Smaller parties continue to help the Conservatives win elections

The 2017 General Election produced a fantastic result for the Labour Party and for Jeremy Corbyn. With polls and pundits predicting a Tory landslide for weeks, Labour instead gained nearly 30 seats and more than 40% of the total votes cast. Impressive though that was, it was not enough. Theresa May was returned as Prime Minister, with the help of the DUP, along with all her policies and plans opposed by the smaller parties who helped her back in, including Hard Brexit, the dismantling of the NHS, the brutal cuts to schools, libraries and social services, the attacks on our civil rights, the growing inequalities, the food banks and so on...

The result could have been very different if just a few thousand more people around the country had voted Labour rather than Green, Plaid Cymru or Independent in seats which the Conservatives won - yet again - with very small majorities.

The Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, narrowly won her seat in Hastings South, after a re-count, with a majority of only 346 votes. Some 412 votes in Hastings South went to an independent candidate and another 1,885 went to the LibDems. If those votes had gone to Labour, Amber Rudd would have been out.

In Calder Valley, the Conservatives held on with a majority of 609 while 631 people voted Green and another 1,034 voted for an independent.

The Conservative majority in Mansfield was 1,057 and 1,079 people voted for an independent candidate there.

The Conservatives took Stoke-on-Trent South from the Labour Party with a majority of 663, while 643 people voted Green in that constituency and 808 voted LibDem.

In Aberconwy, the Conservatives held onto the seat with a majority of just 635, while Plaid Cymru received 3,170 votes.

In Preseli Pembrokeshire, the Conservative majority was 314 and the Plaid Cymru vote was 2,711. An independent candidate there also got 1,209 votes.

In Pudsey, the Conservative majority was 331 while 1,138 people voted there for the 'Yorkshire Party'.

And in Belfast South, the DUP (now propping up Theresa May) took the seat from SDLP (a Labour-leaning party) with a majority of 1,996 while 2,241 people voted Green in that constituency.

And what if Labour (or their partners), rather than the Conservatives (and their partners), had won those additional 8 seats? Instead of Conservatives plus DUP on 328 and Labour plus 'progressive alliance' on 314 seats, the result would have been Conservatives + DUP with 320 seats, and Labour + 'PA' with 322. In other words, Jeremy Corbyn, rather than Theresa May, would have likely have become Prime Minister on June 9th, 2017. That is what a few thousand votes going to smaller parties in just 8 constituencies means in this election.

It was the same story in the 2015 General Election and it is a pattern repeated in many other elections both here and abroad. Donald Trump would not be in the White House right now if a few thousand people in just three states had voted for Hilary Clinton instead of for a minority third party candidate with no hope at all of becoming President of the United States.

It is also true that the Tories would not have won their 12 additional seats in Scotland if Labour voters in those seats had voted SNP rather than for Labour. Since most of those seats had whopping SNP majorities from 2015 and voted to remain in the EU in 2016, it was quite a surprise to see these seats suddenly go Tory blue. Perhaps some people in Scotland were fearing a separation from Westminster even more than a separation from Brussels. Whatever the reasons, the fact is that in Scotland, a larger number of people actually chose to vote Conservative, whereas in England and Wales, Conservatives won seats, not because they got more support than before, but because people continue to vote for parties that can't win.

Why do people choose to vote for Green, Plaid Cymru or other independent candidates in constituencies where those candidates have no chance of being the MP, and every chance of preventing the Labour candidate from winning? Perhaps it is because they don't want the Labour candidate to win. But in that case, the concept of a 'progressive alliance' is a rather empty one. This country cannot afford more election results like this. We've got to learn some hard lessons about how elections work in a first-past-the-post system where individual constituencies are largely dominated by a single party and the few which are up for grabs are easily won simply by splitting the opposition vote.