An official data-set of the British 2024 general election results has finally been released and they have some interesting readings, namely how close things were for some of the parties. Looking over the figures it is plausible Starmer’s 170-seat majority government could end up being a single-term administration, but the Conservatives would be hard-pressed to get an overall majority at the next election.

Serious trouble for SNP

By any measure getting only nine seats was awful for the SNP and I wondered whether being able to run a proper campaign might have made a difference, as FPTP often has cliff-edges where only a small difference in votes can make a big difference in seats. I had not expected them down to single-figures so not having the handicap of a shoe-string campaign budget may have got those extra votes needed to hang on in more constituencies. Below is a cumulative plot of sorts based on percentage majority in seats the SNP held or lost.

It does not look good. With a good portion of their former seats having 8+ percent majorities I doubt they could have done sufficiently better vote-wise to be significantly better seat-wise, but they were dangerously close to being worse off. Five of their remaining seats had majorities under 5% of which two were under 250 votes so they were not far off a Westminster parliamentary party being the smallest since 1992.

Labour’s support mile wide & inch deep

I suspect it is a Conservative this heading paraphrases but it is basically true. While it is subjective what sort of majority can be considered a close call a direct 5% swing will knock over a 10% majority, and with the usual caveats about swings being non-uniform across the country this would be enough for Labour to lose 85 seats and hence lose their parliamentary majority.

Labour only got a third of the nation-wide vote which in itself should be a cause for concern for them, and while their support was “efficent” it means next time round they will have to actively defend seats they would have normally taken for granted.

Going after the Reform vote

In the graph above the purple crosses are the percentage vote the Reform party got and at first glance this makes trying to “win back” this support a sane strategy for the Conservative party. Trouble is while this is dead-simple way of depriving Labour of their majority it is not one for getting a majority themselves, particularly as a significant portion of Reform’s vote is actually from Labour. Them courting Reform in some way is a given but it is no magic bullet. It is more stark with Conservative-LibDem seats:

Taking the Reform vote will easily win back the 20 seats to the left but beyond that it starts to become a dubious strategy. The 20 seats to the left of the chart are ones the LibDems were very lucky to get but the ones to the right look like they will stay with the party for quite some time to come.

British general election is now over, with the most corrupt governing party of my life-time booted out. It was a heavy but well-deserved defeat although it was still towards the better end of expectations. Nevertheless I cannot think of anything they did right.

The Conservatives remain the second-largest party and they did not fall below double-figures, but to pass these two milestones would be into &dquo;existential” territory. However the milestones they did pass include some pretty devastating ones going back almost two centuries. Rishi Sunak did not have the indignity of losing his seat like Arthuf Balfour did in 1906 but his predecessor Liz Truzz did, and the seats of the two prior leaders Theresa May and Boris Johnson were also lost. Watching her declaration live it looked like Liz Truss was going to be absent, and the way she turned up and then left showed a complete lack of dignity.

Overall Labour got close to a 1997-style landslide but it was only on 34% of the vote which is a shockingly narrow support base, and they lost several MPs to Gaza-related independents. This is a function of the voting system rather than a roaring endorsement of the Labour party, which could mean trouble down the line when the going gets tough.

Greens getting four seats is way above anything anyone expected. The LibDems got what the most optimistic of MRP polls predicted but it is clear they did ruthless targeting of mainly southern seats.

At time of writing Inverness, Skye and West Rossshire has yet to declare which is a close call between the LibDems and SNP, but the SNP being down to single-figures is Scottish Independence dead in the water. The SNP were in no fit state to campaign properly but this result is far worse than anything I dared to predict. The huge loss of seats also means a lot less Short Money which means they might now be in a finance doom-loop.

Reform managed to get four seats and the big story is how they tore huge chunks out of the Conservative party voter base, but had Farage not screwed up by praising Vladimir Putin the 2-3 percentage points they lost in the last week or so could have done a lot more damage. Nigel Farage in Westminster is going to make a lot of people uncomfortable.

So it is Labour for the next 5 years. It is time for them to prove themselves.