UK leftists

The result, in terms of the number of seats, is a Labour landslide, just shy of Tony Blair’s New Labour victory in 1997. But enthusiasm for Keir Starmer’s Labour was absent from this general election. The absolute vote for Labour was 9.6 million, lower than the 10.2 million vote Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour got in 2019, never mind the 12.8 million he got in 2017. Labour’s vote share, at around 34%, is the lowest ever for a general election victor, whereas in 2017 Corbyn got 40% of the vote, the biggest jump for a national party in one election since 1945.

The turnout, at less than 60%, was at least as low as 2001, and perhaps the lowest ever in a general election. None of this, of course, has stopped spokespeople for Labour, echoed by the capitalist media, spending election night endlessly repeating how it was only Starmer’s successful ‘change’ in the party (in reality into pro-capitalist New Labour) that had allowed them to go from the allegedly ‘worst election result since 1935’ in 2019 to victory in 2024.