What The UK Election Result Numbers Actually Say

SOMETIMES when you analyse the actual numbers of election results, they don’t match up with the popular or media narrative. For instance, Keir Starmer’s “Landslide Victory” with 9,712,011 votes was actually won with almost 600,000 votes less than Corbyn’s humiliating defeat with 10,269,051 votes in 2019. The difference was that Rishi Sunak’s Tories actually got less than half the votes (6,814,469) than Boris Johnson’s did (13,966,454).  So much for “Getting Brexit done”.

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But contrary to the opinion polls, which consistently showed Labour with 20% plus margins in their favour, Labour only got 10% more of the vote than the Tories (33.8% versus 23.7%). Sinn Féin were lambasted when their Irish local election result underperformed their opinion polling by a similar margin, but you won’t see many newspaper headlines calling this a disastrous result for Labour.

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The difference is, of course, the first past the post electoral system which can yield hugely disproportionate results. Reform got only 5 seats with 4,114,287 votes while the Lib Dems got 72 seats with 3,501,040. Together with the Greens (1,841,888 votes) and the Scots Nationalists (708,759 votes) these four smaller parties only got a total of 90 seats for a combined total of 10,165,974 Votes – well in excess of Labour’s 9,712,011 votes, for which they got 411 seats. And this is in spite of the Liberal Democrats getting their best ever seat result (72) despite receiving only around half the votes they did in 2010.

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How long can the UK political system retain its legitimacy with support for its two main governing parties going lower and lower?

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The main argument for First Past the Post electoral systems is that they are simple and yield decisive results and should thus result in political stability. Comparing the recent political histories of the UK and US with countries using proportional representation systems tends to undermine that argument. Instead, they are more likely to lead to political polarisation and the alienation of large parts of the electorate, as evidenced by a long-term historic trend towards reducing voter turnout.

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The main recent outlier to that trend was the Brexit referendum where every vote counted, whereas the majority of votes in “safe constituencies” matter little, if at all. This election was, if anything, a triumph for tactical voting and “vote management” with Labour, in particular, concentrating their resources of marginal target seats at the expense of their perceived safer seats. So much so that two shadow cabinet members, Thangam Debbonaire and Jonathan Ashworth, lost their seats.

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Northern Ireland

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The distorting effects of the First Past the Post system is also much in evidence in Northern Ireland, with much political polarisation, apathy, and alienation, and turnout, at 57%, even lower than in the rest of the UK, and the lowest in its history. The table below may be a little busy, but it reveals some interesting information:

Sinn Féin’s gain of 4.2% may not have yielded any additional seats, but many of its marginal seats are now relatively safe, and it has made gains almost everywhere else. In particular, it is now within 179 votes of taking East Londonderry and has made huge inroads into Colm Eastwood’s majority in Foyle.

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The DUP, on the other hand lost 8.5% of the vote resulting in three seat losses to Alliance, the TUV and UUP, and much reduced majorities everywhere else. Three of its remaining seats – Belfast East, East Antrim, and East Londonderry are now marginal, and their majorities in Strangford and Upper Bann are much reduced.

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The Alliance vote declined by 1.8% and resulted in one seat loss and one gain – with Sorcha Eastwood taking advantage of the DUP’s travails post Donaldson. The UUP’s Robin Swann had a clear win in East Antrim while the SDLP retained its two seats in Foyle and South Belfast with reduced majorities.

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The TUV’s Jim Allister had a narrow win over Ian Paisley Jnr. in North Antrim while ex-DUP independent Alex Easton had an easy win over Alliance’s Stephen Farry. Alliance have yet to retain any seat they have won and need to get better at building local organisations and doing the nitty gritty constituency work vital to consolidating swing support.

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It used to be said that Fianna Fáil could put up a donkey and win in certain seats, so fierce were party rivalries and loyalties. However, this election showed that the quality of candidate can still matter at the margins with Robin Swann beating Paul Girvan and Pat Cullen consolidating Sinn Féin’s position in Fermanagh South Tyrone.

