So here it is the first attack on the incredible Labour victory – attack the percentage of the vote. Now I don’t remember the Daily Mail complaining about the size of the percentage of the vote cast over the previous 4 general elections.

As can be seen from the table above over the 14 years of the last Conservative governing period the Tories have gained 288 more MPs than they were entitled to if we go by the vote share. But we do not use a Proportional Representation System to select our MPs. We use first past the post method and so it doesn’t really matter what the overall percentage is. What really matters is the efficiency of the vote distribution between constituencies . What this means is to win a seat a candidate needs one more vote than the candidate with the second highest number of votes – every other vote above that is wasted. However, if a political party were to be able to spread the voters out more evenly over more constituencies then they are likely to win more seats. This is what Labour achieved at this election.

To illustrate this point further just compare the number of seats that Labour won in 2019 to 2024. In 2019 Labour won 32% of the vote, just under 3 % less 2024 yet they crashed to one of their worst defeats with only 209 seats compared to 412 seats in 2024. It doesn’t matter how much Jeremy Corbyn might claim that he got almost the same size of the vote as Sir Keir Starmer. His record was disastrous when it comes to converting the number of votes cast for Labour into seats won. This lesson was well learnt by Sir Keir Starmer and today he sits in No. 10 and Jeremy Corbyn sits in his allotment shed. (I know he was re-elected but as an independent.)

Now I am not defending our voting system it is just that Labour really really played system to its own advantage. I might have more sympathy with those gnashing their teeth over Labour’s percentage of the vote if they had been complaining over the last 4 elections when the Liberal Democrats should have received an extra 236 MPs to the number they got. They did not.

Another attack on Labour is that their small percentage of the vote means they are vulnerable at the 2029 General Election. This is just nonsense. Back in 2019, after the General Election, Boris Johnson was master of all her surveyed and there was talk of him winning another two General Elections. How did that work out for him?

We live in a volatile world and now it would seem that that volatility is matched by the British electors behaviour when they vote. I have no idea what will happen between now and 2029 but I doubt the percentage of the vote Labour received in 2024 will have much influence at the next general Election.