‘Greatest swing in history’ - UK election analyzed
Labour achieved victory in the election, with the defeated Conservatives ‘clobbered’ and struggling with an ‘internal psycho drama’ according to a UK politics expert.
Amelia Hadfield, head of the politics department at the University of Surrey, explains how the UK electorate had had enough of Rishi Sunak’s party and simply had their say at the ballot box.
Amelia Hadfield, head of the politics department at the University of Surrey, explains how the UK electorate had had enough of Rishi Sunak’s party and simply had their say at the ballot box.
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00:00I think it's a resounding message of a rebuke, in fact, to the Conservative Party of profound disappointment at years of political malaise and failed policies in many ways,
00:16and a sort of ongoing internal psychodrama within the leaders of the Conservative Party as a whole.
00:23Quite frankly, after a crisis, after a crisis, after a crisis, a sort of omni-crisis, if you like, they've just simply had enough,
00:31and they have cast their votes, seemingly listening to and believing and following the clarion call for change from Keir Starmer of the Labour Party.
00:42Labour have affected the greatest swing in history, as we've seen. They've come, in fact, from a lower base than they originally had back in 1997,
00:52and they've clobbered the opposition. So you have 650 seats in the House of Parliament and the House of Commons, and Labour have claimed 412 seats.
01:02And the Conservatives have been really whittled right back down to 121, and the Lib Dems have done better than they've ever done in history, 71 seats.
01:12That's quite a bit higher than they themselves were expecting, and you have four Reform UK seats.
01:19That's certainly the protest vote, and that has eaten into the Conservative heartland, and it leaves it as something of a rump, and four Green seats as well.
01:29And we've also seen Labour doing extremely well in Scotland. The Scottish National Party, the pro-independence party, having been whittled right down to nine seats,
01:40so that's a deep disappointment. So there are many different messages being sent, but I think the most important one is voting with Labour for change,
01:50and voting against the Conservatives for any continuation of what we've seen in the last 14 years.