The political tide has turned in the UK – and civil society will be hoping for an end to government hostility.

The 4 July general election ended 14 years of rule by the right-wing Conservative party. The centre-left Labour party has returned to power, winning 411 out of 650 parliamentary seats. The Conservatives lost a staggering 244 seats, leaving them with a record low of 121.

Behind the headlines, however, there’s little reason to think the UK’s spell of political volatility is over. The country changed prime ministers twice since the last election in 2019, and the impacts of the deeply polarising 2016 Brexit referendum that led to the UK leaving the European Union (EU) continue to ripple through its politics.

The 2019 election was fought on the single issue of Brexit, and the Conservatives won with a seemingly unassailable 80-seat majority. Their strategy was to target predominantly working-class constituencies that had voted Labour for generations but most strongly backed leaving the EU. Labour’s losses in its heartlands were so bad it seemed likely it would take more than one election to win them back. But support for the Conservatives plummeted following revelations that a series of parties had been held at government headquarters during the pandemic, in breach of the government’s lockdown rules. And then after multiple scandals cost prime minister Boris Johnson his job, along came Liz Truss, who lasted only 50 days but had enough time to introduce disastrous economic measures that live on in higher household bills.

Outgoing prime minister Rishi Sunak couldn’t turn Labour’s huge opinion poll lead around, but used the one card up his sleeve: setting the election date. His announcement of a 4 July vote took many by surprise. As the campaign went on, however, allegations surfaced that some of his inner circle had made money betting on the date ahead of the announcement. This only added to the prevailing public mood that this was a corrupt, self-serving and out-of-touch government that had to go. With high prices, failing public services and a housing crisis, people overwhelmingly wanted the Conservatives out.

A disproportionate result

Labour’s 2024 success has seen it win back many of the seats it lost in 2019 and make inroads into long-held Conservative constituencies. But it’s been enabled by the UK’s archaic electoral system. The country is divided into 650 single-member constituencies, and the candidate who gets the most votes becomes a member of parliament (MP) with no requirement to win a majority. This winner-takes-all system rewards the two main parties, Labour and the Conservatives, with smaller parties only winning seats where their voters are geographically concentrated. Votes for any candidate other than the winner count for nothing, and in tight races small movements in votes can produce big shifts in results. Governments with a parliamentary majority almost always have a minority of the vote.

The 2024 election was the UK’s most disproportionate ever. Labour won 63.2 of seats on just 33.7 per cent of the national vote, up only 1.5 per cent on its 2019 share and less than when it came second in 2017.

The electoral system rewards parties for targeting specific constituencies rather than appealing to the electorate as a whole. Labour poured campaign resources into Conservative-held seats where it came second last time, along with the many it won from the Scottish National Party in Scotland, and was largely able to neglect seats where it already had a significant lead. The centrist Liberal Democrats, historically poorly served by the current system, successfully adopted a niche strategy of pitching themselves as the only party that could beat the Conservatives in a number of more affluent seats. As a result, the party’s 12.2 per cent national vote share efficiently translated into 11.6 per cent of seats. But for others, the system didn’t deliver.

Once again, the Green Party didn’t get the representation its vote share deserved. In 2024, it targeted and won four seats, having previously held only one, but this is still scant reward for its 6.7 per cent national vote share.

But it was the right-wing populist Reform UK party that suffered the most. This is the political heir to the pro-Brexit parties led by the UK’s best-known populist politician, Nigel Farage, whose decision to return from campaigning for Donald Trump boosted his party’s fortunes. At his eighth attempt, he won a seat, in an area that strongly supported leaving the EU. But his party, which came third with 14.3 per cent of the vote, won just five seats. In constituency after constituency Reform took vote shares that weren’t enough to finish first but exceeded the margin by which Labour beat the Conservatives. The implication is that it split the right-wing vote, and if it hadn’t, Labour’s majority would have been much smaller.

This wasn’t the only trend at play. In many places, people showed greater willingness to vote tactically, giving their vote to the party in their constituency best placed to beat the Conservatives rather than the one they most supported. So while Labour won, more than anything the Conservatives lost. There was little enthusiasm for the new prime minister, Keir Starmer, and the cautious package of reforms his party offered.

There are signs the volatility isn’t over yet. One is the success of several independents. It used to be virtually impossible for independent candidates to win seats, but now six have. Starmer turned the party away from the leftist direction of his predecessor in leadership, Jeremy Corbyn. This was symbolised by the removal of Corbyn as a Labour candidate, along with other left-wing MPs. But Corbyn ran as an independent in the constituency he’s long represented, and won. A few Labour politicians who’d expected to win were also defeated in seats with large Muslim electorates by independents demanding stronger action on Israel and Gaza. Muslim voters have overwhelmingly backed Labour in the past, but many are angry at Starmer’s initial expression of support for Israel’s punitive actions.

