>> In the 2024 UK general election, they got 14.3% of the vote. I don't think that's a "tiny minority". And if that's a "tiny minority", then the 12.2% of the vote Lib Dems got is an even tinier minority.
I don't disagree. I argued that the Labour win was a landslide, not that the Lib Dems' result was one. Me and the OP were disagreeing about where the Tories' voters went: Reform, or Labour. I argued they mostly went to Labour and my reasoning is that Labour are now the party that best represents socially conservative voters.
I agree that FPTP is skewing results and Reform might have fared better in a more representative system. Then again, the Lib Dems may also have got more votes. There was a lot of discussion in the elections about "voting strategically" to oust the Tories and avoid splitting the "liberal" vote. Maybe with a more representative system that wouldn't be an issue anymore.
FPTP is an embarrassment certainly. I don't vote in the UK, I'm a bloody foreigner, but if the system was more balanced I might even consider becoming a citizen. It's stupid that I've lived in this country for so long and I don't get to say where it goes politically. Although that would require me to swear an oath of allegiance to the king and I'm a republican. It's a tough call.
There is no official definition, but generally (in a UK context) a "landslide" is a party winning a big House of Commons majority – like the Tories in 1983 and 1987, or Labour in 1997. And by that standard, 2024 was a landslide – Labour won almost as many seats as 1997, and beat both of Thatcher's records.
What I think what complicates things: both Thatcher's and Blair's landslides were big majorities backed by a big percentage of the vote (> 40%). And since the two things go together, even though quasi-officially it is about the first not the second, it is understandable how some people take the second to be part of the definition as well. For 1983, 1987, 1997, it doesn't make a difference. But then suddenly in 2024 it does – Starmer won a big number of seats, but only 33.7% of the vote – only slightly more than Corbyn's 32.1% in 2019, and actually in absolute terms over 500,000 fewer votes. This is because turnout dropped significantly in 2024 compared to 2019.
> Me and the OP were disagreeing about where the Tories' voters went: Reform, or Labour.
Given the drop in turnout, I think quite a few Tory voters just decided to stay home.
> I argued they mostly went to Labour and my reasoning is that Labour are now the party that best represents socially conservative voters.
That's not numerically possible – the Tory vote dropped by 19.9 percentage points, while Labour only gained by 1.6 points and Lib Dems by 0.6 points. A small minority of Tory voters switched to Labour, but any more than that and Labour would have got a bigger vote share than they actually did. The Tory voters must have gone somewhere else – and given Reform got 14% of the vote, it is obvious very many of them went to Reform.
I don't disagree. I argued that the Labour win was a landslide, not that the Lib Dems' result was one. Me and the OP were disagreeing about where the Tories' voters went: Reform, or Labour. I argued they mostly went to Labour and my reasoning is that Labour are now the party that best represents socially conservative voters.
I agree that FPTP is skewing results and Reform might have fared better in a more representative system. Then again, the Lib Dems may also have got more votes. There was a lot of discussion in the elections about "voting strategically" to oust the Tories and avoid splitting the "liberal" vote. Maybe with a more representative system that wouldn't be an issue anymore.
FPTP is an embarrassment certainly. I don't vote in the UK, I'm a bloody foreigner, but if the system was more balanced I might even consider becoming a citizen. It's stupid that I've lived in this country for so long and I don't get to say where it goes politically. Although that would require me to swear an oath of allegiance to the king and I'm a republican. It's a tough call.