Whether you’re just waking up or you powered through the night (like us!) with the help of C4′s Alternative Election, we thought we’d bring you a bleary-eyed recap of the election last night.
Firstly, and most importantly, the UK has a hung Parliament. What does this mean? The UK Parliament has 650 seats on offer, meaning a party needs to win 326 to earn majority rule. The Conservative party , despite receiving the most votes, will not reach the magic number of seats when all results have been declared. In order to retain power, the Conservatives will need to enter a deal with other parties – it is most likely they will look to work with the DUP, who won 10 seats in Northern Ireland.
Keep an eye on the news throughout the day because it’s possible that Theresa May will have to resign. As Prime Minister, May called this snap election to increase her mandate ahead of Brexit negotiations. The aim was to increase the Tory majority in government. At one point, the Conservatives were predicting a 100 seat majority over Labour. The Tories didn’t achieve this – in fact, they didn’t achieve a majority at all. This is quite definitively a loss for the Tories, even if they will not lose power. It is expected that May will resign from her position as leader of the Conservatives, although the situation is complicated by the impending Brexit talks.
Something we’re very excited by: young voters turned out in their hundreds of thousands! Voter turnout was up all around the country, most notably in university towns and the major cities. This has been an election in which the youth vote was captured, but severely doubted by the pollsters. We want to thank each and every young voter out there for heading to the polls and making their voice heard on Thursday. If you ever wondered whether your vote could really make a different, just look at East Fife: 2 votes separated first (SNP) and second (Lib Dem).
The UK accepted Jeremy Corbyn as credible opposition. Elected almost by accident as a Margaret Beckett ‘prank’, Corbyn has faced near constant fights for power within his own party, but the election result clearly shows the support of the UK public for a more left-wing Labour party. Even as the polls closed, the remnants of the centrist Blair government were plotting leadership challenges against a Corbyn they’d predicted would fail – taking 40% of the vote and gaining 30 seats on 2015, Corbyn has put his opponents to bed. For now.
In Scotland, the SNP lost a significant number of seats. We’ll be fair: in 2015, the SNP rode a wave of nationalist sentiment into Westminster, winning almost every seat on offer above the border. They were never going to emulate their successes of two years ago, and 35 seats won is well removed from the wilderness in which they struggled pre-indyref. Losing multiple seats to the Tories, however, was probably not on the cards. Ruth Davidson had one heck of a night.
The award for the expected struggle of the night goes to UKIP, who won no seats whatsoever. A single issue party, maybe this was to be expected – after all, they’ve achieved their current aim of extracting the UK from the EU (or started to, at least). Other parties wiped out at Westminster are the SDLP and the UUP of Northern Ireland.
So that was the General Election 2017 in a (fairly mouthy) nutshell. Obviously there are hundreds more little stories we could have shared – the Tories losing Canterbury for the first time since 1918, perhaps? Or maybe Clegg losing his seat in Sheffield Halam? The return to a two-party system, even. Maybe next time, eh?
