We know Starmer is in No 10, the Tories in disarray but what lies beneath should worry the entire political class

Don’t forget that the word landslide has another meaning, freighted with danger. Soil comes loose and the ground fails. Solid land turns semi-liquid under your feet. Without warning, rocks come crashing down. A vast river of mud covers roads, levels homes. What was once safe territory turns lethal.

No one at Westminster this week wants refreshers in geology, and who can blame them? Much more pleasant to talk of mandates, of Britain as an oasis of political stability, of the orderly transition of power in the mother of all parliaments. Yet this general election shows us that the landscape for both government and official opposition is growing ever more treacherous.

It’s not just the fact that Keir Starmer has scooped a Tony Blair-style majority on Jeremy Corbyn-style polling. It’s also that this country’s two big parties took their lowest share of votes and seats alike in more than a century. There hasn’t been such weakness at the heart of the party system since Lloyd George’s Liberals were on their deathbed.

Long before the side slides off a mountain, the conditions build up until, finally, just a little rainfall can trigger calamity. Many of the biggest names around the new cabinet are dreading a downpour in their own back yard. Consider those representing Labour’s real heartlands: the big cities, with their electoral coalition of renters, ethnic minorities and established leftwingers – a coalition that is coming apart.

After a brutal defeat, the starting gun has been fired on the Tory leadership battle – but which faction will triumph? Kiran Stacey and Peter Walker report

A week ago they suffered the worst defeat in more than 100 years. But rather than licking their wounds, MPs in the Conservative party have already begun positioning themselves as leadership hopefuls. Suella Braverman has made waves with her speech at a Washington meeting of global conservatives, while Kemi Badenoch shocked some by criticising Rishi Sunak in the first shadow cabinet meeting.

The Guardian’s senior political reporter, Peter Walker, has been at the Popular Conservatism conference, where delegates from the right of the Conservative party have been planning how to keep their views on the party’s agenda. He explains how a bitter battle for control of the party by the right and centre factions has begun.

Readers respond to reports that as many as 400,000 people may have been prevented from voting last week

The news that voter ID rules may have stopped 400,000 taking part in the general election ( Report, 8 July ) shows that fears that the Tories’ electoral reforms would damage democracy were well founded. The Johnson administration introduced extreme photo ID requirements, stripped the Electoral Commission of its independence and designed electoral boundaries around a register missing millions of eligible citizens . Our system saw democratic backsliding.

The new government could begin to build a more inclusive democracy. It could repeal parts of the Elections Act, consolidate electoral law and introduce new innovations such as automatic voter registration. A new Representation of the People Act to strengthen elections for the 21st century is needed. The Electoral Integrity Project has a blueprint for reforms that were proposed by academics and civil society groups in the last parliament. There is now an opportunity to take them forward.
Prof Toby S James
University of East Anglia; co-director, Electoral Integrity Project

The Guardian’s Pippa Crerar and Kiran Stacey are on two sides of the Atlantic this week. They discuss Keir Starmer’s first foreign trip, and whether the Conservatives can find the soul of their party

The tone is relentlessly delusional – to listen to this lot you’d think the last 14 years were a socialist paradise

I’m waiting near the front door of the Emmanuel Centre in Westminster drinking a coffee. A well-dressed man leans in and whispers: “Did you manage to get your MP over the line?” I’ve been mistaken for one of the last men – and they are almost all men – standing. A true believer.

I don’t want to upset the man so I just mumble that we did get our woman over the line. I don’t mention that the woman was Labour’s Rosena Allin-Khan. It might break him completely.

While it won’t be easy to regain people’s trust in politics, the exchange between Carla Denyer and Thangam Debbonaire set just the right example

One of the memorable takeaways of election night was the exchange between Carla Denyer, the newly elected Green MP for Bristol Central , and her defeated rival, Labour’s Thangam Debbonaire. It began at the count with Debbonaire paying generous tribute to Denyer as she acknowledged her defeat, and continued on Sunday when Denyer retweeted a video of Debbonaire’s speech and praised her predecessor’s record.

The courtesy was important. But it was more than that. The two women embodied the idea that the essence of democracy is to honour the motives of those with whom you disagree. “Democracy is so special,” said Debbonaire. “We must always treasure and respect it.”

Former PM takes up place on opposition benches and says he looks forward to continuing to represent Richmond and Northallerton

• UK politics live – latest updates

Rishi Sunak is understood to have told MPs he has no plans to leave for California and will do all he can to facilitate a smooth leadership transition.

Sunak has moved into the offices of the leader of the opposition in Portcullis House and chaired his first shadow cabinet meeting on Tuesday.

As Labour takes power for the first time in 14 years, Benjamin Myers describes the legacy of neglected health and education in the city he grew up in

• My home town: Chesterfield | London

As Labour takes power for the first time in 14 years, the Guardian asked three writers to describe how their home towns had changed under Conservative rule – and the challenges now facing Keir Starmer. Here, Benjamin Myers describes what has happened to Durham.

Durham is an ancient city. It wears its stories for all to see – in the medieval market place, the world-renowned Norman cathedral (est. 1093), the monstrous municipal buildings that have been and gone in just six decades, two notorious prisons, and the swish new university properties built to accommodate a boom that has made this Russell Group seat of learning the sixth highest-ranked university in Britain.

A millennial navigates the gig economy, fights in pubs and gets kettled on a demo in Snowflake’s Progress, the Guardian’s political cartoonist’s Hogarthian epitaph for the last 14 years of Conservative rule

Guardian cartoonist Ben Jennings and I stand forlornly before Sir John Soane’s Museum in London as we are told that is it closed. We had planned to see William Hogarth’s tragicomic painting cycle A Rake’s Progress , the model for Jennings’ Snowflake’s Progress – his personal picaresque survey of broken Britain.

Like a couple of ne’er-do-well Georgian fops, we have mucked up – until another journalist generously phones the director, Will Gompertz , who comes down to size us up. The former BBC arts supremo apparently thinks what the hell and gives us a VIP tour of Soane’s atmospheric house .