The winners and losers in British politics 2024

Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak feature in the lists of the six winners and six losers in British politics in 2024, of course, but so do some of the backroom operators who helped them to victory and defeat. What’s more, the splintering of party loyalties meant that a single election produced several winners, as the Liberal Democrats, Reform and the Greens also made gains on a battlefield strewn with Conservative casualties. In Keir Starmer, McSweeney thought he had found a leadership candidate who could take the party back from the Corbynites; winning a general election seemed a long way off. The unpopularity of the Conservative MP, Liz Truss, and a four-way split vote with Reform UK and an independent candidate from the local “turnip Taliban”, who had been opposed to Truss from the start, propelled Jermy into parliament with 27 per cent of the vote, the lowest winning share in the country. “If you ever see any evidence of our preparations for government, please let me know,” said one anonymous adviser, days before Gray was moved as chief of staff in a dysfunctional No 10 to be the prime minister’s envoy to the nations and regions – a non-job that she eventually decided not to take up.