Extract

When on the BBC election-night programme David Dimbleby announced that the exit poll predicted a hung parliament, the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn just smiled. He had reasons to be cautious. For months, the chatter in Westminster was about Labour’s fatal decline. A hung parliament did not feature in this scenario. But voters, a more imaginative bunch than pollsters and pundits, had a surprise in store. Instead of facing a crushing defeat Labour lost the election but by a much smaller margin than anticipated. The party increased its share of the vote from 2015 by almost 10% to 40%, its highest since 2005 and saw 262 MPs elected (30 more than in the previous election). It was the first time since 1997 that Labour increased its representation in the House of Commons. Considering the disastrous results obtained at the 2015 general election and at the local elections of May 2017, winning those extra 30 seats was a considerable achievement. Conservative safe seats like Kensington, Battersea, Canterbury, Portsmouth South and Stroud were not even on the list of the party’s top target seats, and yet Labour won them. Similarly, there were signs of a Labour recovery in Scotland. In 2015, the party lost all but one of its 41 seats, but two years later it retained Edinburgh South and won back East Lothian, Midlothian, Glasgow North East, Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill, Rutherglen and Hamilton West.

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