It’s often been said, by political commentators and in Labour Party propaganda, that the 2019 election was the worst result for Labour for 80 years. Is this true?
Up to a point, it is. But only if you limit the argument to the number of seats won UK-wide. In 2019 Labour won 202 seats, which was less than in any election since 1935 (154 seats). But if you look at the share of the vote, you get a different picture. 2019 (32.1%) was better than 2015 (30.4%). 2010 (29.0%), 1987 (30.8%) or 1983 (27.0%).
Of course, in the end it is the number of seats that is important – but if you want to understand the background you need to look at vote share as well. There is one other factor, often ignored, which is the collapse of the Labour vote in Scotland after 2010. In 2010 Labour won 41 seats in Scotland; in 2015 that went down to just 1. So we need to look at what happened in England. If we do that, we see that in 2017 Labour’s share of the vote (41.9%) was the highest since 1997 (43.9%). It went down in 2019 to 33.9%, which was still the highest (apart from 2017) since 2005 (35.5%). In terms of seats, in 2019 Labour won 179 in England which was more than in 1983 (148) or 1987 (155).
As an aside, when looking at the opinion polls showing Labour on around 40%, it’s worth remembering 1951. In terms of vote share, this was Labour’s best result post-war (48.8%, UK wide), but the Conservatives ‘won’ the election with 321 seats to Labour’s 295.
Jeremy Dale 