What does the election result mean for the future of British politics?

Tor Clark is Associate Professor in Journalism in the School of Arts, Media and Communication at the University of Leicester. A political journalist and regional newspaper editor, he has just covered his ninth UK general election, as an analyst for BBC Radio Leicester.

Here, he dissects what the election result means for British politics.

What a fascinating set of results the 2024 general election produced in the end, but what does it all mean for the future of British politics?

Acting as the studio analyst for the BBC Leicester all-night election results broadcast once again, I was in prime location for one of the most surprising sets of election results in the UK.

The only Conservative gain from Labour came in Leicester East. In Leicester South a little-known optician saw his way clear to beating Labour frontbencher Jon Ashworth out of the blue as an independent candidate, depriving him of a likely seat in Sir Keir Starmer’s cabinet. While the other Leicester MP, Liz Kendall, finished the week sitting at that cabinet table as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.

This was a spectacular result for Starmer’s Labour Party, going from the worst election result in their modern history less than five years ago, to its second best ever, only seven seats behind the landslide gained by Tony Blair’s New Labour in 1997.

There will be much discussion of why Labour won so big. Turnout was poor, around 60%, and compared to 2019, when Conservatives racked up huge numbers of votes in many seats, on a turnout above 67%, it looks like a lot of Conservative voters just didn’t vote this time. 

Labour benefitted from not being the Tories. The Tories suffered huge cuts into their vote from Reform, which hadn’t run candidates against them in 2019. The canniest players were the Liberal Democrats, who went from 11 to 72 seats by targeting the places they could win and ignoring those where they could not. Compare Lib Dem vote share in the North East with Devon and Cornwall for example to see that.

Reform got more votes than the Lib Dems but those votes were evenly spread over the UK. Reform did target a few key seats and won five of them. Interesting how three of their new seats – Clacton, Great Yarmouth and Boston and Skegness – were coastal towns, whose residents seem to have given up on both main parties.

Reform UK came second in 136 seats, often knocking the Conservatives into third. At the next election, Reform could become the main beneficiary of disillusion with the Labour government.

Looking at all the results, the four independent pro-Gaza candidates who beat Labour to take previously safe urban seats – including in Leicester – were interesting. Other independents got very close to unseating other serious Labour players – Wes Streeting in Ilford and Jess Phillips in Birmingham being two serious near misses. Labour needs to work hard to positively influence the situation in Gaza in its foreign policy to ensure it is not this vulnerable again at the next election in five years’ time.

So what next for our new government? The list of urgent priorities is very long. The economy, the NHS, social care, immigration, planning rules, boosting education, relations with the EU, as well as the on-going conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza.

Starmer’s government has got out of the traps very early and will seek to make the most of its honeymoon period while the Conservatives are still in shock and relatively rudderless, with Rishi Sunak’s resignation as leader and half his cabinet having been defeated in the election.

Labour will learn from Tony Blair’s regrets and try to get things done in this opening period of government to build a positive record on which to campaign for re-election in four or five years.

Meanwhile the Conservative Party must try to find a young, charismatic, centrist leader like David Cameron to rehabilitate its brand and prepare for the next election. It must choose a leader credible to the country rather than just the party, which is more right-wing than the electorate, but given Tory party members have the final say, it is doubtful that will happen.

So we enter a short period of relative goodwill towards the new government in the hope positive changes can be achieved.

And we should not forget that we’ve not only just freely participated in a remarkable democratic exercise, which so many of our fellow planet-dwellers can only dream of, but also, in a world of increasing political polarisation and acrimony, of cult personality politics, of easy answers to complex problems and of the rise and rise of populism, here in the UK we’ve just elected about as centrist a government as it is possible to imagine.