What a relief it was to have it confirmed by an exit poll last night that Labour, led by Keir Starmer, was on its way to a massive win over the Conservatives in the election of 4 July. 

The BBC projecting of the exit poll for the Labour landslide

July the fourth. Celebrated in the US as Independence Day. In Britain it was the occasion that the electorate marked its independence of a Conservative government that had nothing more to give. Another moment to celebrate.

I may have overstated when I said that it had nothing more to give. With most governments, including ones we don’t like, we can usually point to one or two achievements and have to admit, even if between gritted teeth, ‘well, it’s true, at least they did that.’ I can think of nothing, in all honesty, which fourteen years of Conservative rule have left in a better state than when they came to office.

That’s even on their own terms. The Tories were obsessed with public debt when they came to power, but they leave it higher now than back then. They were also obsessed with immigration, ignoring the overwhelming evidence that many sectors of the economy need immigrants – healthcare, agriculture, catering for instance – just to keep turning over. But even they admit that illegal immigration is out of control.

The health service is in crisis. Schools are crumbling, literally, with ceilings falling in due to dud cement. The Tories presided over the terrible self-inflicted wound of Brexit. The party of law and order has seen prisons releasing inmates early because they can’t handle the numbers. The police force hasn’t the resources for its task. And the nation’s rivers and the sea off its beaches are flooded with untreated sewage.

As you can imagine, that’s why it’s a relief to see that government go.

But in 1997, when Tony Blair came to power, I reacted with joy, not just with relief. That’s because, whatever his faults, he was a man that inspired. And indeed his government, despite its many errors, the most appalling of which was the Iraq War, did much to be proud of: huge improvements in the health service, freedom of information, devolution to the constituent nations of the United Kingdom, the Good Friday Agreement over Northern Ireland, and much more. 

In 1997, we could sense all that promise and, boy, it felt good to be alive.

But Blair’s government was elected by 13.5 million people. They represented 43% of the votes cast. Britain uses a first-past-the-post system, by which it only takes one more vote than any other candidate, without necessarily having a majority of the votes cast, to win election in a parliamentary constituency. That’s why a government can win a landslide majority in the House of Commons on a minority of the votes, as Blair did in 1997. 

Taking 43% is actually quite respectable.

The 2024 election also gave Labour a landslide majority in the Commons, but this time it took only 9.7 million votes, 3.8 million fewer than won by Blair in 1997. And that represented only 33.8% of the votes cast, not a great deal more than one vote in three. Putting it another way, there were very nearly two votes against Labour for every vote for it.

What makes those figures particularly stark is that at the previous election, in 2019, Labour had its worst result since 1935. It took just 202 seats in the Commons, under half its haul this time. And yet it took 32.1% of the votes cast – so though it has more than doubled its total of seats, Labour only added 1.7% to its percentage of the popular vote.

That’s the difference between the catastrophic defeat last time and the historic landslide victory at this election (Starmer will have more Labour MPs behind him than Blair did).

What this means is that what has taken Starmer to Downing Street isn’t a huge wave of support. It’s a tsunami of dissatisfaction, even bitterness, directed against the Tories. A well-deserved tsunami. But it leaves Starmer with a massive task to win positive support for Labour. He has to do it quickly. His majority of over 170 looks unassailable, enough to carry him through to victory at the next general election too. However, if you look at the percentages of votes cast, you can see that it’s a lot more fragile than that, with a couple of percentage points marking the difference between massive victory and crushing defeat.

After all, looked what happened between 2019 and this year. Back then, it was the Tories who won a landslide. This year, they’ve lost 250 seats and emerged with the lowest number of MPs in their history. That’s how quickly and how massively things can switch around.

Starmer understands all that. In his first speech as Prime Minister, he explained:

our country has voted decisively for change, for national renewal and a return of politics to public service. When the gap between the sacrifices made by people and the service they receive from politicians grows this big it leads to a weariness in the heart of a nation, a draining away of the hope, the spirit, the belief in a better future. But we need to move forward together. Now, this wound, this lack of trust, can only be healed by actions, not words. I know that. But we can make a start today, with the simple acknowledgement that public service is a privilege and that your government should treat every single person in this country with respect. If you voted Labour yesterday, we will carry the responsibility of your trust as we rebuild our country. But whether you voted Labour or not – in fact, especially if you did not – I say to you directly my government will serve you. 

He knows he needs to rebuild trust and he can only do that by serving the electorate, especially the two-thirds of electors who voted against him. I wish him well with that task. It’s a big one, and Britain needs him to succeed in it.

Before I leave, I have to mention the man he defeated, the outgoing Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak. When he announced his resignation, he said:

Whilst he has been my political opponent, Sir Keir Starmer will shortly become our Prime Minister. In this job, his successes will be all our successes. And I wish him and his family well. Whatever our disagreements in this campaign, he is a decent, public-spirited man who I respect.

It’s refreshing to hear a politician talking about an adversary as someone he can respect. One of the worst aspects of politics today – especially in such campaigns as Trump’s in the US – is the apparent belief that it’s not enough to defeat the other side, you have to eliminate them.

Adapting a phrase from Macbeth, I can say of Sunak that nothing in his time in office became him like the leaving of it.