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But the dominant theme has to be the consolidation of the nationalist vote while the unionist vote has fragmented somewhat more. Strangely, the Alliance Party managed to lose votes despite being in pole position to take advantage of the Donaldson Fiasco, while the SDLP continued its long term decline.

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Conclusion

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There has to be something wrong with a political system where 33.8% of the vote wins you a landslide majority and where Reform’s 14.3% of the vote wins them almost no representation. The result can be seen in the polarisation, alienation, and general apathy of the UK electorate with declining turnouts and where the new Labour government has almost no mandate to do anything other than end “Tory Chaos.”

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In Northern Ireland, 27% of the vote was enough for Sinn Féin to secure its position as the largest party in Westminster, Assembly, and Local elections and was quite impressive considering it abstained in no less than four constituencies. The DUP avoided the double whammy of losing another leader, but it is difficult to see where they can go from here. Their “Safeguarding the Union” agreement with the Tories will soon be forgotten while the sea border remains. Their East Londonderry seat looks like the next domino to fall.

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The Alliance surge appears to have stalled – they had an outstanding chance of winning three seats but won only one – while the UUP has avoided the ignominy of having no Westminster representation for the third election in a row. The SDLP managed to hold their two seats despite another decline in their vote, while Jim Allister finally won a seat for the TUV. He isn’t getting any younger however, and will there be life after Jim for the TUV?

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For the second election in a row, Nationalist MP’s outnumber Unionists, but with such a low turnout, it is difficult to say what that might translate to in a border poll. Certainly, engagement with Westminster elections is at an all-time low and Starmer has done little to raise expectations of better days ahead. Perhaps if he builds Casement Park and the new A5 motorway he can buy the Union some time. But Ulster has to start working better for the Union to be safe.

Graham Littlechild sadly passed away this year. He was a long standing member of the NLP until falling ill over the last few years. He was very active in leafleting until that time and stood in Council ward elections in London in 2010 and 2014. RIP

REGULAR READERS will know that Self-Determination is the raison d’être of National Liberalism.  As we noted towards the middle of last month (1) we ‘work towards creating a nation of sovereign citizens – and not a State full of servile subjects.’   

We feel that two key elements that’ll help create this ideal is ‘small’ government and the free flow of information.   

As National Liberals, we believe that ‘Small is Beautiful’.  We wish to devolve power down to the lowest possible common denominator.  The people should be close to their government, so everything (as far as possible) should be on a ‘human scale’.  Therefore, we’re opposed to ‘big’ government.  We are also highly suspicious of those politicians – particularly those who claim to be ‘liberal’ & ‘progressive’ – who seem to want to control every aspect of our lives.   

It goes without saying that, if people are to be close to their government, a free flow of information is absolutely essential.  And, as Caitlin Johnson (2) has noted, ‘Democracy of the vote without democracy of information is not democracy.  It doesn’t matter if people are able to vote as long as the media-owning class are able to manipulate how they vote.  “One person, one vote” is meaningless if influence and control of information is highly concentrated in an elite few.  And it is.’  

With all of the above in mind, we were delighted to come across the following article – which we reproduce below – written by Marc Joffe for the Cato Institute.  Marc Joffe is a federalism and state policy analyst at Cato Institute. His research focuses on government finance and state policy issues.  The Cato Institute itself is a Washington, DC libertarian think tank with a vison to ‘create free, open, and civil societies founded on libertarian principals.’   

As usual, we have kept the original North American spelling.  You can read the original article in the link below (3).  Please note that there are no official links between the National Liberal Party, the Cato Institute, the Orange County Register & Marc Joffe.  

A Practical Case Against Censorship  

The skills needed to get elected and to rise through bureaucracies are not necessarily those possessed by the wisest and least self‐​interested decision makers.  

By Marc Joffe  

This article appeared in the Orange County Register (4) on August 1, 2023.  

The National Liberal Party has a long-term policy of reproducing, deconstructing & commenting on articles produced right across the political spectrum. Here we reproduce an article – relating the free thought & free speech – by Marc Joffe of the libertarian Washington, DC-based Cato Institute.

IN THE late twentieth century, debates over free speech were typically resolved by citing the First Amendment and observing that freedom of expression was a basic human right. But today, that line of argument is no longer sufficient. Those of us who favor free speech must prove to a skeptical audience that it is a right worth protecting. Since people of good faith now find arguments for censorship persuasive, these arguments should be met on their own terms.  

A common view both in California and nationally is that important matters can be resolved by duly elected officials and their appointed experts. The reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic provides an example. Many Californians agreed that the governor, state and county health officials, and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) should handle the pandemic response. Once a state or county health officer promulgated a policy it was the citizen’s responsibility to follow these pronouncements without objection.  

This approach makes sense on its face. Qualified experts chosen by our elected leaders should tell us how to deal with a public health emergency. Anyone using misinformation, disinformation, or malinformation to oppose official policies is merely sewing confusion and potentially reducing compliance, leading to unneeded death and suffering. From this perspective, the logical response is to shut down opposing voices since they are jeopardizing public safety.  

This vision of a wise expert class protecting the public from inappropriate information has deep roots in political thought going all the way back to Plato’s Republic. Although Plato’s ideal city did not hold elections, it was ruled by a highly educated and public‐​spirited elite empowered to control the flow of information.  

But while in ancient Greece, it may have been possible for a small group of experts to accumulate all or most of the relevant information needed to make policy, this is no longer feasible in a complex, modern society. By March 2020, COVID-19 was affecting numerous countries where policymakers were taking different approaches and doctors were trying different treatments. An ideal response would require analyzing all these responses and their results.  

This is beyond the capability of a small expert group but can be handled by pluralistic communities of journalists and academic researchers. Media, including scientific journals, can filter through myriad possible policies to help find those that are the best. Liberal intellectuals have made a similar critique of central economic planning: planners are simply unable (5) to accumulate and act upon sufficient knowledge to manage a whole economy. Only through the operations of the market can resources be allocated effectively.  

Theoretically, a clique of elite public policymakers could read enough articles and consult with enough outside experts to make a semi‐​optimal decision. But there’s a second problem. Advocates of top‐​down decision‐​making implicitly assume that the decision‐​makers are selflessly working on behalf of the community.  

But this assumption does not hold. The skills needed to get elected and to rise through bureaucracies are not necessarily those possessed by the wisest and least self‐​interested decision makers. There is no reason to believe that those most anxious to obtain and wield power will make the best decisions.  

Indeed, Nobel Laureate F. A. Hayek argued (6) that the worst people tend to get to the top of government power structures. Hayek’s analysis focused on totalitarian governments in the run up to World War II, but similar dynamics are at work in contemporary democracies.  

A retrospective look at the state and federal COVID-19 response reveals a pattern of suboptimal communications and decisions. These include an initial lockdown that excluded big box retailers and public transit, needless beach and park closures that limited opportunities for exercise and fresh air, extended reliance on remote schooling, despite its obvious flaws, and vaccine mandates for high school and college students known to be at minimal risk of severe COVID outcomes.  

Those of us who questioned these policies were often ridiculed but could not be completely silenced thanks to constitutional protections. Ultimately, public pressure forced the relaxation of lockdowns and the reopening of schools. Had policymakers been insulated from public debate, and, yes, even ridicule, these destructive policies could well have persisted.  

Elites are not capable of governing optimally even if they are motivated to do so. Open debate serves as an essential check on power that often leads to better decisions. So even for those who are not persuaded that free speech is a natural right, it’s worth defending as a tool for better governance.  

 (1) https://nationalliberal.org/who-we-are  

(2)  https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/real-democracy-means-democracy-of  

(3)  https://www.cato.org/commentary/practical-case-against-censorship  

(4)  https://www.ocregister.com  

(5)  https://www.libertarianism.org/topics/socialist-calculation-debate?__hstc=38939644.8adf223dd745e4cd49d904b747519bda.1691337138712.1691337138712.1691342894094.2&__hssc=38939644.1.1691342894094&__hsfp=2282758685  

(6)  https://fee.org/resources/the-road-to-serfdom-chapter-10-why-the-worst-get-on-top/

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