{"id":573715,"date":"2026-05-08T22:57:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T22:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/573715\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T22:57:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T22:57:08","slug":"these-election-results-change-british-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/573715\/","title":{"rendered":"these election results change British politics"},"content":{"rendered":"

With most election results the tendency is to overestimate their importance. I think on this occasion there is the opposite danger.<\/p>\n

The first mistake is comparing the result with expectations. Because there were forecasters who saw Labour losing 70 per cent of its seats, some depict losing what is still more than half their seats as a relief. Yet such a discrepancy between forecasts and outcome is a piece of information only about forecasters. The information about Labour remains that it is an utter disaster.<\/p>\n

Similarly the test for the Conservatives cannot be that they have failed to be utterly obliterated. It\u2019s terrible for the main opposition party to be losing seats on this scale.<\/p>\n

The second mistake would be to report this in a similar way to the reporting of a by-election. By-elections do give an indication of public mood and may be a political sensation for a few weeks. But everyone accepts that they aren\u2019t a reliable indicator of durable political sentiment.<\/p>\n

These elections are a different matter. They solidify a long-term movement in allegiance. The places where Reform and the Greens won and Labour and the Conservatives lost are not random.<\/p>\n

The wins have a pattern. The outcomes make demographic sense. The correspondence between Reform\u2019s wins and the areas which were strongly for Brexit indicate that there are places which have been turning towards them<\/a> for more than a decade. This is not just a passing fancy.<\/p>\n

Nor will its outcome be a single briefly famous MP. Reform has places to govern. It has hundreds and hundreds of newly elected politicians. This will shape Reform and provide it with spokesmen. Something that is, by the way, threat as well as opportunity for Nigel Farage.<\/p>\n

The third mistake would be to think the most important consequence of this set of elections is its impact upon Sir Keir Starmer. Persisting with him would certainly be, as Sir Humphrey used to say on Yes Minister, \u201cvery courageous\u201d.<\/p>\n

But Labour\u2019s results question its future as a party not just the future of its leader. It lost in one direction to Reform and in another to the Greens. The right question is what sort of political force Labour wants to be, not just who it wants to be led by.<\/p>\n

These results have changed politics fundamentally. And that\u2019s even before considering the impact of separatists winning in Scotland and Wales.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With most election results the tendency is to overestimate their importance. I think on this occasion there is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":573716,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-573715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=573715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573715\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/573716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}