Grieving and unheard, the British public has voted for change – in weariness more than in hope

By Stephen Coleman, University of Leeds

In every election campaign, there is a contrast between the incessantly reinforced narratives of political leaders and the media, and the popular mood that simmers below the surface.

In 2024, this gap came to define the election. Much of what really mattered to voters lay in what was deeply felt, yet was only present as a nagging, niggling sense of complaint from the sidelines of the formal political arena.

Difficult to define, the concept of “political mood” refers to thoughts and feelings that emerge in response to our experience of being in the world. People do not decide to adopt a political mood; the mood adopts them. It is a feeling of being caught up in something that is both overwhelming and undefined.

How can the mood of the 2024 UK election best be described? This was an election in which what remained unsaid weighed more heavily than what was spoken. In the years leading up to the vote, the public services that people had come to depend upon were left to fall apart. A gradual mood of shocked loss emerged along the way, and voters sought big solutions.

From the loss of access to GPs and dentists to the absence of textbooks in their children’s schools, to the reliance of working families on food banks to feed their kids, this was the first electorate in generations to be voting with an expectation that their lives would be materially worse than their parents’.

As they pleaded for people’s votes, politicians seemed unable to fully grasp the psychic consequences of this loss. In the case of the Tories, this was because they were widely regarded as being responsible for presiding with moral indifference over the wreckage of the UK’s social infrastructure. Labour politicians, meanwhile, bound by a self-imposed fiscal dogma, resisted any demand for radical regeneration as if it were an act of economic heresy.

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