As a keen observer of UK politics (In the last decade I probably have followed British politics MUCH closer on a week-to-week basis than US (non-Florida) politics which as this site indicates I’m largely checked out of thanks to multiple factors) I’ve been in a deep mode of concentration the last few weeks. Because historically US and UK politics run in tandem, what would this UK election cycle tell us about the US? Does Labour’s big win mean the Democrats will cruise in November? Well, no but let’s ponder the other lessons.

• Damaged goods cannot be erased. The Conservatives (Tories) were finished when Boris Johnson got caught in one lie after another and then Liz Truss tried to do what Margaret Thatcher did over a decade in a short month while the nation was mourning the death of the Queen. Rishi Sunak never had a chance but his failure to really turn the page on Boris Johnson’s failures until it was too late doomed the Tories. This is a lesson for many of the Democrats about their culture of conformity and cultish behavior around President Biden after the rot has already set in. Nigel Farage’s rebellion on the populist right resembles that of Donald Trump, and his new Reform Party played major spoiler in this election. As a result of all this, Labour was always going to win this election BUT
• Labour didn’t perform in terms of vote share as well as polling indicated they would, nor as well they probably should have. The Green Party vote surged and the pro-Palestinian left peeled off of Labour and took several seats as Independents, including the return to Parliament of former Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn who was kicked out of the party for antisemitism (per a report from an outside commission). And in another seat a pro-Palestinian independent took enough votes from Labour that Ian Dunacn Smith, a former Conservative leader was returned as an MP. So this does mean the Gaza issue is alive and it definitely hurt Labour (Will Michigan be like this for the Democrats this year?). Perhaps also since the new Prime Minister Keir Starmer has a Jewish wife, those who are genuinely antisemitic didn’t want to support Labour. But I do believe a lot of the Labour vote share being low had to do with tactical voting on the left, something I will discuss in a bit.
• The Liberal Democrats, the national 3rd party since the 1980’s (in what is effectively a two-party nation, but perhaps not any longer…) with no real ideology that has meandered from the middle in the 1990’s to the left in the 2000’s to the austere right in the early 2010’s and then back to the middle as champions of Europe in the late 2010’s moved to the left again to contest this election. Irony being the LD’s have long been the great champions of Proportional Representation- why? For example in 2019, the party won 11.6% of the national vote but only about 6% of the seats. This has generally been a pattern since the 1980’s- yet this election the LibDems 12.2% of the vote share basically matched the 72 seats they won in the commons. How did this happen?
• Tactical voting. On the centre-left it has become a strategic thing to vote for whomever has the best chance to beat the Tories in your particular constituency- Meaning a lot of people who would normally voted Labour voted LibDem and vise verse based on where they lived. This also impacted Scotland as it felt like many who typically had backed the Scottish National Party (SNP) to back Labour – to block the Tories. The SNP backs Scottish Independence but is also a socialist party on economics.
• Stale campaigning and a lack governing competence in terms of perception doomed the Conservatives. It could also doom the Democrats in 2024.

I have a lot of additional thoughts on the UK Election which are likely to come out in podcast or video form in the near future.