This article is more than 2 years old
Reform is stronger where higher education is weaker
The political shape of the UK looks very different this morning.
In terms of seats, the Labour party has won a 1997-style majority, but this seismic change was based on a collapse in the Conservative vote and a massive realignment away from the SNP in Scotland.
The Liberal Democrats took an astonishing 71 seats – largely making gains from those nominally held by the Conservatives and SNP. Among smaller parties the Greens, Reform, and Plaid Cymru all had their best ever results (both now with 4 seats), while the SNP didn’t manage to get into double figures.
Labour lost 5 seats to independents and only 8 seats in total. A microtrend saw independent candidates in Muslim areas take four seats from Labour – the other independent was Jeremy Corbyn.
The new Prime Minister is Keir Starmer – Rishi Sunak kept his Richmond and Northallerton seat but is to stand down as Conservative leader.
High-profile seat losses relating to the higher education sector included:
Of the current higher education team only science minister Andrew Griffith held his seat.
The Reform vote in a given constituency in England and Wales negatively correlates moderately well with the likelihood of young people in the constituency to enter higher education (as measured in TUNDRA). HESA’s SEISA measure of deprivation (which is built on the likelihood of a person to hold a low-skilled job, and/or a low level of education – averaged out to constituency level) is also a useful indicator here – broadly speaking the more “deprived” on this measure a constituency, the higher the Reform vote. (As you may expect, the two measures correlate better with each other)