The UK Election Results Explained
Yesterday millions of Brits voted - and this morning we have not only the results but a new government. So we unpack the results of the UK General Election but also what it means for both Labour and the Conservatives.
Transcript
00:00The Labour Party has won this general election.
00:02And that's it. 14 years of Conservative rule has, this morning, come to a rather brutal end.
00:09After a relatively short but terribly bruising campaign,
00:13the Conservatives have been reduced to their lowest seat share ever,
00:16with them dropping below the 156 seats that they won in the 1906 general election.
00:23On the other side of things though,
00:24Labour have achieved almost the highest seat share in their history,
00:27getting very close to the huge 418 seats that they won in the 1997 general election.
00:34It's not only Labour who've had a good night though.
00:36The Liberal Democrats have also had a very good night,
00:39with their seat share ticking up to a huge 71 seats,
00:43the highest seat share ever, and up from only 11 in 2019.
00:47This is, in fact, even higher than their seat share in 2010,
00:51when they agreed to a formal coalition with the Conservative Party.
00:55Similarly, it seems that Reform UK have had a pretty good night too.
00:58They've gone from no seats to a pretty respectable four seats.
01:02Even more impressively, it seems they've achieved an even more respectable 14.3% of the vote.
01:08The Greens didn't have a terrible night either,
01:10with them not only holding on to Brighton Pavilion,
01:12but also gaining Bristol Central, Waverley Valley and North Herefordshire.
01:17The only other party that had a pretty bad night was the SNP,
01:21who were damaged by their ongoing scandals and their very recent change of leader.
01:25Despite their electoral dominance in Scotland over the last decade or so,
01:29last night they received their lowest seat share since 2010,
01:32winning only nine seats.
01:34This is a significant decline since 2019,
01:37when they won 48 out of the 56 available in Scotland.
01:42Obviously, this will raise a couple of key questions.
01:44The first is whether this is the beginning of the end of SNP dominance in Scotland,
01:49and secondly is what such a terrible result will mean for the cause of Scottish independence.
01:54So anyway, these are the headline results from the election,
01:57but let's dive a little deeper and have a look at what happened.
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02:13Now, the key event from last night occurred at 10pm,
02:16when we got our first indication of what was to come in the release of the exit poll.
02:21Now, the most shocking thing to note in the exit poll here
02:24was the number of expected reform seats.
02:26The exit poll predicted that reform would get 13 seats,
02:30significantly higher than most of the MRP polls in the run-up to the election.
02:34However, there were some wobbles through the night,
02:36with some polls suggesting that the exit poll had overestimated the number of seats.
02:41The more observant of you will notice that it turns out that the exit poll
02:44had indeed overestimated, and in the end, reform achieved only four seats.
02:49The other shocking find from the exit poll was the number of predicted Tory seats.
02:53Prior to election day, many of the MRP polls were predicting below 100 Tory seats,
02:58while the exit poll predicted that the Tories were going to win 131 seats.
03:03What followed was deeply chaotic,
03:05and something that made writing this video through the night even more difficult.
03:09As the results started coming in, it appeared that the exit poll was slightly wrong,
03:13although the BBC and ITV couldn't quite agree in what direction.
03:18In the wee hours of Friday morning, the BBC updated their prediction,
03:22with them suggesting that the Conservatives were going to win more seats,
03:25while ITV updated theirs and predicted that they would, in fact, win fewer.
03:30As things stand, it appears that the Tories have won
03:32slightly fewer than originally predicted, but not significantly.
03:36Anyway, overall results aside,
03:38the night was also particularly interesting when it came to individuals.
03:41There were two properly shocking and unexpected results.
03:45The first was Jonathan Ashworth unexpectedly losing his seat to an independent candidate.
03:50Ashworth has previously been the Shadow Health Secretary,
03:53and up until today, was the Shadow Paymaster General.
03:56It appears that the loss of his seat has been a result of Labour's stance on Gaza,
04:01something that could cause problems for the incoming Labour government more generally.
04:05The second unexpected result was Jeremy Corbyn's election in Islington North.
04:09Having been deselected as a Labour MP,
04:12Corbyn opted to stand in his constituency as an independent.
04:16He did, however, make the decision to stand rather late in the election cycle,
04:20something that led to a decent proportion of journalists and pundits
04:23to believe that he was going to lose the constituency to the new Labour candidate.
04:28This wasn't the case though, and Corbyn secured himself a pretty decent majority.
04:33So, now that we've gone through exactly what happened through the night,
04:36it's worth going through what this all means for the main parties.
04:40Now, the most interesting party to discuss right now are the Conservatives,
04:44who, as we've just discussed, lost some pretty major figures through the night.
04:48At the time of writing, Sunak has not yet announced his resignation as Conservative Leader,
04:52although he is expected to either this morning or in the coming days and weeks.
04:57This will naturally kickstart a Tory leadership election.
05:00The question now is who would take over?
05:03While it's a little too soon to tell,
05:05there are some candidates that are in a particularly strong position right now.
05:08Kemi Badenoch is in the strongest position.
05:11She's got a rather strong following among right-wing Tories,
05:14both in Parliament and among the membership.
05:16What really bolsters this position is the fact that one of her key rivals for the leadership,
05:21Penny Mordaunt, lost her seat last night.
05:23It is worth mentioning though that there has been an issue in Badenoch's constituency
05:27with postal votes, and if this is challenging the courts,
05:31it could cause problems for her candidacy in the Tory leadership election.
05:35Anyway, someone else that there's some chatter about in terms of taking over the Tory leadership
05:39is Nigel Farage and his potential defection from Reform UK in order to lead the Tories.
05:44After all, he now has a seat in the House of Commons,
05:47and there are some relatively senior members of the Conservative Party
05:50who have gone on the record as saying that they would like Farage to join their party.
05:55Only the next few weeks will show exactly what happens here,
05:57but if you do want to stay informed on this, make sure you subscribe to the channel.
06:02Anyway, what happens next for Labour is quite simple.
06:05The new Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, will meet the King and agree to form a government in his name.
06:09He'll take office at Downing Street, assemble his first cabinet,
06:12and could even represent his party in a PMQ session before the imminent summer recess.
06:18They will soon begin implementing their policy platform as outlined in their manifesto.
06:22Whether they're successful at implementing this is not yet known though,
06:26and something we'll need to keep an eye on through the next few years of Labour government.
06:30Regardless, this is clearly a monumental election for Labour and the UK.
06:35And when these kinds of elections happen,
06:37people tend to like to save newspapers and magazines with the headlines for posterity.
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07:02the countries likely to join the EU next, the latest from Gaza,
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