On election night, hundreds of people and several panels of experts came together at LSE to discuss and analyse the big issues behind the election results: the state of British politics, healthcare, the economy, foreign policy and democracy at large. Alexis Papazoglou goes through some of the big take-away thoughts from the evening.
The Sheikh Zayed Theatre was packed. Four hundred or so people had gathered for the honoured tradition of the LSE election night event. And even though the polls had been very consistent about who the winner was going to be, as the main screens flashed the count down to the exit poll results, the atmosphere felt electric with anticipation.
This is undeniably a Labour landslide and a Conservative defeat of historic proportions. With 412 seats, Labour didn’t manage to surpass its 1997 result (418 seats), but this is a momentous victory nonetheless. And even though the Conservatives at 120 seats didn’t fall into the two-digit-seats abyss that some polls had predicted, this is still the lowest number in the Party’s long history.
Tim Bale attributed the source of this large defeat to a word that would be heard many times again in the course of the evening, even though it was virtually absent from the election campaign: Brexit.
The Conservative defeat and Reform’s insurgence
For Tim Bale, one of the leading experts on the Conservative Party and its history and Professor of Politics at Queen Mary, this was a very bad result, a disaster even, but not an “existential defeat”. On the day of the election, Vince Cable argued from the pages of this blog that the 2024 election could end up being for the Conservatives what the 1924 election was for the Liberal Party: the end. This doesn’t seem to be the case. Tim Bale attributed the source of this large defeat to a word that would be heard many times again in the course of the evening, even though it was virtually absent from the election campaign: Brexit. Of course, a lot happened since David Cameron’s decision to call that EU referendum, in particular some very poor leadership decisions on behalf of the Conservative Party, according to Bale, but without Brexit we arguably never end up here.
Laura Serra, a Research Officer at LSE, pointed out that young voters seem not only to have abandoned the Conservative party, but they don’t “mature” into Conservative voters as they grow older, as they did in the past. This is not just because the young have progressive values that they hold on to – it’s because of “delayed maturation”. People buy houses, have children, get steady jobs much later in life, or not at all in some cases, so the Conservative party’s policies are not as appealing to them.
What surprised most panellists was the exit poll’s prediction of 13 seats for Reform. That has been proven wrong – Reform actually only gained four seats even though they received 14 per cent of the national vote, more than the Liberal Democrats who managed to secure 71 seats, beating most poll predictions. The perceived unfairness of the electoral system of first-past-the-post could come under scrutiny in the coming weeks (Labour secured 65 per cent of seats in parliament with only 34 per cent of the vote).
Tim Bale wondered what this victory will mean for Nigel Farage who has managed to fall out with all the parties he has previously led, and Laura Serra questioned the degree to which this Reform win has the potential that far-right parties have in other European countries (France, Italy, Germany). The young seem to support the far right in Europe, we are yet to see whether that turns out to be the case in the UK as well.
Setting aside the eye-watering rise in NHS waiting lists since 2010, Street hammered home the fact that for the first time in peacetime the life-expectancy of the nation is falling.
The NHS in intensive care
The tone of many of the panels was defined by a joint diagnosis of the malaise of the country, but none was as damning as the panel discussing domestic policy, and healthcare in particular. Andrew Street, Professor of Health Eonomics at LSE, was scathing of the state that the Conservative Party has left the NHS, which he described as being in “intensive care”. Setting aside the eye-watering rise in NHS waiting lists since 2010, Street hammered home the fact that for the first time in peacetime the life-expectancy of the nation is falling. He argued that the Labour Government will need at least 10 years to be able to return the NHS to the state it was in before the Conservative party took over in 2010, but was not at all optimistic about Labour’s proposed policies for getting there – making already burned-out NHS staff work longer hours.
Wendy Thompson, Vice Chancellor of the University of London, and Nicholas Barr, Professor of Public Economics at LSE, made the argument that NHS hospitals alone aren’t able to recover the country’s health. Thompson talked about “population health” and the importance of preventative measures that catch health issues early on, not allowing them to develop into conditions that require hospitalisation and surgery, which are a lot more costly. Barr on the other hand said that if he could only do one thing for public health it wouldn’t be anything to do with the NHS – it would be to ban ultra-processed foods.
The economy and how to grow it
The economy was next on the agenda. Growth is what is needed, no one disagrees with that. The question is how to achieve it. Private investment has to be a part of that, the panellists agreed. But again, how to achieve that is not clear. Eshe Nelson, a reporter for the New York Times, made the point about how important stability is for investors, and quipped that it would be “interesting” to see what difference having one Chancellor of the Exchequer for five years would be like, as opposed to having five in five years, as has been the case.
