Election result signifies realignment of UK politics

It has already become clear that the 2019 general election represents one of the more significant moments in postwar British politics: where the shock waves triggered by the result of the 2016 Brexit referendum have translated into a Conservative landslide in England and Wales and disaster for the Labour party.

Nearly 35 years after the end of the miners’ strike and the ensuing closure of the country’s pits, angry, frustrated voters in seats such as Blyth Valley, in Northumberland, have been prepared to elect a Conservative MP to end the Brexit wrangling – and to send Labour the message: we are not prepared to elect you.

The latest predictions, after 630 results declared, put the Conservatives in line for 364 seats, the party’s best result since Margaret Thatcher’s third election win in 1987, made all the better for the party given it was on track to lose most of its seats in Scotland to the resurgent SNP.

But it was less of a vindication for Boris Johnson than the emphatic ultimate result might appear: his party is on course to win about 43.4% of the vote – just ahead of Theresa May’s 42.34% in 2017 – a result reflected in seat after seat where the Conservative vote often increased only slightly.

Instead, it was Labour’s vote that slumped from the famous 40% close finish in 2017 to 32.6% this time around. It does remain a higher proportion than the party finished with in defeat in 2010 and 2015 but the difference this time is the strength of the SNP in Scotland and the relative weakness of the Lib Dems.

Labour will end up with about 204 seats, its worst result since 1935, its share of the vote falling in almost every seat barring a few exceptions where the party had campaigned hard in London, in Putney, where it won, and in Chingford and Woodford Green, where it ran hard but still lost to Iain Duncan Smith.

It means the party has lost four elections in a decade, and only one of its leaders, Tony Blair, has triumphed at the polls in over 40 years. But it is the manner of the defeat that is so telling, where outside London and the big cities of England and Wales, the party lost a string of long-held seats.

Blyth Valley has only elected Labour MPs since it was created in 1950, apart from a brief period when an independent Labour member represented the seat. Labour lost 15 points, and the seat – target number 116 for the Conservatives – fell to the Tories on a swing of 10.2%, one of the largest seen on the night.

It rapidly became clear that Labour’s “red wall” had utterly crumbled from the east to the west. Darlington, previously with a majority of 3,280, fell on a 7.4% swing; Workington in Cumbria, previous majority 3,925, fell to the Tories on a 9.7% swing. In North Wales, the party lost Clwyd South on a 7.5% swing.

More significant swings emerged later. Bassetlaw, in Nottinghamshire, a former mining area that last elected a Conservative in 1924, fell to the Conservatives on an 18% swing, with Labour’s vote falling by 25%. Dennis Skinner was defeated in Bolsover, Derbyshire, on a 11.5% swing from Labour.

The same picture was repeated again and again in leave-supporting seats in Wales, the Midlands and the north of England, in many smaller cities and big towns. Great Grimsby, which voted leave by 71.5%, and was last won by the Conservatives in 1935, went over decisively: with a 14.7% swing.

Labour candidates tended to lose support to the Conservatives, Lib Dems and the Brexit party, but in some cases, such as Barnsley Central and Barnsley East, sitting Labour MPs in Yorkshire were saved by Nigel Farage’s party securing 30% and 29% of the vote respectively, votes that might otherwise have gone to the Tories.

The opposition did fare better in pro-remain London, winning Putney on a swing of 6.6% but it proved to be a largely isolated result; in other seats once held and targeted by Labour the party moved further and further away: in Nuneaton, a 2015 key marginal, the swing to Conservatives was 9.4%.

In the south of England, the swings to the Conservatives were often smaller, but still significant. Labour failed to progress in Hastings and Rye – a long-standing target, and the swing against was 3.4%. It lost a seat in marginal Stroud, Gloucester, with a swing to the Tories of 3.5%.

The 2019 election turned out exactly as billed – the Brexit election – and Labour’s counter, post-austerity narrative failed to resonate: the question will be whether this amounts to a permanent alignment in British politics, with echoes of Trump-era US, or a one-off attempt by the public to get Brexit over the line.