Eyre Lines

The exit poll was right…

…and that is most of the shock. In conscience, I’m not sure whether the exit poll was right because it was far better constructed than previous polls (though by all accounts it was, taking into account at least some subtleties such as what the Brexit vote had been) or because the pollsters have to be right sometime.

There were other shocks – departures such as Alex Salmond and Angus Robertson for the SNP, Nick Clegg for the Liberal Democrats and, for the Tories, Gavin Barwell, Jane Ellison, Simon Kirby, Ben Gummer and Nicola Blackwood. Sadly, Amber Rudd (Home Secretary) was not among the fallen… by less than 400 votes.

What does this result tell us? In conscience, it is somewhat difficult to say with clarity. The Liberal Democrats have been squeezed in a good bit of England and Wales, but have come back fairly strong in Scotland – but in Scotland, so have the Tories and Labour. The SNP should not feel too disconsolate – they did, after all, win at the last election with swings of as much as 40%, and had very close to a clean sweep of Scottish constituencies; it was always very likely that they would lose several seats. So far as Labour is concerned, Jeremy Corbyn should be feeling very happy indeed; against predictions of a wipeout to less than 200 MPs, the party has done really well. It’s just a shame for him that the Conservatives picked up quite so many seats in Scotland, as they can now cling to power with the help of the Democratic Unionist Party (of Northern Ireland), who are basically UKIP but with nasty accents and a fundamentalist outlook. Five less seats or so, and we might have seen a failed Queen’s speech and Labour attempting to form a minority government, which would probably have succeeded. In Northern Ireland, the DUP have wiped out the Official Ulster Unionists, while Sinn Fein have wiped out the Social Democratic and Labour Party; NI is now a two-party system for the first time in 40 years or so.

UKIP got wiped out, typically losing around 10% of the vote – and they didn’t stand in quite a few constituencies, which benefited the Conservatives quite a bit, although not as much as UKIP must have hoped. Their votes didn’t, however, obviously benefit just the Conservatives (which one would have expected, given that UKIP’s sole policy was a hard Brexit), prompting regular comments during the election coverage of “swing from Labour to Conservative” or vice versa (generally Lab-Con in high Brexit areas, Con-Lab in high Remain areas) which irritated me hugely. What I think was happening was more that the UKIP voters voted Tory, and there was a consistent swing from Tory to Labour, just varying according to how anti-EU the constituency actually was – and even then, considering that the turnout was far better than in recent elections, I doubt there were all that many people formerly voting Tory and now voting Labour – it seems far more probable that some of the Tory voters stayed home and that Corbyn had managed to excite Labour voters (particularly young people) so as to increase their turnout disproportionately. Labour did do particularly well in seats with a high student population, and students have never previously been known for turning out in droves, but this time they did.

But it makes no sense, when a party shows an increase in its share of the vote, to talk of a “swing from them to…” another party, even where that party has increased their share rather more. That’s just daft talk.

The increased turnout itself is a very good sign for our democracy. Turnout in the 50-60% range has been replaced by turnout in the 70-80% range in many areas.

The big loser was, however, Teresa May. A few weeks ago, I complained bitterly of her wanting to ditch the Fixed Term Parliaments Act at the first opportunity, and of the other parties obediently rolling over and allowing her to do that. What she wanted and expected, of course, was to get a much increased majority on the strength of the polls, attacking Labour at a time of her choosing (which the Act was designed to stop happening). Instead, she lost the thin working majority and replaced it with a wafer thin one which relies on the DUP. I certainly didn’t appreciate her trying to game the system, and it seems the voters en masse didn’t appreciate it either.

She also lost on the basis that she campaigned on the basis of “vote for ME”, with the slogan “strong and stable government”. I don’t think the British electorate want presidents, and it was a very presidential campaign. Lastly, she lost on policy – the manifesto showed up the “nasty party”, with even more cuts for the old and the sick than have already been imposed, and we’ve frankly had enough of that.

Finally, what does this mean for Brexit? Well, with DUP support, no doubt May is going to keep trying for a “hard Brexit”; the talks are set to start in under two weeks, and there is no mechanism for stopping that. Hopes that this result might have killed a “hard Brexit” look unfounded. However, even with the DUP support and the probable absence from Westminster of the now 6 Sinn Fein MPs, the majority (which I calculate as 9) is too small for us to be able to rule out a revolt – there are still significant numbers of Tory MPs who were always Remainers at heart, and she needs pretty much every one of them. There are stories of thousands of voters being turned away from the polls because of the use of out-of-date electoral registers in several constituencies, and I can’t rule out a small crop of by-elections, assuming those results are declared invalid by election courts; that might further erode the figure.

Finally, the Tory party are not historically kind to failed leaders, and May has failed worse for them than any leader I can think of since Anthony Eden. I can see a divided party, with infighting and with a leadership contest in sight. The only thing which may save her is that the Conservatives think that if they change leader and call yet another election to give that leader a mandate, the electorate will punish them even more than they have already.

I think they’re right. But electoral prudence hasn’t always stopped them in the past.

Interesting times…