Opinion: How Labour lost millions of voters to apathy and a Gaza earthquake

There has been a lot of comment on the Labour victory in the 2024 UK general elections, arguing that it was a "loveless landslide" or a "sandcastle majority", pointing to the yawning gap between the huge numbers of seats won on a very slender proportion of the popular vote.

The discrepancy is indeed striking. Labour’s huge Commons majority rests on a lower popular vote (9.7 million) than Jeremy Corbyn won in the so-called "catastrophic" general election of 2019 (10.2 million). And it is two million votes less than Corbyn won in the 2017 general election (12.8 million).

Even Keir Starmer won fewer votes in his own constituency under his own leadership than he did in both elections when Corbyn was Labour leader.

So where did those missing Labour votes go?

READ MORE: How Labour lost millions of voters to apathy and a Gaza earthquake, opinion by John Rees