Posted Jun 10, 2017
by
It doesn’t matter where you begin.
Canterbury, Tory since the First World War, went Labour.
Labour took over Portsmouth South, a Tory–Liberal marginal. Nick Clegg lost
Sheffield Hallam, the Tory ministers Jane Ellison and Ben Gummer were ousted,
and Amber Rudd was only barely saved by the recount. A string of bellwethers,
such as Warwick and Leamington, Reading East, Ipswich, Peterborough and Enfield
Southgate, turned Labour. Mountainous SNP majorities fell. Supposed London
marginals such as Ealing Central, Tooting and Hampstead and Kilburn became safe
seats. Labour had its biggest surge in vote share since 1945, with Corbyn
racking up just short of 13 million votes, 40 per cent of the total, after
coming from twenty points behind. The political map has been completely
re-drawn.
Just as important was the dog that didn’t bark. The “UKIP
effect” was, for good reasons, expected to maul Labour in the rustbelts of the
North and West Midlands. Not a bit of it. Except for a few interesting cases,
such as Stoke and Mansfield, Labour came back with increased majorities.
It is hard to remember, in the face of all this, that Labour
didn’t actually win the election. Because, while Jeremy Corbyn didn’t become
Prime Minister, he did pull off the most stunning upset in recent political
history. And he did this by turning out voters who, according to all received
wisdom, would never vote, above all the young and poor.
