Four for the Fourth 2024: And Farmer George Thought HE Had it Bad on His 4th of July...

This will be a 4th Of July long remembered in Great Britain.

The United Kingdom held their parliamentary elections today, and it turned into a "bloodbath" for the ruling Conservative Party projected to suffer their worst defeat in over two centuries (via Brian Wheeler at BBC News):

Labour is set to win a general election landslide with a majority of 170, according to an exit poll for the BBC, ITV and Sky.

If the forecast is accurate, Sir Keir Starmer will become prime minister with 410 Labour MPs – just short of Tony Blair's 1997 total.

The Conservatives are predicted to slump to 131 MPs, their lowest number ever...

The exit poll, overseen by Sir John Curtice and a team of statisticians, is based on data from voters at about 130 polling stations in England, Scotland and Wales. The poll does not cover Northern Ireland.

At the past five general elections, the exit poll has been accurate to within a range of 1.5 and 7.5 seats...

If the exit poll is correct it will be a remarkable turnaround for the Labour Party, which had its worst post-war election result in 2019, when the Conservatives under Boris Johnson won an 80-seat majority.

The Conservatives may avoid the wipe-out predicted by some opinion polls but they are still set for the worst result in the party's history, losing 241 MPs - a devastating blow after 14 years in government...

I'm not sure how the Tories are going to convince themselves they know what they're doing after a massive shift in voter support like this. They had picked up a major victory in 2019 gaining an 80-seat majority, and by the next election are losing 170 seats. A comparable situation would be like the House Republicans getting their 6-seat majority in 2022 only to have the Democrats flip it to a 60 seat majority in 2024 (one hopes).

I still have not heard any results for the election most watched this night: the turnout between Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Count Binface (okay, there's a few other party candidates as well). Sunak's polling numbers were low enough that he's facing a historic first: First Prime Minister to lose his seat in an election. Most of those predecessors tended to be in safe districts, but in this election cycle almost none of the Conservative seats were safe. (Update: Sunak was able to win his seat, alas. Dammit, Richmond and Northallerton! A Raving Looney candidate was right there! You had one job!)

That's how bad the Tories had performed over the past five years to lose so much support.

It'll take some time for the actual ballots to get counted, but even if the projections are off by their statistical norms, Labour has still won a decisive turnout.

Next will be a question of how Labour is going to fix all the damage - the austerity economics getting out of the Great Recession, the various scandals over their tenure, and of course Brexit - this inept, corrupt Tory leadership has done since 2010.

Happy 4th of July, Brits!

Hope you saved some of the fireworks from Bonfire Night.

Here's George III taking it like a champ in Hamilton: