General Election 2019 - a Statistical Analysis

2019 Tories - 43.6%, Labour - 32.2%, Liberals - 11.6%

2017 Tories- 42.4%, Labour- 40%, Liberals- 7.4%

In 2019 the Tories were up by 329,767 votes compared to 2017,   but Labour was down by 2,582,011 votes. So not all Labour losses went directly to the Tories by any means. Where did they go? The Liberal Democrats gained 1,324,562 votes, and the Greens 340,032 votes. This was a change from 2017 when Labour won most of the anti-Tory vote. That was a factor in Theresa May’s miscalculation when she called the election, based on the Tory projected share of the vote.

In 2019 the anti-Tory vote was more fractured, allowing Tory MPs to be elected on a minority vote in a number of constituencies; for example in Kensington and Stroud, where a Liberal and Green candidate respectively divided  opposition votes.  Liberal gains however would not have come exclusively from Labour. Some Tory veterans were calling for a Liberal vote. Even if all the Liberal gains resulted from Labour losses this would not account for the whole slump in the Labour vote.

 Some Labour voters turned to the Brexit Party. In Don Valley for instance the Labour vote was down by 14.8% but the Tories were only up by 1.4% on 2017. The Brexit Party gained 13.7% of the vote here, where there had been no UKIP candidate in 2017. In Sedgefield the Labour vote was down by 17.1%, the Tories up by 8.4% in comparison and the Brexit Party won an above-average 8.5% of the vote.

The other explanation not examined is the fall in voter turnout in some of the Leave voting constituencies which had returned a Labour MP in 2017 and previous years. Many former Labour voters did not turn out to vote in these constituencies. The Tories gained seats from Labour mainly in Leave voting constituencies when former Labour voters voted for the Brexit Party or did not vote. The outcome was that a Tory MP won the seat.

There was no uniform swing from Labour to Conservative across the country. In Leave voting constituencies the swing was anything from 8-13%. In Remain areas such as London the swing was often less than 1%.  In some constituencies there was even a small swing from Tory to Labour - for example in Enfield, Reading East and Putney.  In Islington (both North and South) the swing was from Labour to the Liberals. In constituencies which experienced a large swing to Labour in 2017 such as Ealing Central and Acton and Brentford and Isleworth, large Labour majorities were maintained in 2019. Constituencies which had Tory MPs as late as 2015 now have Labour MPs with 10,000 plus majorities.

Voter turnout across the country was more uneven - in an area with many young people such as Hove it was 75%. In Leeds North East, also a student community it was 71.5%. In Doncaster North however turnout was 56.2%,  with a 13.7% swing to the Tories, in Hull East 49% with a 12.3% swing, Hull North 52.2% with a 8.1% swing and Leicester West 53.6% with a 8.7% swing. In these constituencies the Labour MPs did just hold on to their seats but with reduced majorities.

So what does this say about Labour’s Brexit policy and its impact? Clearly it was fine in London and other large cities (including those in the north such as Liverpool and Manchester), but not in Stoke on Trent or the Don Valley. So what should Labour have done differently? It is very tempting to say that we lost because of our Brexit policy. Calling for a second referendum as agreed by Labour Party conference was seen by Leave voters as disrespectful and a betrayal. They were also appalled at the way in which Parliament had descended into chaos. 

However Labour MPs were quite rightly committed to opposing all Tory deals on Brexit and offering to negotiate a new deal, to protect workers’ rights for example. Those Labour MPs who panicked and voted for the Johnson deal on the grounds that they represented Leave constituencies did little to save seats or votes. Now that the Johnson deal is back in Parliament all commitment to workers’ rights has been stripped out.

We should also consider that we could have lost more Remain voters if we had not included a second referendum in our manifesto. We would have risked being squeezed from all sides, losing more votes to the Liberals and Greens in this election, many of them being young voters.  The issue of Brexit is divisive for the working class but the divide is partly on generation lines. The young generation is more inclined to be anti-Brexit. It also has been more inclined to support Labour.

