UK General Election 2019 - Election Day and Results Thread

[Cassius]

Huh. Thought 'folks' for 'people' was an American archaicism, like 'fall' for 'autumn'.

Anyway, rooting for the worst Labour performance possible. None of the other choices seem particularly good, but Labour is the worst by far, and any seat they lose or suffer an adverse swing in will be an occasion for satisfaction.

British people using the term ‘folks’ is part of the Great British tradition of adopting every bad American innovation and making it twee and even more sh1t.

[Cassius]

It’s looking very much like Russian Standard time whichever way the vote goes.

[Cassius]

Goethe at the battle of Valmy vibes.

Romeo foxtrot shall we dance.

[Cassius]

I don't really think Labour deserved to do any better than this--I've been probably the maroon avatar most critical of them on the antisemitism issue--but this is obviously a terrible result for British working people, and seeing the most personally loathsome individual on the forum gloating about this is enough to make me hurl. I'm going out to celebrate Our Lady of Guadalupe. I might be back for a hot-take postmortem later.

It was only a little dig :’(

[Cassius]

I feel sorry for John McDonnell, who I actually have a fair bit of respect for, unlike most on the Labour left.

Hopefully Major, Heseltine, Grieve, Gauke, Stewart, Gyimah and the rest of the so-called “mainstream”, “One Nation” Tories can, in the words of Gavin Williamson, shut up and go away forever

[Cassius]

Yep it's going to be a classic #Globaltrend night. London and her enviorns are moving against Boris, the North is in love with him.

Normally I like to poo poo this kind of thing, but the idea that Labour can hold Cardiff North (a historic Welsh marginal won twice by the Tories in recent times) on such a large projected swing is astonishing, and can only be explained by a genuine, partial realignment on Remain v Leave lines.

[Cassius]

Skinner looks like losing Bolsover. He would have been Father of the House had he won.

Making Peter Bottomley the Father of the House (I think).

[Cassius]

The liberal democrats have really hurt Labour in this election.

Serious questions need to asked to why they carried on standing candidates

At the count in Kensington, the voters were horrified (pro-remain) that they have a die-hard leaver representing them because the liberal democrats refused to stand down.

In High Peak, the liberal democrat was sarcastically clapped for letting the Tory in. Even in Blyth Valley (first Tory gain) the Green party were put in the awkward position of trying to explain what the benefit is of splitting the left vote for the tory to win?  

Its totally pointless for the Green Party and Liberal democrats to say that the political system is rotten or broken. You know the rules before the election and if you have zero chance of running and its a swing district then questions need to be asked why are you running in the first place?

Labour candidates do not have a God given right to expect Lib Dem candidates to stand down in their favour and vice versa. The parties fought the election on different platforms and there is little evidence to suggest, especially in the case of Labour-Tory contests, that all of the votes from the third places party would have transferred directly to help the second placed party win. The admittedly unreliable constituency polling done before the election showed large numbers of Lib Dem voters preferred the Tories to Labour, and would have voted in sufficient numbers for the former in a straight fight that them to have won.

The idea that will inevitably be trotted out by sore Labour supporters that the election was really won by the ‘progressive alliance’ is, to be blunt, a load of old bollocks. Generally speaking there was little love lost between Labour and the Liberal Democrats (this is not 1997) who ran with very different policies on leaving the EU and on the budget, taxation and other economic issues. The same is true for Labour, the Lib Dems and the SNP (see the SNP reaction to turfing out Swinson!), the latter of whom are on the opposite side to the former two of that central issue in Scottish politics, independence. There is little reason to believe that if every non-Labour and non-Tory candidate had stood down in the election that it would’ve resulted in a Labour victory. This is an excuse deployed by Labour partisans to distract from their party’s general unpopularity and their failure to build a durable, national coalition of support.

[Cassius]

The liberal democrats have really hurt Labour in this election.

