Frances Ryan: This crushing Tory defeat is for Windrush, for Grenfell, for disability benefit deaths
And just like that, Britain kicked the Conservative party into touch.
Labour’s enduring poll lead long signalled victory for Keir Starmer – and this, coupled with an uninspiring campaign, resulted in a muted election for one so seismic. But watching the map turn from blue to red overnight, it was hard not to feel a kind of cathartic cleanse. This was close to a Tory wipeout by any definition. Former prime minister Liz Truss was spectacularly ousted, alongside a spate of cabinet members, including Penny Mordaunt, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Grant Shapps. Culture-war peddler Miriam Cates lost her battle, while Ben “vasectomies are free for the jobless” Bradley was cut loose.
Nothing will spoil Labour’s thumping landslide, but voters hurt by Gaza and other concerns dealt several blows. Iain Duncan Smith, early architect of austerity, survived because of a split vote with a former Labour candidate. Reform took only a few seats but their national vote share should trouble Labour.
At its heart, this election was less about welcoming Labour in than getting the Tories out. From austerity to Brexit to Partygate, voters have lived through an unprecedented era of cruelty, chaos and corruption. If a week is a long time in politics, 14 years of Conservative misrule has practically been a life sentence.
Many don’t believe anything will change with a Labour government, let alone soon. In the coming months, Starmer must show it can. For now, it is enough to sit and savour what has ended. To draw a line under the worst of governments and remember the millions of lives made poorer, sicker, more afraid.
Today is for Windrush, disability benefit deaths and Grenfell. It is for food banks, “go home” vans and the rape clause. For PPE contracts, cancer patients and Rwanda flights.
Goodbye to the vandals of Britain. How fitting they destroyed themselves in the end.
Katy Balls: A catastrophic loss the Tories will struggle to recover from in one term
The nicest thing to be said about the Conservatives’ election performance is that they managed to avoid a total wipeout. The predictions by some pollsters of the party being reduced to double digits proved a little wide of the mark – with Rishi Sunak instead slumping to 119 seats and counting. That means they remain His Majesty’s official opposition and avoid the humiliation of being treated like a fringe party by the broadcasters.
But this is where any crumbs of comfort stop for Sunak. Ultimately the Tories have suffered catastrophic losses that they will struggle to recover from in one term. The casualties include plenty of so-called Tory big beasts, including Liz Truss, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Penny Mordaunt and Grant Shapps. But perhaps more damning is the areas they lost in – seats that have long been blue, from Aldershot to Surrey Heath, as well as the gains made in the Midlands and north in recent elections withering away. The rebuild will be hard.
To make matters worse, there will be a small but noisy intake of Reform MPs including Nigel Farage, Lee Anderson and Richard Tice. This group has the potential to cause mayhem and divide the Tories further as they try to regroup and recover. The question that will dominate the coming Tory leadership contest will be what to do about Farage and his party – hug them close or push them away? The voters turning to Reform played a large role in the Tory party’s disastrous showing. In parts of the red wall, Farage can now claim his party is second to Labour.
The only other small ray of light for the Tories is that, despite Labour’s landslide victory, the early signs are that its vote share has not risen significantly from 2019 – so the size of the majority may not reflect a rush of public enthusiasm for Starmer. The difference between the two parties is a mix of Labour’s efficient campaigning in swing seats and the collapse of the Tory vote. But given this is the worst result in the Tories’ history, this will likely be little comfort to them in the coming years in opposition.
Chris Skidmore: The Tories abandoned conservative values – and paid the price
Responsibility for this historic defeat lies ultimately with the Conservative party’s abandonment of its traditional and trusted values of conservatism, and its replacing of these with the dog-whistle politics of division. In becoming a party that stated only what it stood against, eventually it stood for nothing, becoming a party of nowhere.
It didn’t have to be this way. When Rishi Sunak personally decided to row back on net zero and climate action, promoting new oil and gas and opening a new coalmine, I stated that this would become the greatest mistake of his premiership. It turns out it was also his greatest political error, as the party tonight lost not only in the “red wall” but across swathes of seats in the southern “blue wall”. Seats where voters believed the Conservatives cared about conserving our environment turned against Sunak’s hardline rhetoric.
I had no choice but to resign and leave the party when it turned against its climate record. Net zero is the greatest economic opportunity of the decade, bringing with it jobs, growth and regeneration. Sunak instead preferred to follow Reform’s corrosive culture war politics, which brought zero votes. The same could be said for the party’s incessant attacks on migrants, on international humanitarian law, on international students, on our institutions and even family meals on a Friday. Again, the pattern was the same: hate not hope, blaming others, blaming each other. It didn’t just lose the plot, it forgot where the theatre even was.
The country has not only voted for change: it has voted overwhelmingly to deliver the net zero mission that Keir Starmer has set out as one of his government’s five key priorities. Putting politics aside, we now have the opportunity to restore the consensus on climate action that is sorely needed. Carbon dioxide knows no political colours. We must all now work together in this new parliament to deliver the change and results that our environment urgently requires.
