Ministers toppled, Tories banished from Greater Manchester: Inside the Labour landslide
Our reports from an historic night
Dear Millers — it’s a beautiful sunny day and the country has a new government and a new prime minister. Around midday, Sir Keir Starmer visited Buckingham Palace after winning a landslide victory in yesterday’s election and reducing the Conservatives to their lowest-ever seat count.
Our reporters were up all night reporting at counts across Greater Manchester, with the sturdiest of them filing copy at 7am. We have those reports below, which really bring to life the drama and emotion of an election that has utterly transformed the political makeup of the country. In the excitement, we’ve packed this edition with so much analysis that we’ve hit Substack’s email length limit, so we’ll send our usual news round-up and weekend recommendations in a separate newsletter.
With two constituencies still to declare, Labour has 412 seats, giving the party an enormous 170-seat majority, similar to Tony Blair’s victory in 1997. Standing outside Number 10, Starmer promised a period of national renewal and grown-up governance, saying: “Whether you voted Labour or not — in fact especially if you did not — I say to you directly, my government will serve you.”
The Conservatives lost every seat (check your local results) they held in Greater Manchester, leaving the map of the region red with a couple of splatters of yellow in Cheadle and Hazel Grove, where the Lib Dems picked up their two target seats with comfortable margins. George Galloway lost in Rochdale just months after taking the constituency in a by-election. Angela Rayner, who grew up in poverty on a council estate in Stockport, will now become deputy prime minister. After winning her seat in Ashton she told supporters: “I hope to do you proud in a Labour government”.
It was a humiliating night for some of the best-known Tory figures in the land. Former prime minister Liz Truss lost her seat, as did Jacob Rees-Mogg, Penny Mordaunt, Grant Shapps, Mark Harper, Johnny Mercer and Thérèse Coffey. When Rees-Mogg was toppled, a delighted Andy Burnham told Sky News viewers: “He's been battered and he deserves to be. He's no clue what he's inflicted on people.” The Lib Dems picked up dozens of seats to end up with 71 MPs and despite a flurry of media excitement after the 10pm exit poll predicted Nigel Farage’s Reform party winning 13 seats, in the end, it only managed four, the same total as the Greens.
If you’re not yet a Mill member and you’ve found our coverage of this election useful, please do join up now using the button below. The new Labour government will have major implications for Greater Manchester in all sorts of areas and our members will be the ones who are always in the know as those changes play out.
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‘I’ve seen the exit poll, I’m not an idiot’
By Jack Dulhanty in Bolton
Two Conservative counting agents sat on the sidelines at the Bolton Community Centre, host to last night’s general election count for the borough. They hunched over a laptop building a spreadsheet, into which they punched figures to calculate the party’s vote share in Bolton West.
An hour earlier, the national exit poll had predicted that the Conservatives were about to lose more than 200 seats, with Labour winning a massive majority. The poll gave the Conservatives a 2% chance of holding on in Bolton West, despite winning it by 8,855 votes at the last election. And yet, they carried on plugging in the figures being brought back by counting agents sampling the vote, finding consolation where they could.
“[Sky News political editor] Beth Rigby is saying their majority will be wide but shallow,” the one on the laptop said.
“So, like ours in 2019?” The other asked.
“Uh, yeah.”
Martyn Cox, the local Conservative leader, strode over from the counting tables and I asked him how he was feeling. “I’m pissed off,” he said. “I’ve seen the exit poll, I’m not an idiot.”
It was around this time that Chris Green, the Conservative candidate and incumbent MP, walked in. He was holding himself bolt upright and maintaining the kind of tight smile that looks like it has been practised in the mirror. “It’s all getting rather tense, isn’t it?” he said. I raised the 2% figure with him.
“Two per cent! Well, in 2017 they gave me one per cent, so I’ve doubled my odds already!”
Green, with his 2%, was the Conservative in with the best chance of winning a seat in Greater Manchester last night. In neighbouring Bolton North East, the former Conservative Mark Logan had announced he wouldn’t be standing again and instead was backing Labour. No members of the constituency’s Tory group even showed up to the count, opting to have a watch party at home instead (Labour took the seat with a 6,653 majority). Bolton South and Walkden was a nailed-on hold for Labour MP Yasmin Qureshi, whose supporters sang happy birthday when she turned 61 at midnight and won by over 15,000 votes.
Green blamed the pandemic for the Conservatives’ punishment at this election. He has always been critical of the government’s response to Covid-19, saying they didn’t give enough evidence to the public to show how lockdowns worked. “The government were appalling, we got that wrong,” he said. But there seemed to be something about staring into the electoral abyss that made the Tories here more relaxed. Green swanned around the count and the Conservative councillors and canvassers seemed to be having a laugh — likely gallows humour, but still.
Phil Brickell, the Bolton West candidate, arrived at the count just before results were announced. Some might say it's paranoia, others might say Labour — who briefed candidates and journalists not to speak to the press — just wanted the result to speak for itself. Brickell won with a 4,945 vote majority. Afterwards, Green gave a speech saying he was interested to see the new Labour government live up to its promises and was nigh on booed off stage. Brickell said the win was “surreal”.
The reaction to the Bolton West result, and the national result, made sense. After the exit poll was announced, six hours before the announcements, a young Labour councillor, who only became active in the party in 2012, was laughing. Many in the party are people who have never known anything other than a Conservative government. They have never seen the party they have dedicated years of their lives to in power. Now, it has a Blair-stye majority, something that seemed fanciful a few years ago. “I hope it’s not a crushing disappointment that, when we’re in, it’s still terrible,” the young councillor said.
The fleeting reign of George Galloway
By Mollie Simpson in Rochdale
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