This means that, despite Labour’s majority, this will be a parliament with many shades of opinion represented, with MPs from a record 12 parties plus independents – not counting Sinn Féin, the republican party that came first in Northern Ireland, which always refuses to take its seats. It will also be the most diverse parliament ever, with 263 women and 90 members from the UK’s ethnic minorities.

It also seems clear the Brexit decision will remain a key political dividing line. Only 16 per cent of those who voted to remain in the EU backed the Conservatives; only 19 per cent of people who’d voted to leave chose Labour this time. Reform, which ran a campaign that blamed immigrants for all the UK’s problems, fared best in leave-voting areas, which tend to be poorer and with older populations. Its high vote shows the UK isn’t immune to the broader wave of right-wing populism mobilising in Europe.

Labour’s parliamentary majority is broad but shallow: it won many seats by small margins that could be overturned next time. Reform, having come second in 98 seats, can be expected to try to exploit the disarray in the Conservative Party, make as much noise as it can in parliament and hope for a breakthrough next time. Conservative politicians may well decide the lesson is to tack further right, and an alliance or merger between the two right-wing forces can’t be ruled out.

Discontent and disengagement were also indicated by a turnout of only 59.9 per cent, one of the lowest ever. The sense this could be a decisive election evidently wasn’t shared by many. There may be a several reasons for low turnout: a sense that Labour’s win was a foregone conclusion, and voter ID measures introduced by the last government that may have stopped 400,000 people voting, disproportionately from ethnic minorities. But it’s hard to escape the conclusion that at least some who stayed at home felt there was no point choosing between the parties on offer.

Time to reclaim rights

To address disaffection and stave off the threat of right-wing populism, Labour will need to show it can make a difference in addressing the UK’s economic and social malaise. One way it can signal a change and build positive partnerships to tackle problems is by respecting civic space and working with civil society. There’s plenty of room for improvement here.

Under the last government, hostility towards civil society grew and civic freedoms suffered. In 2023, the UK’s civic space rating was downgraded to ‘obstructed’ by the CIVICUS Monitor, our collaborative research project that tracks the health of civic space around the world. The main reason for this was a series of laws that significantly increased restrictions on protests and expanded police powers to break them up and arrest protesters. Climate activists have been the main target.

As the outgoing government backtracked on its net-zero pledges and committed to more oil and gas extraction, campaigners increasingly embraced non-violent direct action. The government’s response was to vilify climate protesters, backed by laws that criminalise protests deemed to be noisy or disruptive. Mass arrests of protesters have become commonplace, and it’s no longer rare for people to receive jail sentences for protest-related offences. Recently, protesters against the monarchy and those demanding stronger action on Israel have faced similar treatment.

Meanwhile the outgoing government relentlessly fuelled public hostility towards migrants, particularly those crossing the English Channel in the absence of legal routes. Its ‘hostile environment’ policy led to the Windrush Scandal – in which people who’d lived legally in the UK for decades were detained and deported for want of documentation they’d never needed. More recently the government introduced its Rwanda policy, threatening to permanently remove people to the authoritarian East African state. When, in response to a civil society lawsuit, the European Court of Human Rights ruled the policy was illegal because Rwanda wasn’t a safe country to send people to, the government passed a law declaring it safe, and its more right-wing politicians called for the UK to leave the court.

At the same time, the government raided its aid budget to cover the cost of hosting asylum seekers in the UK. The government had merged its international development ministry into its foreign affairs ministry in 2020 and, in 2021, dropped its commitment to spend 0.7 per cent of gross national income on international aid. Last year, it spent more than a quarter of its aid budget – money that should be used to help end poverty and inequality in the global south – on hosting asylum seekers in the UK.

As part of its rightward shift, the Conservative Party also backtracked on its commitments to LGBTQI+ rights, waging a culture war against trans rights, including by promising to ban gender-neutral bathrooms and prohibit discussion of gender identity in schools. The UK went from being Europe’s most LGBTQI+-friendly country to 16^th in the rankings. As happens every time politicians target an excluded group for vilification, hate crimes against trans people hit record levels.

This all leaves civil society with a big agenda to take to the new government. There’ve been some early encouraging signs. The government has dropped the Rwanda plan. It’s reversed a ban on onshore wind farms. But there are many more advocacy asks. The best way to signal a new beginning would be to commit to respecting and repairing the space where demands can be articulated: rebuilding relationships with civil society, restoring the right to protest and reversing attacks on human rights.

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