TORY BLUNDERS LED TO LABOUR SWEEP IN UK ELECTION

The Labour Party in the UK exterminated the Conservative Party, by winning 412 seats and a majority of 170.

- ANTONIA FILMER

Many of the seats captured by Labour were extremely marginal Conservative seats. The Labour knows that its victory is not a win, it is a Conservative loss. In 2019, Boris Johnson had thanked the Red Wall MPs for lending him their vote, on 4 July those MPs took that back.

The Conservatives’ continuous taxing, poor performance, dishonesty and internal dysfunction gave the Labour its mantra of “Conservative chaos and division”. The electorate voted for the “Change” that Sir Keir Starmer offered. It is being reported that 72% who voted for Labour did so to punish the Conservatives, and not because they believed in Starmer. These folks are oblivious of Labour’s ideology. The anti-incumbency sentiment is not entirely directed at former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. The electorate has not forgotten or forgiven the partying, profligacy and perfidy of the Covid era by the Conservatives.

Sunak held onto his Richmond and Northallerton seat in Yorkshire with 23,059 votes, which was 47.5% of the vote share. Other Indian origin Conservative MPs who held their seats are Claire Coutinho, Priti Patel, Suella Braverman, Gagan Mohindra and Shivan Raja; and honorary Indian Bob Blackman held on to Harrow East, whilst Shailesh Vara and Ameet Jogia lost their seats.

It seems the disunited Tories allowed the Liberal Democrats to take 71 seats and Reform 4 seats. This is a huge achievement for Nigel Farage as the Reform party is only just emerging and has no structure and very little budget. Reform’s campaign dominated social media and received support from Generation Z. Some Tory MPs complimented the significance of Reform during their campaign in an effort to keep their seats. The LibDem revival is a backlash against Brexit and it seems the Tory campaign was unaware of the shift. It seems other small conservatives drifted to the LibDems, and many others stayed home. The turnout was low at 60%.