July 3, 2024 - 7:00am
The election in 2010 was meant to be a nadir, of sorts, when the combined vote of Labour and the Tories fell to its lowest ebb since 1918 — with Cleggmania inching the Liberal Democrats beyond even the giddy heights of opposition to Iraq.
To many this demonstrated that voters were becoming more “polyamorous” — and that even the toughest “heartland” could be rendered soft. Although the next election saw a slight bump for the “big two”, the collapse of the Lib Dems happened alongside the Greens amassing a million votes, Ukip capturing nearly four million, and the SNP winning almost every seat in Scotland in 2015.
The following election in 2017 was the great exception. Despite the media instructing the public that Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May were useless and not “electable”, the combined vote of the parties they led hit 84%. But that proved a blip, and the old trend soon returned. Indeed, this week’s election, if some pollsters are correct, could outdo 2010, with the combined vote of the two major parties falling to their lowest levels in more than a century.
Unlike in 2010, however, this year’s trend has been driven by non-established parties, specifically the Greens and Reform UK. Independent candidates may not win in many places, but they are set to win a record number of votes nationally.
All of this also raises questions regarding Labour’s mandate to govern. After all, Keir Starmer could be set for a majority in the hundreds while plausibly winning fewer votes than Corbyn seven years ago. One YouGov poll, which put Labour on 36% (equidistant between their 2017 and 2019 showings) even furnished the party with a majority of 244 — the largest enjoyed by a single party in history. The closest comparison would be 1931, when the Tories were the last party to win an overall majority of votes.
One can answer that such a huge majority — larger than anything achieved by Baldwin, Attlee, Thatcher or Blair — is simply a fair reflection of what would be a stunning margin of victory. Westminster, after all, is often a “winner-takes-all” system, and triumphing by double digits over the runner-up will produce strange results. But again, this was designed for a world of two parties and high turnout — neither of which is likely to prevail on Thursday. If Starmer gets anything like the polling predicts, it’s hard to see how a crisis of legitimacy (ironically) doesn’t ensue for the rest of this decade.
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