Size of Labour's landslide is down to one man: Farage

A broken Rishi Sunak took responsibility for the Conservatives' historic defeat, and a jubilant Keir Starmer said there was "nothing preordained" about Labour's remarkable victory. But neither man acknowledged that the scale of Labour's landslide was also down to someone in neither main party: Nigel Farage.

- ANDREW GRICE

His Reform UK will win only a handful of seats, including Clacton in Essex, where Farage was finally elected to the Commons at the eighth attempt. But Reform's role was decisive in many other places - including Liz Truss's unexpected defeat. As John Curtice, the election experts' expert, told the BBC: "This does look like an election the Conservatives have lost and lost primarily because of the votes they lost to Reform... Around two-thirds of the seats the Conservatives have lost are seats where, if Reform voters had voted Conservative, they would still have hung on to."

Curtice pointed out that Labour's vote, while up spectacularly in Scotland since the 2019 election, was down in Wales and barely changed in England. Of course, Labour - and the revived Liberal Democrats - needed to be trusted enough to win Tory seats. But Farage undoubtedly gave them a helping hand. This has huge implications. Starmer deserves the plaudits he is getting for matching Tony Blair's 1997 landslide, from a much lower base, and after Labour's worst defeat since 1935 in 2019. But Labour's share of the vote, probably less than the 40 per cent it won under Jeremy Corbyn in 2017, will raise questions about its mandate. Unusually, Starmer will have to "seal the deal" with voters after winning the election, rather than before it.