Robbie Moore was the sitting Tory MP for Keighley & Ilkley who sent out just one campaign leaflet which my contact in the constituency got on polling day. As you can see, whoever proofread the work before it went to the printers messed it up so some poor sods had to sit there with felt-tipped pens to correct the thing by hand before it could be sent to the punters.
Had there been any justice in the world, the Tories would have been rejected by an electorate that could not bring themselves to vote for such an amateur hour performance. Luckily for Mr Moore there is no justice in the world and he held his seat as all about him were losing theirs.
What a weird election it was. People in England and Wales voted to get rid of the Tories and they didn't much care who they voted for so long as the Tories lost. In Scotland, they voted against both the Tories and the SNP, so across Great Britain, this was an election in which people voted against those parties, rather than for a particular party.
The end result of this was that Labour has a massive majority, that is broadly based and very shallow. The new government could come under threat very soon from three different quarters.
The first is Reform who talked away with five MPs. Nigel Farage is their leader and I expect him to make Labour's life a misery. Secondly we have Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader who scored more votes in 2017 and 2019 than Starmer did in 2024. I expect that he will rally support from within Labour and cause trouble for Starmer from his own MPs. Finally, we have a clutch of Islamic independents who now represent seats that were formerly solid Labour. Starmer will need to mollify those voters and not alienate his secular, middle-class base.
If he can defend his government from Reform that will eat into what is left of his working class base, Corbyn who will chip away at the urban progressives and the Muslims who will try to tear down Labour's remaining Pakistani vote he should survive, but that is a tall order for him.
It is also a lot of fun for us!
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