theinspectorst1

Pezeshkian has been an advocate of letting women choose whether to wear the hijab and ending internet restrictions that require the population to use VPN connections to avoid government censorship. He said after his victory: “The difficult path ahead will not be smooth except with your companionship, empathy and trust.”

Under the slogan “For Iran”, Pezeshkian had promised to be a voice of the voiceless, saying protests must not be met with the police baton. Although some regard him as naive in high politics, a large part of his campaign was deliberately framed around his personal integrity, as well as his absence from ministerial office for the past decade. There were immediate calls from his backers to release political prisoners from jails, a symbol of the pent-up demands he may struggle to satisfy.

Pezeshkian faces a minefield in trying to bring about change, and although he has said he is loyal to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, he has also said he will resign if he feels he is being thwarted, and will then call on the population to withdraw from the political process.

The Lib Dems got 71 seats (potentially 72 as one Lib Dem/SNP marginal is yet to declare), which is the best haul of a third party since they were led by HH Asquith in 1923 - it actually wouldn't have taken a lot of poll movement from here to make the Lib Dems the 2nd party (several of the MRPs and polling averages during the last few weeks of the campaign had suggested this was possible). 71 was in the upper range of expectations for the Lib Dems, but Labour and Reform ultimately underperformed in Lab/Con and Ref/Con contests, which seems to have saved the Tories scores of seats. Electoral Calculus's final projection was Lab 470, Lib Dem 71, Con 61 - that would have even more dramatically changed the dynamic of British politics by making Ed Davey leader of the opposition with all the tools that come with it (leading the questioning at PMQs, more select committee chairs, etc).

No chance of the Greens ever overtaking the Tories though - they are a very small party who are pretty much localised to the 4 seats they won, which they threw all their resources and campaigning into. None of the projections showed them winning more than 4 seats because those are the 4 they've spent years cultivating.

The candidates are told the results off-stage a few minutes before they're announced - so the announcement wasn't a surprise for her. The announcement was actually delayed several minutes because all the candidates were lined up on stage waiting and Truss was nowhere to be seen, and the audience started slow-clapping her - I think her reaction probably happened locked in a toilet cubicle during that break.

Then after the Labour winner gave his victory speech, she just wandered off-stage and out of the venue instead of giving the customary concession speech...

The story of the ex-Tory PMs' seats is fascinating too. There have been five Tory PMs since 2010, all in super safe Tory seats, and only one of those (Sunak's seat) remains blue.

Witney (David Cameron's former seat), Maidenhead (Theresa May's former seat) and Henley (Boris Johnson's first seat) - went Lib Dem.

Uxbridge (Boris Johnson's second seat) and SW Norfolk (Liz Truss's seat) - went Labour.

A pretty stark verdict by the voters on the track record of the Tories in office!

Non-paywall link: https://archive.ph/tBxdk

The article is still quoting the exit poll of 61 seats, but the Lib Dems are currently at 71 with one Lib Dem/SNP marginal still to declare...

This is the best result by a third party in Britain since 1923!

Also hopefully a huge future threat to the Tories if they now pivot right to head off the Reform surge - there's now a massive wedge of seats from south-west London all the way out to Cornwall where moderate ex-Tory voters have gone Lib Dem and which the Tories will risk cementing as Lib Dem for a generation if they don't tack back to the centre.