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Despite securing a supermajority with the lowest vote share in history, Labour claims a mandate it does not have, says Stephen Bailey.
During Margaret Thatcher’s time in office (1979–1990), extreme-left Labour MP Tony Benn (current Northern Ireland Minister Hilary Benn’s father) angrily, as was his wont, dismissed the then Conservative Government as a “constitutional dictatorship”.
At the time, the Conservatives held a large overall majority in the House of Commons. This meant they could pass legislation at will, with the opposition (Labour) unable to do much, if anything, to stop government bills from reaching the Statute Book and becoming law.
Labour peers in the Lords did manage to get some Conservative legislation amended throughout the Thatcher period. But Benn argued, forcefully and with typical anger, that the UK was effectively a dictatorship. As he saw it, elections were merely a fig leaf of democracy. The Prime Minister and the ruling party could impose their will on the Commons and the country. The opposition had little ability to challenge the government’s agenda. Therefore, in practice if not in law, the UK was a dictatorship.
Fast forward to the present day. The 2024 General Election marked Labour’s first general election victory since 2005. The party won a 174-seat majority and a total of 411 seats in the House of Commons. This was its second-best seat share after the 1997 General Election.
Yet Labour’s vote share was only 33.7%, the smallest ever for any majority government in UK electoral history. Despite gaining 211 more seats than in 2019, Labour actually received fewer total votes than in that year. It became the largest party in England for the first time since 2005. In Scotland, for the first time since 2010. In Wales, it remained the largest.
Labour now has a supermajority in the Commons. This majority is substantially larger than any of the Conservatives’ majorities in their three periods of government between 1979 and 1990 (not including John Major’s 1990–97 term, which is not relevant to this article). These were the 1979–83, 1983–87 and 1987–90 governments led by Margaret Thatcher.
Labour can now impose its will—and its agenda—on the Commons and on the country. This is despite the statistics clearly showing that there is no real appetite for Keir Starmer, the Labour Party, or its policies (such as they are) among the vast majority of the UK population.
Labour received fewer votes than in 2019. It also recorded the lowest vote share of any winning party in UK history. The Conservative Party, therefore, can do nothing in the Commons to stop or amend Labour’s bills. Labour is also attempting to pack the House of Lords with Labour peers, making it harder for Conservatives to amend legislation there. Talk about dictatorship.
That’s the current political reality. Given all this, it is entirely appropriate to accuse this Labour Government of being a constitutional dictatorship. They are imposing their will and agenda on the country, while hiding behind the illusion of democracy. They have no real mandate. The statistics prove this.
They cannot have it both ways. This is Labour hypocrisy at its finest.
Let’s take a further look at the electoral statistics.
The Reform Party did split the Conservative vote, as predicted. This deprived the Conservatives of a substantial number of votes and allowed Labour to form a government with a supermajority. Consider the numbers:
- Total Conservative and Reform votes combined: 10,946,535
- Labour total votes: 9,708,716
The current Labour Government has little, if any, popular mandate from the electorate to pursue its agenda. It should stop claiming that it does.
Sovereignty lies with the entity (nation, authority, legal jurisdiction, etc.) that holds it. In the UK, political legislative sovereignty resides solely and exclusively in the House of Commons.
If an authority has to share sovereignty with another external power—even in part—and that external power can unilaterally impose its will, then the first authority is not sovereign. Shared sovereignty is not genuine sovereignty. If it were, one might as well claim that Vichy France was an independent country.
If a sovereign nation chooses, of its own free will, to allow external input into its affairs, that is a different matter. For example, if the UK voluntarily adopts EU standards to facilitate trade, that can be acceptable.
The key test is this: does the UK have full, unrestricted power to choose what it adopts or rejects? If the EU can compel the UK to adopt rules—just as it did with directives and regulations—then that is not acceptable.
Any degree of power or authority that any EU institution can impose unilaterally on the UK is unacceptable.
Sovereignty means full control over all aspects of your country’s affairs. Anything less is not sovereignty.
The Acid Tests of Genuine Sovereignty:
- Is there any government in the world that can overrule the UK on matters concerning only UK citizens?
- Is there any foreign court that can overrule the UK Supreme Court?
- Do we have the right, through our elected government, to control who may enter the UK, how long they may stay, and who must leave?
- Can we negotiate trade treaties with any nation we choose?
Under the EU, governmental, judicial, territorial and trade sovereignty resided in Brussels—not in the member state.
We were not a sovereign nation while we were in the EU. Had we remained, things would have grown worse as Brussels centralised more and more power.
Keir Starmer’s proposed “reset” deal with the EU is therefore highly concerning. The most alarming element is food standards. Once again, the UK will accept the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice in this area. The ECJ will be able to override Westminster on food regulation.
This means we have already lost part of the national sovereignty we regained by leaving the EU. This is a partial reversal of Brexit.
And this is only the beginning. Starmer’s Labour is engaged in an incremental, ongoing process of handing UK powers back to the EU, by stealth. Piece by piece, control over UK matters will be handed back to Brussels.
Today it’s food standards. Tomorrow it will be something else. Eventually, the UK will be entirely under EU control once again.
Under Labour, the UK is on course to become a rule-taker, a subservient vassal state of the EU.
Welcome to the Vichy UK.
For more from Stephen Bailey please visit: https://ukunionism.wordpress.com/blog-2/
© 2025 Stephen Bailey
This article (What Mandate? Labour’s Constitutional Dictatorship Is Forcing Us into a Vichy UK) was created and published by Conservative Post and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Stephen Bailey and with intro by CP
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