Massive majority for Starmer, but HUGE issues have been exposed!

Right, so perhaps you might be thinking as you watch this video that here is a chagrined rotten leftie, bitter and twisted that Starmer won where Corbyn failed when he was Labour leader, giving Starmer a landslide win and the Tories their worst defeat ever, but actually what we’ve observed is the complete and utter failure of First Past the Post as an electoral system. Sure, it has delivered one party into power, a supermajority, almost as big as Blair’s in 1997 – not quite though – which is supposedly the point of that electoral system, but when you dig into the results, when you look at where Labour did well and where it didn’t, because it had it’s share of seats that clearly didn’t go it’s way and when you look at the national picture and overall vote share and then compare that to other elections, for as much as you might cheer a Labour victory, cheer the Tories being decimated and I certainly share that sentiment, I hope by the end of this video you are asking yourself how the hell we’ve arrived at this result, because frankly it’s bonkers.
Right, so Starmer is Prime Minister, we knew he would be. We knew the Tories were toast as well, perhaps we hoped they’d have been cooked even more than they were, but it is still the biggest defeat handed to that party in their history, a party that has existed since 1832 and they just lost 250 seats, at time of writing there are two seats to go still. We’ve seen the back of Liz Truss, Grant Shapps, Penny Mordaunt, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Johnny Mercer, Gillian Keegan, Alex Chalk, Therese Coffey, Damian Green, Michele Donelan, Mark Harper, Robert Buckland and so many more that we truly can celebrate that fact and yes, for as much as I hold Starmer and Labour feet to the fire on this channel because I do not like the way the party is now run, do not like the authoritarianism and dread this now being inflicted on the country, I look forward to Starmer no longer being able to go back on his words, when his actions will finally now be held accountable and what he chooses to do and will he do anything different or will ,as the manifesto implies, it just be business as usual for the status quo. I am not getting my hopes up on that of course. All of this is stuff Starmer’s Labour now need be mindful of though.
That said, the how he got there, how the results have paned out how they have, is worth discussing, because you might be shocked to know to begin with, that Labour’s vote share barely moved from the last General Election in 2019, which of course the Labour right love to point to as proof that rotten lefties and socialists cannot win elections. I’m not joking. Labour’s vote share for this General Election compared to 2019, rose by 1.6%. Labour got 33.8% of the national vote share in this election, compared to 32.2% of the vote in 2019, which saw Labour lose 60 seats indicating a great many polls in the run up to this election were overestimating the Labour vote share. Labo8ur has won an almost 1997 landslide effectively on a vote share similar to that which Blair got in his final election in 2005.
For comparison, in 2017, Labour got 40% of the vote, but then of course the Tories got 42.3% of the vote and in 2019 they got 43.6% of the vote. This time around, the Tory vote collapsed, but as Labour vote share shows, they didn’t go to Labour. The Tories vote share collapsed by almost 20%, Labour only gained 1.6%. Yet still Starmer, instead of losing as Corbyn did, gains a supermajority. A supermajority based on winning 33.8% of the vote, of those voting just 1 in 3 people voted Labour in effect, yet this is the result. I don’t yet know what the official turnout figures are, I’ve seen 57% being publicised, if that’s anywhere close to accurate, then that’s the lowest turnout in history, 43% of voting age people put off bothering to vote at all, not liking what was on offer and if that is true then Starmer’s Labour won the vote of something like 19% of the British public and got a supermajority. First Past the Post for you, really doesn’t sound very democratic does it?
Now vote share is one thing you might be thinking, but with the Tory vote collapsing, does number of votes cast make any difference? Oh well indeed, but not in any way that justifies Starmer’s supermajority. Labour got at time of writing, bearing in mind a couple of results aren’t in yet, 9,621,603 votes. That last election where Labour got decimated and Corbyn resigned and the Labour right attack? Labour won 10,269,051 votes. Labour literally won a supermajority with over 600,000 fewer votes than they actually got last time and where they 60 seats. The so-called worst Labour election result since 1935 as it was called, so make this make sense! Doesn’t it just go to prove though that when so many people’s votes count for nothing under this system the results end up frankly being questionable? Until we have a better system though, until we have a government willing to go there and Starmer has binned any notion of PR, we’re going to have to keep demanding it. Everyone’s vote should count for something, otherwise more and more people will not bother.
Aside from raw data though, the effect that data had in real terms has also exposed considerable vulnerability to this majority.