For example these are figures given for the politics of the following age groups:

18-24 Labour 71%; 25-34 59%; 35-44 -50%; 55-64 56% Tory; 65plus - 64% Tory. (Guardian 14/12/19).  See also article Forget Leaflets: Demographics may Decide the Election Result (Guardian 6/12/19).

This intergenerational political dividing line has been played out in divisions on Brexit and much more, influencing priorities on housing and education for example. It explains the difference in politics between large cities and small towns. We can avoid the rhetoric about the so-called ‘metropolitan elite’. There are plenty of people in poverty in Hackney, Tottenham and even cathedral cities such as Canterbury. The difference between them and those in the ‘left-behind’ areas is hope versus despair. When you are young you cannot give up on hope.

So what has happened in what used to be called ‘Labour Heartlands’? It is now decades since the mines, mills and potteries were closed and no gainful employment replaced them. So the young of these areas left them behind to go into neighbouring cities. Many went into higher education as the percentage of students rose to 50%. No longer could a unionised workforce guarantee the sustaining of a community which would always vote Labour. At one time the Durham Miners Association could be relied on to get out the Labour vote. MPs did not even have to campaign. The unions provided political education, an antidote to balance the bias of the pro-Tory mass media.  Now there are no working miners in the entire county of Durham, and constituencies such as Bishops Auckland and Sedgefield have the look of a rural area, with small pockets of retired miners. So the Labour vote in these areas was on the decline before Brexit. It was the result of de-industrialisation, but aggravated by the way that many Labour politicians had taken their votes for granted and told voters that they had nowhere else to go.

 Between 1997, a time of hope, and 2015 nationally over 4 million votes were lost to Labour. Take the case of Sedgefield. It was won by Tony Blair in 1997 with 33,536 votes (71.2%). By the 2005 election the Labour vote had fallen to 24,421 (58.9%). With a new candidate in place, (a Blair aide) it fell again in 2010 to 18,141 (45.1%). However in 2017 the Labour vote increased to 22,202 (53.4%), in an election campaign led by Jeremy Corbyn! So the leadership then could not have been such a decisive issue. In Don Valley also the largest fall in Labour’s vote share was in 2010 when it dropped by 18.6%. In 2015 it climbed by 8.5%, and again in 2017 by 6.8%. However in 2019 it fell again and the MP lost her seat.

To put this result into a historical perspective, media pundits have come up with the soundbite that this is the worse result ever for Labour. (Actually the worse result ever was in 1931 with only 52 Labour MPs elected.)  Labour has now been reduced to 202 MPs. In terms of seats this is the worst result for Labour since 1935. In terms of percentage vote - results were worse in 1983 - 27.6%, with 8,456,934 votes, or in 1987 with 30.8% of the vote and 10,029,807 votes.

Though devastating to Labour supporters, this is actually Labour’s second best result out of the last five general elections in terms of votes cast. Labour won 10.3 million votes, compared to 9.5 million in 2005, 8.6 million in 2010, 9.35 million in 2015 - but 12.9 million in 2017. This may illustrate the eccentricities of the British electoral system but it is no consolation when we have lost an opportunity to bring about real political change in this country, an opportunity which seemed within our grasp after the 2017 election. However the results deserve a more detailed analysis and this article has hopefully made a contribution to this.

Going forward into a Labour leadership contest, there will be no appetite to return to the agenda of supporting cuts and austerity as in 2015. Notably all independents from both main political parties have lost their seats and Change UK is no more. On the issue of Brexit we need to be more cautious and have fewer knee-jerk reactions. We may consider that this election defeat was caused not by our policy on Brexit but our failure to prevent this from being a Brexit election. The Tories have used Brexit to carry out a raid on voters in some Labour constituencies and this has been enough for them to win a large parliamentary majority. It must be remembered though that the majority of Labour voters, whether Leave or Remain in the EU Referendum did not go down this route. Similarly the majority of Tory voters stayed with their party, whether they were Leave or Remain. The priorities and agenda of the Johnson government will be those of the ‘Tory Heartlands,’ not the’ Labour Heartlands’.

Barbara Humphries (Ealing Southall CLP)