Britain’s main opposition Labour Party is headed for a landslide victory in elections, exit polls indicated on Thursday, with Keir Starmer replacing Rishi Sunak as prime minister, ending 14 years of Conservative rule.
The survey, conducted for British broadcasters, suggested the left-wing Labour Party would win 410 seats in the 650-seat House of Commons, while the right-wing Tory Party would win only 131 seats – a record low.
The centrists got another boost when the small opposition party, the Liberal Democrats, gained 61 seats, which will push the Scottish National Party into the third-largest party with 10 seats.
Nigel Farage’s far-right anti-immigration Reform UK party could gain 13 seats, while Welsh nationalist Plaid Cymru could gain four and the Greens could gain two MPs.
Labour would have a majority of 170 – more than double the majority won for the Tories by Boris Johnson in the last Brexit-influenced election in December 2019.
“To everyone who campaigned for Labour in this election, to everyone who voted for us, and to everyone who put their trust in our changed Labour Party – thank you,” Starmer wrote on social media.
Outside Starmer’s local pub The Pineapple in north London, pub-goers hailed the expected result as “a new dawn”, but there were no boisterous celebrations.
Starmer’s deputy Angela Rayner told the BBC the figures were “encouraging… but I wouldn’t get too optimistic until we get the results”.
Former Conservative leader William Hague told Times Radio the predicted result would be a “historically devastating outcome” for the Tories.
The Tories’ worst previous result had been 156 seats in 1906.
But Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary, University of London, said it was “not as disastrous as some were predicting” and that the Tory party, plagued by ideological infighting, now needed to decide which direction it would take.
‘Bright future’
Counting of votes will continue through the night at around 40,000 polling stations across the country and official results are expected by Friday morning.
Just an hour after voting closed, the first victory was declared in Houghton and Sunderland South in north-east England, where Labour’s Bridget Phillipson was elected as MP.
Phillipson, who was chosen to become education secretary, said in his acceptance speech that Britons appeared to have chosen a “brighter future”.
“After 14 years the British people have voted for change… The Labour Party will honour the trust you have placed in us,” he told supporters, drawing applause.
The projected overall outcome stands in contrast to rightward trends among Britain’s closest Western allies, where the far right is eyeing power in France, and Donald Trump looks set to return in the United States.
Under Britain’s first-past-the-post electoral system, a party needs 326 seats to secure an absolute majority in parliament.
The leaders of the winning party are expected to meet head of state King Charles III on Friday morning, who will ask the leader of the largest party to form a government.
Ministerial appointments are expected shortly after the acceptance speech at Downing Street.
to do list
Confirmation of the result would mark a significant increase in power for Starmer, 61, who was first elected as a member of parliament in 2015 – and a surprise turnaround for Labour.
The former human rights lawyer and chief public prosecutor was elected Labour Party leader in early 2020, succeeding veteran leftist Jeremy Corbyn, who lost to Johnson by a huge margin in 2019 – Labour’s worst performance since 1935.
Starmer has returned the party to a central role, making it a more electable proposition, and ending the infighting with the hard-left and anti-Semitism that had eroded its support.
Opinion polls for the past two years or so have consistently given Labour a 20-point lead over the Tories, which even a largely lackluster election campaign has failed to change.
Some polls had predicted a near wipeout for the Tories, given negative public opinion and a split in the right-wing vote caused by the arrival of Reform UK.
This made a Labour victory – the first since Tony Blair in 2005 – seem inevitable, and the party feared it could impact voter turnout.
Starmer, the working-class son of a tool maker and a nurse, has promised “a decade of national renewal” after post-financial crisis austerity measures, Brexit upheaval and a cost-of-living crisis.
But their to-do list is daunting, with economic growth slow, public services under pressure and underfunded by nearly a decade of cuts, and families financially strapped.
The Labour leader has also promised a return to political integrity after a chaotic period of scandal and corruption that saw five Tory prime ministers, three of them in four months.
His first days in office are likely to be busy, including representing Britain at next week’s NATO summit in Washington, and hosting European leaders at a summit in southern England later this month.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
