After six long weeks of political campaigning, UK voters woke up slightly bleary-eyed last Friday morning to greet Keir Starmer’s new government. The landslide was huge, the number of Labour MPs historic but, as our coverage of the UK election this week reflects, this was an election more against 14 years of Conservative rule than strongly for Labour, which won its 412 seats through just 34% of the vote in a notably low turnout of just 60% of the electorate.
Nevertheless, the mood was cautiously optimistic as Jonathan Freedland conveys in our main piece, which follows Starmer from the excitement of the exit poll to entering Downing Street greeted by flags, cheers and tears from party activists. Robert Ford analyses the new political makeup of the country, examining the Liberal Democrats’ success in targeted seats and how Nigel Farage got out the vote countrywide but in a first-past-the-post system, Reform UK’s roughly four million votes translated into only five seats. We also examine why people turned so decisively against the Tories.
