Here is your easy guide to making sure you do not fall for the political spin of politicians or the political rhetoric of the Labour or Tory party. Based on the only real quantifiable data that matters in UK politics, hold on to these key points to make sure you see what is really going on and when to listen/not listen.
Labour has a mandate for wide sweeping change
Look at the below image lifted from the reputable polling company YouGov on the reasons as to why people voted Labour in the 2024 General Election.
As you can see from the above graphic the main, overarching reason people voted Labour (a lower amount to those who voted for Corbyn in 2019 and 2017) was because they wanted to get the Tories out. Britain has elected (20% of the entire electorate) just to get the Tories out. A very far away second is not even a Labour point, it’s just because people want things to change. Only 5% of all Labour voters agree with their policies. 5% of 20% of the country want Labour policies. This is madness. 5% of 20% of the electorate are going to get their way in the entirety.
The spin will be that Labour have a mandate and under our constitution they do. The majority party based on winning the electoral system gets to make all of the decisions and in this case without any obstruction from any other party. We are in an elected dictatorship now, no doubt about it. Starmer can do what he wants. BUT, this is all on the backs of 5% of 20% of the electorate.
Let’s not beat about the bush. The Labour government intends to fundementally change the country for good. Starmer’s speech talked about completely resetting and changing the country. Constitutional change will follow change in our society, countryside, cities and law and order and no one will have voted for this to any degree. Labour will rig the country to make their unpopular changes impossible to reverse (by creating a parallel constitution, or adding to it like they did with devolution in 1997 for example), and most insidiously, they will write into law (and thus backed up by the Supreme Court who will not let an alternative government change this) that any future laws for the rest of time will have to get the OK from the civil service before they get to the Commons to vote on. Labour plan to turn the country into a little EU (where the commission, not parliament proposes and enacts law) where unelected officials make the key decisions. As part of the ‘service’ rhetoric, Starmer is basically shifting politics away from the right for good.
All of this is to take power from Westminster, much like their plans for massive devolution from Westminster (you know, the place we have the most say over as the electorate) to the devolved governments and more elected mayors. This destroys democracy in this country with its old constitution and fundementally undermines the core institution that has made our country so good - Parliament. Starmer will most likely oversee The House of Commons and Lords move out of Westminster (as is due to happen due to structural repairs) and they will never move back again. Starmer wants to completely remove Britain from its past and this symbolic shift will be part of that.
All on the back of 5% of 20% of the electorate. It’s revolting. They have no mandate to fundementally change the make-up of the country to a more republican, federal system. No one voted for it. Then again, no one votes for dictatorships.
2. The people got what they voted for
Take a look at the below graphic; 2 pie charts. The first one is a reflection of the vote share of each party (other parties/independents in grey). The second one is reflective of the seat share percentage of the House of Commons.
This is what a majoritarian system gets you. This is reminiscent of something called the ‘Acerbo Law’ which was introduced in the 1920s in Italy by the Fascists led by Benito Mussolini. The Acerbo Law gave a huge percentage of seats in the Italian legislature to the party that won the most seats under Proportional Representation, as a sort of add-on. The Labour Party were awarded 1/3 of the seats as an addition to their 1/3 of the vote based on the fact that they ‘won’ right. They took seats that under an actual proportional system would have gone to the Reform Party, the Tories, the Greens, the SNP and others.
Labour did not earn those seats that have given them a massive majority. They were given to them because of our electoral system. We didn’t vote for the Labour Party. In fact the Labour vote was stagnant in England, it went down in Wales by 4%. Only in Scotland did the Labour vote rise by 26%, but that’s because in Scotland it was ‘anyone but the SNP’ and Labour were the only possible alternative.
Britain did not vote for Labour. In reality they voted for a coalition. It doesn’t matter if you think that this would be unstable; people voted for it. What we have, when people say this is what we voted for, is that the commentariat believe this is what we SHOULD have, not what we voted for. This is what the mainstream media want, not us. Don’t fall for the spin that we got what we deserved. We wanted something else, we did not get it.
3. The Reform MPs are irrelevant
Look at the below graphic of how many votes it took to elect each MP for the 4 main parties (those who polled above 10%).
A Labour MP is there because on average 23,000 voters wanted them there. Each Reform MP (5 in total), represents 822,000 people.
We live in a representative democracy. Seeing as our electoral system is broken (as basically stated in the first 2 points) as the difference between what voters wanted and what they got as at its highest since elections began in this country, it thus falls to how many voters each MP stands for, especially for the parties with NATIONAL support rather than local support. Reform, if you look at the vote share INCREASE, won by a whopping 12% increase more than any other party. 14% of the vote and 5 seats means that there has to be some kind of representation or there would be riots on the streets (we aren’t being flippant). Millions of Reform voters, over 4 million, are represented by just 5 MPs. Therefore the MPs have more relevance than any other MP if we go by the numbers they represent.
