This chart shows the pattern of voting in the UK election general election held on December 12 2019.

Compared this chart with the charts for the previous five elections: 2001, 2005, 2010, 2015 and 2017. After a well established pattern of voting was broken in 2017, there has been a recovery to a familiar looking chart. Labour were the biggest losers and after four consecutive defeats in ten years during a period of wages stagnation must be wondering about their relevance. The other, smaller parties made a decent recovery from their low point in 2017.

The following table goes into more detail. The Tories increased their numerical vote by only 1% compared to 2017 but the electoral system has somehow conspired to give them an 80 seat majority. Last time they were eight seats short of a working majority and had to strike up an arrangement with the DUP.

What hardly ever changes irrespective of votes cast at the ballot box is the percentage of seats held in parliament by the two largest parties, Tory and Labour. It looked in the first half of 2019 as if they were ready to split into four parties such were the depths of the rifts in each. Both leaderships must have made concerted efforts to prevent the unthinkable – that the country might need to evolve to a system of proportional representation. The fact that the UK is leaving the EU in January will help reassure our political duopoly that such an alarming prospect is now in the long grass.