The Conservative coalition has well and truly fallen apart

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his wife Akshata Murty arrive to cast their votes during the general election. Picture: Getty Images

So what just happened? Something that has almost never happened before and something that happens all the time. This election was a landmark political event. If the results follow the exit polls even roughly, they will produce one of the biggest majorities of the modern era. It is vast in scale and significance.

The Conservative coalition has simply fallen apart. And the left has, after a century of division, found a way of working together. For a hundred years the electoral system has favoured a unified right against a split left. Now the opposite holds.

This represents an opportunity for the left to change the assumptions of political debate and public policymaking. The arguments of Conservatives and between Conservatives will no longer set the political agenda. Reform’s extraordinary result provides the Tories with an extraordinary problem.

On the right there will therefore be a vigorous debate about what to do next, but it will no longer be central.

Sir Keir Starmer. Picture: Getty Images

Instead, Sir Keir Starmer’s huge majority will shift the public discourse to the left. It is possible that voters who turned to Labour in order to get rid of the Tories will be quite startled by this change, but Labour would be smart if it took care to ensure that they were not.

But as well as something unprecedented, election night also saw a repetition of one of the oldest stories in politics. Once upon a time there was a party that was too extreme and unfit to be elected. It moved to the centre, made itself seem fit to govern, contrasted itself with a crumbling opponent who had been in power too long, and won. The end.

The Conservative Party vacated the centre ground, where elections are always, always won. Part of being in the centre is to show integrity, be responsible, be mature, be cohesive, provide stability, be thoughtful, be competent, be honest, produce workable solutions to problems people care about, listen to voters and make them your focus rather than yourself. The Conservative Party failed on every measure of reasonableness and competence. And Keir Starmer and Labour worked to earn trust on all of them. It’s as simple as that.

Labour won because the Tories lost. That’s why Reform did well too. They both did well because whatever kind of Conservative you are, it became impossible to maintain that the party deserved another period in office.

But although the discourse will move to the left, and the opportunity now falls to Labour, I think most voters are where they have always been. And want what they always want. A government that works, an economy that thrives, a state that is secure within secure borders and supportive but not intrusive.

These are quite basic, dull, straightforward things to demand, and require intelligence, pragmatism, decency and diligence to supply. Cometh the hour, cometh the man? Time to find out.

The Times