London on the night of an England game is always a bit tense. The pubs are overflowing, Three Lions is being roared out of key by lads with more than few on board – and it’s only 6pm. If you have spent any time in this city you’ll appreciate the “after work” pub thing is such an important part of London’s popular culture. After days of rain, the sun is out, St George is flying and an England team just scored.

Over the past week, people have been trying to digest what really happened in the general election. Did the UK, and specifically England, switch to the left or the right? On paper, obviously the parliament is more left than at any stage in the past half century. However, when you drill down, the numbers are at best inconclusive. Britain’s first-past-the-post electoral system distorts the relationship between the number of seats and their share of the popular vote.

Labour won 34 per cent of all votes but now commands about 64 per cent of the 650 seats. Meanwhile, the Tories with 24 per cent of the vote secured just 121 seats – their worst result since 1761. Only the Liberal Democrats – with 12 per cent of the vote and 11 per cent of the seats – look representative. The story that no one really wants to talk about is the re-emergence of Ukip in the guise of Reform, which won a pretty spectacular 14 per cent of the popular vote yet has only a measly 1 per cent of the seats in parliament, the same number of seats as Sinn Féin that secured about 1 per cent of the total UK vote. The BBC analysed all elections over the past century and found that Labour’s recent win ranks as the most disproportionate on record: a 30 percentage-point gap between the share of votes won and the share of seats won.

The State has to take........

© The Irish Times