Aftermath, Part 1 - Where Did All The Votes Go?

So, that didn't go so well.

Immediately after the election, the Guardian published data showing where Labour's vote had gone:

Labour to Conservative - 4.72%
Conservative to Lib Dems - 1.34%
Labour to Lib Dems - 6.06%

The impact of the Brexit Party (BXP) on Labour has already been noted - in seat after seat, the BXP absorbed Labour votes and allowed the Tories to take the seat on relatively small gains.  In Blyth valley, the Conservative vote went up by about 2,000 - small change.  But the Labour vote dropped by 6,000 - 3,000 stayed at home and 3,000 appears to have transferred to the Brexit Party.  And this allowed the Tories to take the seat.

(It is a shame the figures don't include the BXP.  I imagine the transfer would be small, but critical in a lot of seats.)

But the third figure is also interesting.  Labour lost a lot of votes to the Lib Dems, and as a result neither went anywhere.  In spite of Swinson being ousted in East Dunbartonshire and ending up a couple of seats down on 2017, they actually increased their vote share substantially by absorbing Labour votes.  In 2017 the Lib Dems won a national vote share of 2,371,861, or 7.4% of the vote. In 2017, their vote was 3,696,423, 11.6%. It seems unlikely that the extra illion were people inspired by Swinson's charismatic leadership. It looks like they absorbed a lot of Labour voters.

Perhaps the hidden story here is that Labour lost Leave votes to BXP AND Remain votes to the Lib Dems, with both sides of the argument rejecting Labour's measured, sensible Seocnd Referendum compromise. Be interesting to know - though there is probably no way of telling - how much of this was smart tactical voting, and how much Remainers dumbly rejecting the second referendum.

This time, Labour seems to have been caught between two vote sinks - the Lib Dems taking their votes on one flank, and the BXP giving disaffected Labour voters an option than stopped short of voting Tory. And the result of this mess is that it enabled a Tory government with a massive majority.

Some of it was intentional - Farage's ploy of standing own candidates in Conservative seats was an obvious but effective ploy. And some of it boils down to the continual madness of running two parties competing for the centre left vote. Thatcher's reign in the 80s was enabled by the SDP-Liberal Alliance absorbing 25% of the vote and returning fewer than 5% of the MPs.

It seems we've learned nothing since.

This is not about trying to transfer all the blame onto the Lib dem - another, oft overlooked, reason why Blair's government should be remembered as a failure. They had the opportunity to change things in 1997; but they decided the system was working for them, so they would keep it like it was.

Of course, subsequent incarnations of the Labour Party have failed to embrace electoral reform. Stupid short-termist idiots.