Cleansing rain falls on a Tory-free Wales this morning

Ben Wildsmith

Out, damned spot! Cleansing rain fell on a Tory-free Wales this morning after the UK acted in concert to evict the party not only from power, but from the national conversation.

After five years that saw us enduring hardship and upheaval that has changed us forever, the driving emotion of this election result was revulsion.

For people bereaved during the pandemic, homeowners whose mortgages have soared,
people suffering from cuts to a range of public services, and those whose pensions have been devalued, governance since 2019 has seemed like abuse.

At the very time when wise and gentle leadership was needed, the Conservatives offered irresponsible, callous politicians whose personal behaviour often reflected the public decline they oversaw.

Many chose not to face the electorate at all, standing down before the public could issue its verdict. Those who remained, including the inconsequential Rishi Sunak, didn’t so much campaign as cower through the last six weeks, bracing themselves for their just desserts.

The result is less a political decision than it is a trauma reaction from voters whose decency has been outraged and who needed to be seen.

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Unprecedented

Refreshing as rain can be, though, it doesn’t provide a backdrop for a new day in the nation’s mood. A disciplined Labour campaign saw the party achieve an unprecedented majority without significantly increasing its share of the vote.

Many of its gains were the result of the Tories haemorrhaging votes to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. You Gov published a poll this week of people’s reasons for voting Labour.

48% responded that their motivation was to remove the Tories, a further 13% because the country needed a change. Only 5% of respondents cited approval of the party’s policies as their reason.

It's far from clear what the party intends to do in office for many people, me included. A vague manifesto and a front bench that lacks many recognisable figures leaves the party with a huge mandate but no defined mission.

While the public is clear that it demands sensible behaviour, the result offers little insight into how voters want the country to change.

Labour’s support in this election is so broadly drawn that some of it is likely to evaporate as soon as policies are announced. It’s not possible to govern for the equal benefit of traditional voters in the Valleys, for instance, and those in English constituencies that previously voted Conservative as a matter of religion.

Something will have to give, and which way Starmer’s government leans will have far-reaching consequences.

Unified

In France, Emmanuel Macron moved into the centre ground from the left and tried to cohere the nation around traditional economics and cautious social reform. Labour will be eyeing the results on Sunday’s French election to see if managerial polish is, in fact, enough to stabilise a nation that is unified in dissatisfaction with the status quo.

With anti-Tory sentiment the overwhelming factor in today’s result, it may transpire that second places and shifts in vote share reveal more about the nation’s feelings than the headline figures.

Reform’s 13% is significant enough to demand attention but also evidence that Farageiste populism doesn’t cut the mustard for mainstream right-of-centre voters.

Subtract Farage himself from the equation and, for now at least, there is not a base for radical conservatism in the UK.

Nature abhors a vacuum, however, so if Starmer’s Labour steps into the huge Tory-shaped hole on the right of UK politics, the Lib Dems, Greens, and Plaid Cymru have the momentum to grow exponentially on the left.

The SNP, paradoxically, have squandered that position by underperforming in office. Labour should be taking notice of that, too.

Decency drove last night’s result. Voters lashed out at its scarcity in the Conservatives and signalled their approval for it in the Lib Dems, Greens, and Plaid Cymru.

The recent machinations of internal Labour politics suggest they may be disappointed in that regard when it comes to Labour but, for now, Keir Starmer has a clean slate and a mandate to draw up a new UK. We’ll all thrash out the implications of that when he gets started.

Today, let the rain wash away the stench of 14 years of disgrace. On that, for once, we can all agree.