Long Reads: Britain's Tory Wipeout w/ Phil Burton-Cartledge

On July 4, voters in Britain went to the polls to elect a new government. Labour ended up with 411 seats in the House of Commons, while the Conservative Party had just 121.At first glance, the result seems like a massive popular mandate for Keir Starmer and the Labour Party. But we have to reckon with the British electoral system, which can give parties a large majority of seats without even a small majority of votes. Labour will form a government with less than 34 percent of the overall vote. That’s barely 2 percent more than the party achieved with Jeremy Corbyn as leader in 2019, on a much lower turnout.The real story of the election was a Tory collapse. The Conservative vote share dropped by 20 percent. The right-wing Reform Party of Nigel Farage divided the right-wing bloc with its anti-immigrant platform. Reform received 14 percent of the vote, but only ended up with 5 seats.For a conversation about the election and the future of British politics, Long Reads is joined by Phil Burton-Cartledge. Phil is a lecturer in sociology at the University of Derby, and he’s the author of a book about the Conservative Party called The Party’s Over.Support for this podcast comes from Haymarket Books, offering free shipping on orders over $25 (or £20). One title you might enjoy is Against Erasure: A Photographic Memory of Palestine Before the Nakba.Support also comes from A Sense of Rebellion, a new podcast from tech critic Evgeny Morozov that explores counterculture at the dawn of the digital revolution.Long Reads is a Jacobin podcast looking in-depth at political topics and thinkers, both contemporary and historical, with the magazine’s longform writers. Hosted by features editor Daniel Finn. Produced by Conor Gillies, music by Knxwledge. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.