Looking at the charts in this section of 5.5.5 & Counting should soon show you that a very similar vote split has emerged in UK politics in the four elections since 2001. Start by taking a look at 2001: You may want to glance at how similar this is to the charts for 2005, 2010 and 2015.

More figures for 2001 are shown in this table. We have added an extra row to show the combined vote for Labour plus Tory. This reveals that together they attracted the support of only 43% of those entitled to vote. The non-voter group at 40.6% (18 million) nearly equalled the joint vote for our two largest political parties.

Yet neither one of these two parties ever has qualms over claiming the right to govern with an outright majority when they get the better of their rival. Getting the better of your rival in this context has come to mean polling the few more per-cent that boosts the triumphant one to a total of 10.5 to 11 million votes. In this instance, Labour crept back into Westminster to claim their outright majority in 2001 with the support of 10.73 million, less than one in four of the electorate. But we invite you to see how it actually gets worse next time round. If you’re of nervous disposition have something steadying to hand before you look in close detail at the analysis for 2005.