Nowhere is the adage “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” truer than in the first past the post system. Simple electoral maths means that even if a party gains few votes it can still win significant numbers of seats as long as its main opponent is losing more votes.
Of course, that is part of the story of the 2024 General Election—while Labour only improved its vote share by two points in Great Britain, it was able to gain 180 seats from the Tories, whose own vote share fell by 20 points. While the Conservative vote splintered in many different directions, a significant chunk of those who voted for Boris Johnson in 2019 voted for Nigel Farage’s Reform UK in July. Those defections helped Labour win scores of seats the Conservatives could otherwise have held.
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