He was the best of swings …he was the worst of swings…

So how bad was Jeremy Corbyn’s defeat…?  We are told it was the worst performance for Labour since 1935 …but was it…?  

Labour lost 60 seats in the election dropping from 262 to 202 – a 7.4 swing against the party.  This means that Labour now have less seats than after Michael Foot’s disastrous 1983 election failure.  

However although in 1983 Foot won 209 seats the swing against the party under Foot was an even more massive 9.3 per cent.  Foot got ~ 8.5 million votes whereas Corbyn got ~ 10.2 million.  So is it fair to compare?

After some thought I’ve decided that it doesn’t seem sensible to evaluate the result in terms of votes as voter turnout was much lower in the 80s.  No one turned out to vote for Foot as it was seen as almost a foregone conclusion that Mrs Thatcher would win.  What really matters is swing.  So let’s look at the swings…

Historically there have not been very many big Labour majorities …or indeed very many Labour majorities.   

In 1935 Clement Attlee achieved a massive swing to Labour of 7.4 per cent almost tripling the number of Labour seats from 52 to 154.  

He then achieved another landslide with a 9.7 per cent swing in 1945 which almost doubled Labour’s seats from 154 to 393 – in terms of swing this performance has never been bettered (Corbyn came closest with a 9.6 per cent swing).  One possible explanation for it was that due to world war two there had been no general election for 10 years and possibly people were a bit miffed about this and cheered up by the end of the war so the 1945 election turned into something special...

After that it was all downhill.  Attlee suffered only a 1.5 per cent swing against him in 1950 but because the votes were all in the wrong places his majority was slashed by 78 seats leaving him with 315 – a majority of only 5.  

Following another election in 1951 Attlee again managed a small swing towards him of 2.7 per cent but again the votes were in the wrong places so his seat number was reduced to 295.  

Churchill wisely targeted the Liberal vote and this resulted in a 4.6 per cent swing to the Tories which propelled him back into power for most of the rest of the 50s.  In 1955 Attlee had another negative swing of 2.4 per cent and the Labour party was reduced to 277 seats. 

Hugh Gaitskell lead Labour to another defeat in 1955 with another 2.6 per cent swing against the party which reduced their seats further to 258.

But in 1964 Harold Wilson managed a 0.2 per cent swing to the Labour Party and there was a 6 per cent swing against the Tories with the Liberals hoovering up most of these votes but not translating them into seats.  

This propelled Wilson into power with 258 seats - a majority of 4.  Wilson cemented his majority with a further election in 1966 which gave him a 3.9 per cent swing which increased his seats to 364 – giving him a majority of 98.

In 1970 following a few Labour economic cock ups Ted Heath managed to get a 4.5 per cent swing which reduced Labour back down to 288 seats.  Giving the Ted a majority of 31.  In the 3-day-week “who governs Britain” election of Febuary 1974 both Wilson and Heath managed to get large negative swings against them (5.9 per cent and 8.5 per cent respectively) as Jeremy Thorpe hoovered up the discontent to almost double the number liberal MPs from 6 to 11.  

With nobody actually winning Wilson called another election and this time round managed to get a 2 per cent swing which propelled Labour back into power with 301 seats (a majority of 3).  By 1979 this majority had gone and Wilson’s successor Callaghan had fallen out with the Liberals so a general election was forced by Mrs Thatcher tabling a vote of no confidence.

In 1979 Labour fell from 319 seats to 261 following a 2.3 swing away from Labour. 

In 1983 Michael Foot – who like Mr Corbyn compiled his manifesto by consulting with the membership rather than the voters – achieved his record 9.3 per cent negative swing against Labour which reduced the party to 209 seats.  

Although it seemed Mrs Thatcher would be there forever Neil Kinnock gradually eroded Mrs T’s majorities with a 3.2 per cent swing in 1987 that increased the party’s seats to 229 and a further swing of 3.6 per cent in 1992 that helped the party crawl up to 271.  

When then Tony Blair achieved his 1997 super swing of 8.8 per cent the party was already starting from a very high base that propelled it to a massive 418 seats.

From here it was all downhill again as Blair suffered a negative swing of 2.5 per cent in 2001 reducing the party to 413 seats and an Iraq War created negative swing of 5.5 per cent in 2005 which reduced the party to 403.  

 Following the financial crash Gordon Brown then achieved a futher negative swing of 6.2 per cent reducing the party to 258 seats and allowing the Liberal Democrats and David Cameron’s Conservatives to form a coalition.

The much maligned Ed Miliband actually achieved a 1.4 per cent positive swing to Labour but this didn’t translate into seats and the party’s seat share dropped further to 232. 

And following a disastrous campaign by Theresa May in her own snap election of 2017 Jeremy Corbyn actually achieved a 9.6 per cent swing to Labour.  However, much of this was the result of increased voter turnout which saw the Conservatives also pick up a swing of 5.5 per cent.  So Jeremy was still stuck on 262 seats.   

Mr Corbyn's negative 7.9 per cent swing this time round then brought Labour back down to 202 seats so… there you have it – the enigma that is Jeremy Corbyn…

 

He was the best of swings* …he was the worst of swings…

*within 0.1 per cent of the best anyway...