Tim Besley argued that the Labour Government can entice more private investment by offering a long-term vision for the country,
Richard Davies, Professor of Practice at the School of Public Policy at LSE, made some unpopular with the audience remarks about inequality in the country not being as bad as people think it is, and made the argument for consumer-led growth – pointing out that many households have accumulated wealth in the form of housing and savings that could be used in that direction.
Tim Besley, School Professor of Economics and Political Science at LSE, argued that the Labour Government can entice more private investment by offering a long-term vision for the country, something that has been missing lately. Labour’s green-growth strategy can be such a vision, though the devil is always in the detail. However, Besley also argued that private investment has to go hand-in-hand with public investment. Having a long-term plan can help with that too – inspiring confidence in the markets and thus allowing some borrowing and spending, something the markets punished the Truss government for.
Eshe Nelson’s closing remarks were a good segue to the foreign policy panel. The foreign press seems rather uninterested in the UK elections, Nelson observed. This should trouble the UK. The country needs to rethink its strategic relationships and engage with the rest of the world, rather than looking inwards, like it did during the long Brexit years.
The foreign policy panel agreed it was the single most defining event when it comes to the country’s standing in the world.
The B-word
It’s now hard to remember that the 2019 elections were essentially fought and won on the issue of Brexit. Boris Johnson secured his large majority by promising the country to “get it done”. Five years later, the word was hardly uttered during the election campaign. And yet, the foreign policy panel agreed it was the single most defining event when it comes to the country’s standing in the world. Iain Begg, Professorial Research Fellow at the European Institute, LSE reminded the audience that Keir Starmer has said that the UK would not be re-joining the EU in his lifetime. Keir Starmer is 60 years old.
Michael Cox, Founding Director of LSE IDEAS, echoed the mood of Begg’s comments “Brexit itself was a diminution of the country’s position in the world” – our position in the world is smaller. Maybe that’s not a bad thing, Cox argued, but, for historical reasons, the country has taken up a big military role (referring in particular to the UK’s nuclear capacity) that it seems unprepared to upkeep.
Michael Cox argued that “what happens in the US in November’s election will have a greater impact on our foreign policy that this election”.
Stephanie Rickard, Professor of Political Science at the Department of Government, LSE argued that even though international trade rarely features as a big issue in elections, it has a big impact on people’s pockets. The big upcoming foreign policy and trade challenge for the Labour Government will be whether to apply tariffs on China’s electric vehicles – will the UK align with the US, or the EU?
The upcoming US elections (strangely scheduled for Guy Fawkes’ night, when the UK elections took place on US Independence Day) were seen as hugely influential when it comes to UK’s foreign policy. So much so that Michael Cox argued that “what happens in the US in November’s election will have a greater impact on our foreign policy that this election”.
Peter Trubowitz, Professor of International Relations at LSE, argued that if Donald Trump makes a return to the US presidency, a Labour Government could use that as an opportunity to offer the EU extra protection with its nuclear capability, potentially in exchange for better trade relations. Not exactly “Global Britain”, but a way of navigating the geopolitical constraints.
The requirement of a photo-id in order to vote, for example, was explicitly designed, at the admission of Jacob Rees-Mogg, to disenfranchise younger voters who often don’t have a driving licence or passport.
A democratic culture beyond elections
“The future of liberal democracy” was a heavy topic to close the night with, but perhaps a hopeful one when it comes to the UK-context. As Mukulika Banerjee, Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology, LSE argued, the fact that the UK is a country in which elections are carried out peacefully, for the most part properly, and in which the loser admits defeat, is something to be celebrated and not taken for granted.
That is not to say there weren’t any dark shadows even in this election. The requirement of a photo-id in order to vote, for example, was explicitly designed, at the admission of Jacob Rees-Mogg (who lost his seat), to disenfranchise younger voters who often don’t have a driving licence or passport.
But as Banerjee also said, we need to think about what happens to democracy once elections are over. Does the UK have a strong democratic culture? While canvassing, Banerjee realised how little many people care about politics. Turnout to this election was very low – only 60 per cent of those eligible to vote voted.
General elections are rightly seen as “feasts of democracy”, and they do manage to capture the attention of people who might not engage much with politics the rest of the time. But unless we make an effort to grow a civic, democratic culture after each election, we might find that our democracy is more fragile than it seems, Banerjee warned.
Read more articles on the LSE blogs’ General Election 2024 series.
All articles posted on this blog give the views of the author(s), and not the position of LSE British Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Image credit: Martin Suker on Shutterstock.
