertain future of liberal globalism
What is notable about this landslide is that it comes as a result of voter disaffection, with a lower turnout overall, and mounting exasperation with the political settlement of “uniparty” politics.
As Europe – and especially France – risks political instability in its attempts to lock populists out of power, the future for Britain looks less like socialism and more like the last hurrah of business as usual.
Populists are now in Parliament, albeit in a capacity which fails to reflect their level of support across the country. It is their voice which will provide a meaningful opposition to the liberal-globalist agenda, whose power internationally is in terminal decline.
The same can be said of the Labour Party, whose power is purchased in a context of exasperation with establishment politics. This victory is the verdict of a broken system. How long it can prevail against the tide of the times is the question.