Serious questions need to asked to why they carried on standing candidates

At the count in Kensington, the voters were horrified (pro-remain) that they have a die-hard leaver representing them because the liberal democrats refused to stand down.

In High Peak, the liberal democrat was sarcastically clapped for letting the Tory in. Even in Blyth Valley (first Tory gain) the Green party were put in the awkward position of trying to explain what the benefit is of splitting the left vote for the tory to win?  

Its totally pointless for the Green Party and Liberal democrats to say that the political system is rotten or broken. You know the rules before the election and if you have zero chance of running and its a swing district then questions need to be asked why are you running in the first place?

Labour candidates do not have a God given right to expect Lib Dem candidates to stand down in their favour and vice versa. The parties fought the election on different platforms and there is little evidence to suggest, especially in the case of Labour-Tory contests, that all of the votes from the third places party would have transferred directly to help the second placed party win. The admittedly unreliable constituency polling done before the election showed large numbers of Lib Dem voters preferred the Tories to Labour, and would have voted in sufficient numbers for the former in a straight fight that them to have won.

The idea that will inevitably be trotted out by sore Labour supporters that the election was really won by the ‘progressive alliance’ is, to be blunt, a load of old bollocks. Generally speaking there was little love lost between Labour and the Liberal Democrats (this is not 1997) who ran with very different policies on leaving the EU and on the budget, taxation and other economic issues. The same is true for Labour, the Lib Dems and the SNP (see the SNP reaction to turfing out Swinson!), the latter of whom are on the opposite side to the former two of that central issue in Scottish politics, independence. There is little reason to believe that if every non-Labour and non-Tory candidate had stood down in the election that it would’ve resulted in a Labour victory. This is an excuse deployed by Labour partisans to distract from their party’s general unpopularity and their failure to build a durable, national coalition of support.

"Shame on Labour and Lib Dems not standing down in favour of the Tories. They split the unionist vote and let the SNP win!"

The progressive vote split narrative is only marginally less ridiculous than that.

I think in all honesty there’s possibly more evidence for the success of cross-party unionist cooperation (outside of Scotland’s central belt) than there is for the viability of a ‘progressive alliance’.

[Cassius]

The Home Counties are not abandoning the Tories any time soon. Apart from a handful of strong Lib Dem performances in seats which they threw the kitchen sink at (and still lost) like Guildford, Esher and Wokingham, the ‘progressive’ parties were crushed almost everywhere else in the Home Counties. Sevenoaks, Tunbridge Wells, Runnymede and Weybridge, Beaconsfield, South West Hertfordshire, Surrey Heath, Reigate, Chesham and Amersham, and on and on, the Tories were still miles ahead in all of these. Miles ahead, in spite of the fact that most of these constituencies voted to remain and in spite of the Lib Dems essentially rebranding themselves as ‘the Tories but pro-Europe’ for this election campaign. Given that this election has exposed the Lib Dem ‘resurgence’ as a paper tiger, and given the fact that by 2024 they will have lost their EU lifeboat to campaign on, their prospects do not look good in the South East, bar in that handful of seats where they were always competitive anyway (aside from during their 2015-2017 Götterdämmerung), like St Albans and Guildford.

As for Labour, they’re going nowhere in the South East, unless the demography of commuter belt seats changes to the point where they are basically like London/Brighton. This could happen, but banking on demographic changes that may or may not occur (and if they do, possibly not for decades) is not a good strategy and even in places where the demography has become much more favourable to Labour (such as in Chingford) Labour failed to win this time round, proving the point that demography is not destiny. As things stand at the moment, Labour do not have a hope in hell of winning big in the South East (outside of the towns they already hold)  with their current platform and leadership.

No ‘progressive alliance’ will change this. As others, and I, have pointed out, many Lib Dem voters would plump for the Tories before Labour in a two party contest, whilst it is not a dead certainty that all Labour voters would lend their votes to the Lib Dems in a Tory-Lib Dem matchup. More to the point, in many constituencies it is not clear who the better anti-Tory challenger would be, so dividing the seats in such a way would be difficult.