With fewer votes cast and despite the Tory vote collapsing, there has been a rise and increase in vote share amongst smaller parties and that has eaten into Labour. Where the Lib Dems and Reform UK have been major beneficiaries of the Tory collapse, Independent candidates who have become a much bigger fixture this time around, with many more people fed up with party politics able to get crowdfunded campaigns off the ground and have local support for a local candidate which Labour chose to spurn and the Green Party have also become more seen as an alternative in both Labour and Tory areas. The Green Party for so long having just the one MP, now have 4. Co Leader Carla Denyer defeated shadow minister for culture, media and sport, Thangham Debbonaire in Bristol Central, overturning Debbonaire’s 28,000 majority, albeit allowing for boundary changes, to now having a 10,000 majority of her own. She took an astonishing 56.6% of the vote there. Equally incredible, her fellow co-leader Adrian Ramsay, overturned a 22,000 Tory majority to take Waveney Valley, Ellie Chowns beat Tory Bill Wiggin, ending his more than 20 year reign in North Herefordshire and of course the Greens held Brighton Pavilion. They had a plan to get 4 MPs and build the party up from there, they invested in those seats heavily, they got the win. In a sense, Independents did likewise and when we think of Independent MPs, we tend to think of those suspended for some reason, not being elected as such, but we now have 6 elected Independent MPs, who of course would have been people completely invested in their own area and that area only, and very often they went up against Labour too and this is where Starmer did get a spanking in some instances and deservedly for how Labour had behaved.
Jeremy Corbyn of course is the best known. That would be a Labour seat now if Starmer had let him stand and not put a private healthcare CEO up against him, but he did and Labour lost the seat.
Jonathan Ashworth, who made appalling comments about Bangladeshi migrants and the situation in Gaza and was questioned about that, was stood against a pro Gaza candidate in Shockat Adam, who beat him by just under 1000 votes. Labour also lost Blackburn to a pro Gaza Independent Adnan Hussain, with the same happening in Dewsbury and Batley, a new seat from a former Labour won, but again this was taken by a pro Gaza candidate Iqbal Mohamed. Birmingham Perry Barr Labour MP Khalid Mahmood was also defeated by Independent Ayoub Khan and an Independent took North Down in Northern Ireland too.
Even where Labour held a seat though and this has been seen across parties, formerly safe seats look a lot less safe. Wes Streeting just held off Leanne Mohamad in Ilford North, but his majority has been cut to 500. Where Labour could have kept Faiza Shaheen as their candidate in Chingford, instead, Iain Duncan Smith, Dr Death, managed to hold on despite being nailed on for defeat. Even Keir Starmer himself is not immune, a man who in 2019, won 36,000 votes in 2019, saw his vote share slashed by more than 17%, leaving him now with a majority of 11,000, down from 27,000. That might seem a healthy majority still, but it’s been literally halved and if an Independent like Andrew Feinstein can eat into it that far, coming second as he did, and as the Tories have learned this time to their cost, then the warning signs are there that if Labour don’t deliver, such majorities are not insurmountable. Starmer ought also take note perhaps that vote for vote, he was outperformed by Jeremy Corbyn running as an independent!
And of course there’s one other factor that needs to be covered and that is the get the Tories out factor. The tactical vote factor. How much of this vote share that Labour won, is down to that and that alone and if as I expect Labour don’t change away from that, if they become continuity austerity, continuity Tory, then the support they’ve won here will evaporate very quickly and who will that leave open a vacuum for? Politics hates a vacuum, and the fear is the far right could be it, especially if Starmer lurches even further to the right in power to try and see off the likes of Nigel Farage, Farage splitting the Tory vote and letting Starmer through in no insignificant part either due to this stupid electoral system of ours.
I don’t believe Starmer will deliver, goodness knows regular viewers will already know that, so the fightback begins today. This channel as it has always done will be holding him to account, will be covering the stories the mainstream do not and will not, he has been handed a majority on the basis he will bring change from the right wing politics of Tories and those like them but worse exemplified by Reform UK and if he doesn’t deliver, and I don’t believe he will, he must be held accountable for that. He won’t make the country more democratic, he, as an authoritarian won’t legislate against himself more checks and balances, more honesty and transparency, will lead the party born from protest in a manner that opposes that, but which would inevitably lead to more protest and protest against him. He wants more control not less. By ruling out replacing the joke of an electoral system that has given him a massive majority despite his party winning fewer votes and a stagnant vote share, he has already shown us he won’t change and that is precisely why independents have succeeded here and there and will likely do so going forwards as well, because now people know it can work, and if you don’t like what you’ve got, well this is just another form of protest, backing someone else, saying we don’t want you any more. Starmer should heed the warning signs, to not abuse his majority for his own ends, he is already personally unpopular, but use it in our interests. I won’t be holding my breath though. It will of course be independent media and commentators that will be holding him accountable for everything he does going forwards, so support your favourite independent media.
The victory of Jeremy Corbyn was a highlight for many in last night’s elections, a guy who was polling as the underdog in the constituency he had held for 40 years running against a private health CEO and he came through, but in no small part was that due to local campaigners and a phenomena that we’ve seen repeated up and down the country where labour members, and elected officials deserted the party of Keir Starmer and in this case 72 of them did so just to campaign for Corbs and clearly that helped get him over the line. Check out the details of that story in this video recommendation here and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.