Did Labour win 411 or 412 seats in the 2024 general election?

You may have spotted a slight discrepancy in reports of the number of seats won by Labour in last week’s general election. 

Some sources, including the Telegraph, the House of Commons Library and the Institute for Government think tank, say that Labour won 411 seats. But according to others including the BBC, Guardian, ITV and Sky News, Labour actually won 412 seats. 

So what’s behind this one-seat discrepancy?

This difference is down to the Speaker of the House of Commons, Sir Lindsay Hoyle MP, who won the constituency of Chorley in Lancashire with 74% of the votes and was re-elected as Speaker by MPs at the first meeting of the new House of Commons on Tuesday.

Sir Lindsay was originally elected in Chorley as a Labour MP in 1997, and was affiliated with the party until 2019. But he was required to renounce his party allegiance when he was elected as Speaker in 2019, after being a Deputy Speaker to John Bercow since 2010. 

As Speaker, Sir Lindsay stood as a candidate without party affiliation in this year’s general election, and neither Labour nor the Conservatives fielded a candidate against him in his constituency. 

The Speaker is required to be politically impartial and non-partisan—they do not vote on legislation unless their vote is required to break a tied division. Deputy Speakers (of which there are usually three) also do not vote but, unlike the Speaker, retain their party affiliations. The four are typically split evenly between government and opposition, which means in this Parliament one deputy will be elected from Labour and two from the Conservatives.