This of course does not matter in terms of parliamentary business but whenever a news outlet or activist barrages one of the Reform MPs they are offending over 800,000 people at the same time. This isn’t to say that Reform MPs should be treated with kid gloves but the rhetoric has to change, especially when it comes to their MPs. The media and politicians cannot carry on calling the MPs awful words because they represent well over 10 times the amount of voters the average Labour politician represents. Until the voting system changes this is a genuine reality and it will be something to watch to see how the contempt might change, or not.
4. The Tories are the official opposition
The Tories think themselves still relevant and with over 130 MPs you could be forgiven for thinking that they still have a role to play in government. The real answer is that they don’t. They are a large party with no uniting reason for being. The leadership election will no doubt be long, arduous, messy and inconclusive. What they stand for will be just as unclear after they elect their new leader.
Once again, the Tories will fulfill their constitutional role as His Majesty’s Official Opposition but the term ‘lame duck’ best reflects their role for the next 5 years. They will not push back against Labour. Labour’s majority means the Tories are fundementally irrelevant. But The Tories will elect a centrist as they will believe they lost the election because they weren’t centrist enough (this is a prediction based on the entire history of the Tory party aside from 1975-9. They will agree with Labour on most things economic and on social issues they will shake their fist but not consider lifting a finger to stop it again if ever they return to power.
The Tories will desperately try to spin their position to be relevant and they will position themselves as the next protest vote against Labour but if you look at the graphic in point 1, the Tories are too toxic a brand to ever vote for by a vast majority of the voting population. They are therefore not the opposition. They are just…there. They will not garner the anti-Labour vote in any meaningful way, especially in the Red Wall where the official opposition is the Reform Party (second in 81 Labour constituencies for this parliament, in dozens by less than 5%). The Tories have lost their coalition.
If you are reading this as Kemi Badenoch, Suella Braverman or Priti Patel becomes Tory leader please don’t consider this a change in the wind. The rump of the Tory party will make a right-it’s conservative a lame duck as leader and they will be stitched up like Liz Truss, only with a greater degree of stealth. The One-Nation Tories are inevitable, they are strong, they hold the party in the palm of their hand. Lord David Cameron is one such example of how much power they have. Most likely, though, the next leader will not be a right-its - what’s left of the parliamentary party is now full of centrist Tories. The Tory members will not get to vote for anyone other than a centrist. That’s politics, guys. It’s not that you get to vote, it’s that you don’t get to choose who you can vote for.
5. The Liberal Democrats are relevant again
The Lib Dems are relevant in that they have a lot more MPs to go on TV to talk about things but in reality they aren’t. Labour will steal a couple of their ideas. Then the Lib Dems will go down in the polls and become electorally irrelevant for another 10 years. They are just a yo-yo party. Labour is doing their job for them. Done.
6. Keir Starmer is in charge
Keir Starmer is not in charge. His role is to make other people in charge. Whether it’s the devolved governments, mayors, the civil service, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown or the trade unions, Starmer is NOT the leader of the Labour movement. As Prime Minister he has the title and the Downing Street accommodation, but he is not in charge. Much like Joe Biden, the Faustian bargain Starmer struck to be leader of the party and relevant in British politics required him to satisfy grey big beasts in the centre and left of political power in this country.
If you want to see a leader in politics look for the charismatic ones, the decisive ones, the ones able to shoot from the hip in terms of their speech. Look for the politician who can speak without an auto-cue or without having to read a speech line by line. Starmer looked down at his notes over 150 times in his first speech as Prime Minister. He is being told what to do and say so many times. He might have one or two things he wants to say and do, and he’ll get the green light to do it sometimes. But Labour is hamstrung by people at the side of the political stage of the Labour Party, people paying for the political stage of the Labour Party and those reporting what is going on on the Labour Party political stage.
Starmer is being told what to do, and not only by those within the party but even by those outside. At the time when devolution looks at its weakest (The Welsh First Minister losing a vote of no confidence 7 weeks ago and the Scottish National Party recently facing an almost electoral wipeout) Starmer’s first move was to go around promising more devolution. He is being told what to do by the various regions in the UK, giving them a new lease of life.
The word ‘puppet’ is probably too strong a word to describe Keir Starmer. As an ex-lawyer, he will be instrumental in drawing up laws that will have the full force of law to enforce enshrined in the constitution so it will be next to impossible to remove. But he is not in charge. A better way of putting it is that Keir Starmer is, at best, a ‘conduit’ politician. He is the facade of democracy, but he is also the symbol of the erosion of democracy too.
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These are just 6 things to consider when you hear the media report on the news. It’s all rather difficult to keep up to date with the copious amounts of spin attached to sorts of news stories that manage to get through the mainstream media that wants to MAKE news, not report it. All we can say is please make sure you are clued up and educated on the political nuances, otherwise you could be forgiven for thinking that Labour are so popular, Starmer is the next coming of Jesus and all other parties are just racists or irrelevant.
Please be aware that our democracy is now under threat for the next 5 years. Why should we know this? Because we will need to know what it will take to fix things, and to make things better, more democratic and more accountable. For the next 5 years democracy and accountability will be eroded to almost biblical proportions…just as Blair and Brown wanted it.
This article first appeared on the TDL Times. For more information, articles and more please visit www.thetdltimes.com.
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