Tonight, we have glimpsed Britain’s socialist future
The Exit Poll could have been better for the Conservatives. On the other hand, it could have been much, much worse.
It says something about how dreadful the campaign Rishi Sunak has led has been that he may count it as a major triumph that he, and not Ed Davey, will take over as leader of the opposition from tomorrow.
And thirteen seats for Nigel Farage’s Reform? That would make Prime Minister’s Questions a prime-time draw.
Six weeks of campaigning – of debates, leafleting, canvassing, debates, resignations and gaffes – have been leading up to this moment.
A myth surrounding these key polls is that they are frequently inaccurate. They are not. True, the shadow of 1992 looms large, when the broadcaster confidently predicted a hung parliament, only to see John Major’s Conservatives emerge with a working majority of 21. But flaws in methodology have long since been corrected; if the ten o’clock headline on polling day predicts the result, it usually does so accurately.
Exit polls perform two services. The less important one is that it gives viewers who might fancy an early night an idea of who they can expect to be governing the country when the alarm clock goes off the next morning. The far more important service is giving those in TV and radio studios something to talk about for the next two hours when hardly a ballot paper has been counted and returning officers who should know better are playing silly media games with the physical expressions of people’s democratic choices by racing to see who can make a declaration first, like they’re taking part in It’s A Knockout.
Speculation becomes less speculative once the exit poll has been revealed. Politicians whose party has been predicted to have lost the support of the public are obliged to smile grimly and insist that the only poll that counts is the one just closed, and that the exit poll is no more than just another opinion poll.
They’re dissembling, of course, and no one can blame them. Just as no one can blame the politicians from the other side whose smiles are rather more genuine but who nonetheless will make an attempt at claiming, like their opponents just did, that we must wait for the actual results to be declared before all the chickens can be counted.
Meanwhile, the shape, if not the precise design, of the next few years has been revealed. Keir Starmer will have a sizable majority, and have led an unprecedented recovery in his party’s fortunes in a record short period of time, having taken over after Labour’s historically disastrous result in December 2019.
Perhaps now is an appropriate time to paraphrase The Simpsons’ cable news anchorman, Kent Brockman: Well, I for one welcome our new socialist overlords.
