Why this is the most important election of modern times

I said just after the exit poll dropped at 10pm last night that we were experiencing the most significant General Election result since Margaret Thatcher's victory in 1979.I haven't changed my view, though 1979 and 2024 could not be more different in the explanations for why they are defining moments.Thatcher's victory mattered for how she changed everything about the economic stewardship of the UK. She remade the landscape for generations.We don't know if Sir Keir will do that. His manifesto is long on big ambitions to restore growth and prosperity, and short on practical detail.But last night is as important because it is the confirmation of some huge and important trends.Perhaps the most important is that political tribalism focused on Labour and Tories is dead, that political allegiances have fragmented, and that huge numbers of voters didn't vote at all and wish a curse on all houses.That may seem odd to say when Sir Keir has won by such a landslide margin.

But he did so on the back of less than 34% of the vote, only marginally up on Jeremy Corbyn's 32.1% haul in 2019, when Boris Johnson required just under 44% of the vote for an 80 seat majority.Sir Keir is being carried into Downing Street on the shoulders of the Liberal Democrats, the Greens and - most especially - Reform, all of whom rode the crest of the national mood, which was to evict the Tory Party.

The combined vote share of Labour and Tories - less than 60% - is lower than it has ever been, though of course the 20 percentage point drop in the Conservative share is the big shift.At the time of writing, there are still a couple of seats left to declare. But here are the numbers that should focus all our minds.The actual numbers of votes cast for the Conservatives have halved - yes halved - to around 7 million.

Labour's tally of around 10 million may end up being less than what it picked up on that disastrous day in 2019.

And Reform have received more than 4 million votes, for its four seats - about a half a million more than the LibDems, whose reward was more than 70 seats, and double the 2 million received by the Greens (on a great night for them, and which yielded four seats).There is much to say about all this.First, that this is the least proportional distribution of seats in modern electoral history. If you believe that the configuration of the Commons should roughly reflect the revealed preferences of voters, this is not a fair result.Second, the turnout of circa 60% means around 80% of the British electorate did not vote for Labour, which is remarkable. Starmer did not win by a landslide of public opinion towards his party.

He won because of fury with the Tories and because - thanks to a brilliant logistical campaign organised by Morgan McSweeney - his votes were concentrated in the right places.He would be wise however to govern with humility, and perhaps consensually, rather than with an arrogance that his unassailable position in parliament will inevitably make tempting.There is so much more to discuss, not least what the SNP's collapse means for the independence cause in Scotland, and whether it is now clear that discontent with the EU was always the symptom of a much more profound fissure in politics rather than the cause.But I'll pick all that up in coming days.

For now, let's take a deep breath and acknowledge that this is a result that will start an important debate about whether our electoral system remains fit for purpose.

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