Gradually, and then suddenly. Ernest Hemingway famously described his characters’ bankruptcies.Thus came a brutal end to 14 years of Tory hegemony in Britain.
If the exit polls published just after 10pm are even half right, this is more of a punitive blow than a change of government, and a well-deserved retribution: Keir Starmer and his reconstituted Labour Party are projected to win 410 seats, giving them a majority of 170. The Conservatives have fallen to 131.
The Conservative Party has never tasted a defeat like this. This raises big questions for the most successful political party in British history. The stakes are existential. They may not survive.
And the terrible news for the Conservatives before dawn is that their predictions are almost always more than half correct. Professor John Curtice and his team are the foundation of these predictions, who correctly predicted 2010, 2015, 2017 and 2019. Nobody stole this election; the Conservatives faced the electorate and their wrath through the ballot box.
For the Labour Party and its leader, this night will be one of extraordinary achievement and redemption. The party will take control of the political scene with hundreds of new members, and the leader will have great powers to impose his will on the country and the party. That power will have to be used wisely, and perhaps generously. There are too many serious battles ahead to get embroiled in unnecessary ones. There will be celebrations, and the appointment of ministers will begin tomorrow. It may be time to set a course that the majority of the party’s members and those who wish him success can follow.
He wasn’t the only winner, of course. As voters flocked to the polls, his mission statement seemed aimed at anyone but the Conservatives. Ed Davey swam, ran, jumped, contorted and did whatever it took to get airtime and public attention, and in return he won 61 seats, up from the 46 he had taken from the Conservatives. The Liberal Democrats were back as the third largest party after the dark days of post-Clegg and post-Coalition governments.
The Greens are set to double their number of seats, making up for the loss of two seats for Councillor Caroline Lucas, while Plaid Cymru will also increase its number of seats to four.
It was a tough night for the SNP, who were initially expected to lose 33 seats, losing many of those to Labour, reducing their share to just 10. If true, this would be an electoral meteorite that resets the party contest in Scotland, brings an end to years of independence struggle and gives Scotland a new, devolved political identity.
The rejection of the Conservatives seems to have come from all sides. Early votes suggest that the Reform Party could win 13 seats from the get-go. If true, that would be another tally in the Conservative indictment. The modern party’s shift to nationalism has opened the door to Nigel Farage, who is more comfortable in dangerous situations than the Conservatives.
In many ways this has been a disheartening election, with important issues barely being considered, stale debates being overstated and a doomed Conservative Party trying to save itself with worn-out policies, divisive rhetoric and further support for the right-wing ideology that has turned its historic party (the former “party of power”) away from its guiding principles.
This was an election engineered to be cynical and divisive by the Conservative Party and its pawns in the right-wing media, which was their best hope of relief, or at least limiting the scale of the destruction.
But the predictions are in, and what is clear is the voters’ total rejection of a government that is tired, rudderless and amoral. This is the latest in a series of moves that have left the country in a worse state than it started in — gradually, then suddenly, then brutally.
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Hugh Muir is Opinion Editor of the Guardian.
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The Guardian newsroom: election results special
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