With just under two weeks to go, we are on course for a ground-shaking general election result. Labour are set to win the popular vote by around 20 points, blowing Margaret Thatcher’s 1983 record-winning margin of 14.8 points out of the water. Most projections have them winning the most seats since Stanley Baldwin’s victory in 1931 – some project Labour winning more seats than any single party in the United Kingdom’s 317-year history.

It is also set to be the most disproportionate election result in the history of British democracy and one of the most disproportionate in the history of post-war, Western liberal democracy in general. At the extreme end, Labour could win 71% of seats in the House of Commons, with just 41% of the votes cast. In contrast, the smaller parties collectively could win over 35% of the votes but just 14% of the seats. A fifth of the voters could end up voting for Reform UK or one of the Green parties and end up with no Parliamentary representation at all.

The Conservatives, of course, could win around a fifth of the vote too and end up with just an eighth of the seats. The projected size of Labour’s majority has sent the Conservatives into a frenzy of public handwringing over ‘supermajorities’. It has triggered heel-turns among a spate of right-wing commentators who celebrated Boris Johnson’s chunky, disproportional victory in 2019 but feel differently now that they find themselves on the losing side.

Professor Sir John Curtice says the public 'is as doubtful as it has ever been about the trustworthiness and efficacy of the country’s system of government' (Image: free)

I have no sympathy for them. The Conservatives and their outriders have spent most of Britain’s........

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