In what has been hailed in the media as a "landslide victory", the Labour Party under Kier Starmer won an outright majority in the House of Commons in the July 4 general election.

The electoral coup was secured with a share of the vote of only 33.7%, which, as has been pointed out by many commentators, is less than that achieved by the party under Jeremy Corbyn in 2017 (40.0%). The share of the vote of the Labour Party in the 2015 election had been 30.4%, winning fewer seats than in the 2010 election.

Also, the turnout of 59.9% was historically low - the second lowest in a century, the lowest being in 2001 in conditions of widespread disaffection after New Labour's first term in power - significantly below the average this century so far. Which all means that just 20.2% of the electorate voted Labour: nearly 80% did not. It cannot be said that they have a mandate. In fact, Labour and the Conservatives combined received votes from just 34.4% of the electorate. The election represented a widespread rejection of the biggest parties in this sense.

The large parliamentary majority won by Labour is a result of the first past the post system and is more precarious than it might seem from its size alone; the majority could quickly be converted into its opposite. Falling turnouts will only make the situation ever more unpredictable. Whilst in the present election, polls agreed with the general outcome of a large Labour majority, as a foregone conclusion, the details and the actual distribution of the seats was not so well predicted. This trend has been characterised in some quarters as due to the "volatility" of the electorate, but it could be more accurately said that it is now the cartel party system which is in flux and being rejected. The number of seats actually won by the Conservative Party and then the smaller parties were only correctly predicted in the broadest terms. In fact, the Conservatives received significantly more seats than had been predicted by polls. Although all indications were that there was going to be a Labour landslide, it cannot be said that predictability was really a feature of the election, and the ordering of the second to fourth places was especially uncertain.

The vote was largely a rejection of the devastating effects of the all-round anti-social offensive that took place while the Conservatives were in office. This time, there was a wholesale abandonment of the Conservative Party after their record in government over the past 14 years, a period that saw the final end of equilibrium in parliament.

Equilibrium had already gone into crisis with the fall of New Labour and the election of the Coalition government in 2010 as a way of bolstering the system at that time. This growing crisis culminated in Theresa May's inability to win an overall majority and her "strong and stable government" that was anything but, and her replacement by Boris Johnson. With Johnson came the constitutional crisis and the overturning of taboos and norms, and an electoral coup was engineered in 2019 on that basis. This was followed by an escalating factional chaos in the Conservative Party and the government, and the short-lived premiership of Liz Truss proved the final straw from which the Party never recovered. The July 4 election has set the seal on that period. It was itself part of that disequilibrium and its result reflects the continuing unfolding crisis of the cartel party system. On the part of the electorate, it reflects the dissatisfaction, disillusionment, disenfranchisement, disgust, and widespread disaffection with representative democracy.

Independent candidates at the National March for Palestine - July 6 2024

This election was marked by the participation of a large number of independent candidates (459), who received over half a million votes in total. Jeremy Corbyn, who stood as an independent, deserves particular note for winning in Islington North by a huge margin (24,120 to Labour's 16,873). Labour in fact lost five seats to independents, due in large part to its stance on the genocide in Gaza. It is also noteworthy how many votes were won by the Workers' Party, which incidentally did not win a single seat while winning over 210,000 votes - a share of the vote much larger than various parties that did. In the north of Ireland, Labour did not stand any candidates, and Sinn Féin now holds the majority of MPs.

This time around, what is evident is that the old illusions of the Labour Party do not exist in the same way as in the past, particularly given the experience of Blair and Brown, and especially amongst the youth. In the workers' movement, even amongst the organised working class and the big unions, it is different from the past. The struggle under the banner of "Enough is Enough!" continues. The fight for an anti-war government continues. The workers' opposition exists, the resistance exists, and this is where the real opposition lies.

What the election points to is the need for new decision-making forms, arising out of the movement and its opposition. How do people in localities, in their workplaces and in the movement think, analyse, and directly decide based on their own independent outlook? What do people need to do to keep developing that consciousness and their organisation, so that the new democratic personality continues to come into being and develop, and take concrete forms? What is revealed by this election is the need to leave the Old behind. The striving of the people is for people's empowerment and democratic renewal, and the 2024 general election is pointing the way forward and highlighting this crucial need.

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