In short, the Home Counties are fools gold for Labour. The thing about this election is that the dam finally burst in a lot of (but not all) traditionally Labour constituencies, whilst the Tories simultaneously held on to practically all of their traditional strongholds, usually with a comfortable majority. Any hopes for Labour regaining power should focus on them winning the constituencies they’ve actually been able to win in the past, rather than upon some wild goose chase after the mythical ‘liberal internationalists’ of the South East.

Also, re Sadiq Khan, you can forget winning over Kent, Surrey, Berkshire, Oxfordshire et al with a soft-left Lahndener at the helm of the Labour Party.

[Cassius]

Guildford
Conservative Bloc 2015: 65.9
Conservative Bloc 2019: 44.9
Swing: 21.0

Esher and Walton
Conservative Bloc 2015: 72.6
Conservative Bloc 2019: 49.4
Swing: 23.2

Wokingham
Conservative Bloc 2015: 67.6
Conservative Bloc 2019: 49.6
Swing: 18.0

Sevenoaks
Conservative Bloc 2015: 74.8
Conservative Bloc 2019: 60.7
Swing: 14.1

Tunbridge Wells
Conservative Bloc 2015: 71.3
Conservative Bloc 2019: 55.1
Swing: 16.2

Runnymede and Weybridge
Conservative Bloc 2015: 73.6
Conservative Bloc 2019: 55.8
Swing: 17.8

South West Hertfordshire
Conservative Bloc 2015: 68.4
Conservative Bloc 2019: 49.6
Swing: 18.8

Surrey Heath
Conservative Bloc 2015: 74.2
Conservative Bloc 2019: 59.7
Swing: 14.5

Reigate
Conservative Bloc 2015: 70.1
Conservative Bloc 2019: 55.1
Swing: 15.0

Chesham and Amersham
Conservative Bloc 2015: 72.8
Conservative Bloc 2019: 55.4
Swing: 17.4

St Albans
Conservative Bloc 2015: 54.4
Conservative Bloc 2019: 39.2
Swing: 15.2

You really think there's nothing here?

With the exception of St Albans, Guildford, Wokingham and Esher, yes, pretty much. Excluding those seats, the Tories were still far ahead of the opposition in the rest of them, no matter whom that happened to be (in South West Hertfordshire the effective ‘progressive alliance’ candidate was a former Tory cabinet minister!), usually with a vote share barely changed from 2015 (in Sevenoaks they actually got a higher share of the vote). This is Britain, not Sweden, we do not do Blockpolitik, the Conservatives and UKIP did not form a ‘conservative bloc’ in 2015 (a not insignificant number of 2015 UKIP voters had previously voted Lib Dem or Labour), just as there was and is no ‘progressive bloc’ facing them.

Granted, the Lib Dems put on a lot of votes in many Home Counties constituencies, which was enough to turn a handful of them marginal. For the rest, it frankly doesn’t matter very much. Take Tunbridge Wells, sure, the Lib Dems went up by 18%, but the sitting Tory MP still has a majority of 15,000 votes and the seat is still a safe Tory seat. Maybe the composition of the Tory vote has changed since 2015, but the point is they still won it (and many, many seats like it) comfortably. The Lib Dems have had two elections in which to exploit the high remain vote in many Home Counties constituencies, and twice they’ve fallen flat on their faces (they made a solitary gain in this region, St Albans, which was balanced out by their losing Eastbourne). The salience of hardline remainer politics is likely to diminish in the future, once we leave the EU and membership ceases to be the status quo option and becomes the radical change (which it will be, given that if we do ever re-enter the EU we will have to sign up to the Euro, Schengen and various other bits and bobs we’d previously secured opt outs from). If the Lib Dems couldn’t turn the commuter belt yellow this year, then I doubt that they will ever do, barring the handful of exceptions like Guildford.