XPost: uk.politics.misc, aus.politics, talk.politics.guns   
   XPost: sac.politics, alt.society.liberalism   
   From: yourdime@outlook.com   
      
   Keir Starmer is the United Kingdom’s new prime minister after sweeping   
   away a 14-year era of Conservative rule by leading his center-left Labour   
   party to a massive landslide election victory.   
      
   British rejected the Conservatives by a historic margin, and Starmer will   
   be a very powerful prime minister.   
      
   But there are urgent issues needing his attention. And as the the dust   
   settles on the election, a number of eye-opening trends are clear.   
      
   Here’s what you need to know.   
      
   Labour’s huge, but fragile, landslide   
   Labour’s victory was seismic. It was very nearly unprecedented; only Tony   
   Blair’s Labour Party has ever won more seats in an election.   
      
   Addressing the nation before entering 10 Downing Street on Friday   
   afternoon, Starmer pledged a return to the politics of public service,   
   vowing to heal the “weariness at the heart of the nation” with “action not   
   words.”   
      
   But Labour’s win was also fragile. The vote breakdown made clear that the   
   election was as much, if not more, about the public’s anger towards the   
   Conservatives as it was about excitement for Labour’s offer.   
      
   Starmer’s party only increased its vote share by a few percentage points   
   from its dismal 2019 showing, even though it may end up with almost twice   
   as many seats. Starmer won a smaller vote share than his predecessor   
   Jeremy Corbyn did in 2017, an election that Labour also lost. It was   
   helped in seat after seat by a strong showing from populists Reform UK,   
   who tore votes away from the Conservatives.   
      
   Those stats highlight the oddities of Britain’s first-past-the-post voting   
   system, but also the dangers facing Starmer. He will govern with a   
   powerful majority in parliament, but the public coalition he has built   
   will not afford him a long honeymoon period.   
      
   He will be opposed by the Conservatives, but also by Reform, which   
   challenged Labour candidates in several seats around the country. And a   
   throng of left-wing support will also attempt to detract attention from   
   Starmer; his predecessor Corbyn, who had been expelled by the party, won   
   as an independent in Islington North and will become the face of that   
   opposition.   
      
   Starmer was far more popular than Sunak, opinion polls showed, but he has   
   never enjoyed the healthy approval ratings that Blair and Boris Johnson   
   once did, lacking the natural charisma or campaigning prowess of those   
   leaders.   
      
   “Election victories don’t fall from the sky. They’re hard won, and hard   
   fought for,” he acknowledged in a speech earlier on Friday. Starmer has   
   promised “a decade of national renewal,” a pledge that nods to the deep-   
   seated problems in Britain’s public services but also the lengthy stint he   
   intends to spend in government. Whether or not he completes that goal   
   could depend heavily on the early impression he leaves on the public as   
   Prime Minister.   
      
   In a sign of the potential fragility of Labour’s landslide, turnout is on   
   track to be the lowest for more than 20 years. With all but two seats   
   declared as of Friday afternoon, turnout was at 60% – down from 67.3% at   
   the last election in 2019. If confirmed, it would be only the second time   
   in more than a century that 40% of voters decided to skip the vote.   
      
   A devastating Conservative defeat   
   Unlike Labour’s victory, there are no two sides to the Conservatives’   
   performance. This was a woeful showing, after a dreadful campaign, and it   
   has consigned the Tories not just to opposition but to the cusp of   
   irrelevance.   
      
   Senior Conservatives fell like dominoes in seat after seat; the party was   
   decimated by Labour and Reform in the so-called Red Wall swathe of   
   battleground seats across North England and the Midlands, and by the   
   Liberal Democrats in affluent areas in southern England that it had   
   previously controlled for decades.   
      
   And a line of high-profile figures – the faces of a 14-year era of power –   
   stunningly lost their seats. Penny Mourdant, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Robert   
   Buckland, Alex Chalk and others were dumped from power. The outgoing   
   chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, narrowly clung on.   
      
   And the most sensational defeat was saved until last: shortly after 6 a.m.   
   Friday, in one of the final seats to declare, former Prime Minister Liz   
   Truss lost her previously ultra-safe seat.   
      
   She refused to speak after her defeat, leaving the stage with her fellow   
   candidates instead, attempting to retain a steely look on her face.   
      
   “I’m sorry,” Sunak told activists and voters after winning his count.   
   There was not much more he could say.   
      
   Before this election, only three Cabinet ministers had lost their seat   
   this century, and all were Lib Dems serving in coalition with the   
   Conservatives.   
      
   It opened up a furious and bitter backlash within the party about what   
   went wrong. “Our renewal as a party and a country will not be achieved by   
   us talking to an ever-smaller slice of ourselves, but by being guided by   
   the people of this country,” Mordaunt said after losing her seat,   
   implicitly taking aim at the populist wing of the party, which has   
   recently sought to pull it towards the right on issues such as migration.   
      
   Buckland was blunter. “I’m fed up with performance art politics,” Buckland   
   told the BBC. “I’ve watched colleagues in the Conservative Party strike   
   poses, write inflammatory op-eds and say stupid things they have no   
   evidence for instead of concentrating on doing the job that they were   
   elected to do.   
      
   “I think we’ve seen in this election astonishing ill-discipline within the   
   party,” he added.   
      
   A battle for control of the Tories   
   For some of the Conservative lawmakers who survived the wipeout, there was   
   little time for mourning.   
      
   A battle to seize the leadership of the party is underway after Sunak   
   announced he would step down as Tory leader. Senior MPs who ran in the two   
   recent elections for the post were pointed in their speeches, doing little   
   to hide their ambitions.   
      
   And the fight could be bitter. Two wings have split the party over the   
   course of the last parliament, and will seek to control it now – a   
   populist bloc who have employed tough rhetoric on migration and sought to   
   battle Reform for votes, and a moderate wing eager to drag the party back   
   to its “One Nation” roots.   
      
   “I’m sorry that my party didn’t listen to you,” Britain’s former hardline   
   Home Secretary Suella Braverman said at her count, in a speech that could   
   well have been addressed purely to the party members that will select its   
   next leader.   
      
   “(The) Conservative Party has let you down. You – the great British people   
   – voted for us over 14 years and we did not keep our promises,” she said.   
   “We’ve acted as if we’re entitled to your vote regardless of what we did,   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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