Keir Starmer took office as Britain’s new leader on Friday, appointing his cabinet after his left-wing Labour Party won a landslide general election victory, ending 14 years of Conservative rule.
Starmer appointed Rachel Reeves as Britain’s first female finance minister and David Lammy as foreign secretary as he won the election and became the first Labour Party prime minister since Gordon Brown in 2010.
Crowds of Labour Party activists waving flags gathered at Downing Street after Starmer pledged to “rebuild” Britain after head of state King Charles III invited him to form a government during a meeting at Buckingham Palace.
“Now, our country has voted decisively for change, national renewal and to return politics to public service,” the 61-year-old said in his first speech as prime minister.
“The work of transformation begins urgently, but there is no doubt that we will rebuild Britain.”
‘Apologise’
Rishi Sunak conceded defeat on a tough night for his Conservative Party, which saw at least 12 of his senior Cabinet colleagues – and his predecessor Liz Truss – lose their seats.
His disastrous 49-day tenure effectively sealed the Tories’ fate with the public two years ago, when his unpaid tax cuts roiled markets and sent the pound crashing.
Before leaving Downing Street for the final time as prime minister, Sunak “apologised” to the public and revealed he would resign as Tory leader once formal arrangements for a successor had been made.
Labour has surpassed the 326 seats needed to win an absolute majority in the 650-seat House of Commons, with final results expected on Saturday.
By 1700 GMT on Friday, the party had won 412 seats in the House of Commons with just one result yet to be declared, giving it a majority of 174.
The Tories won just 121 seats – a record low – while the right-wing vote clearly swung behind Nigel Farage’s anti-immigration Reform UK party, which took five seats.
The centrists received a further boost when the smaller opposition party, the Liberal Democrats, replaced the Scottish National Party as the third-largest party.
World response
The results contrast with trends among Britain’s closest Western allies, where the far-right is eyeing power in France and Donald Trump looks set to return to power in the United States.
Congratulation poured in from European leaders, including German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who said Starmer would be a “very good, very successful” prime minister.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the two countries would “remain reliable allies in good and bad times”.
Former US president Donald Trump congratulated his fan Farage on winning election to the UK Parliament in his eighth attempt, but forgot to mention Starmer.
Outside London’s busy Waterloo station, engagement officer Ramsey Sargeant, 49, described it as a “critical election”.
“It’s been a very up and down over the last few months and years. I’m very excited to see what happens next,” he told AFP.
‘devastating’
Sunak submitted his resignation to King shortly after returning to London from his rural constituency in northern England, where the depth of his party’s defeat became immediately apparent.
The Tories’ worst previous election result was 156 seats in 1906. Former leader William Hague told Times Radio it was “a disastrous result in historical terms”.
But Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary, University of London, said it was “not as devastating as some people were predicting” and the Tories would now have to decide how to counter it.
Brexit-supporting Farage has made no secret of his aim to take over the party.
“There’s a huge gap in the centre-right of British politics and my job is to fill it,” he said after his comfortable win in Clacton, eastern England.
to do list
Labour’s resurgence is a stunning turnaround from five years ago, when hard-left former leader Jeremy Corbyn led the party to its worst defeat since 1935 in an election dominated by Brexit.
Starmer took office in early 2020 and has worked to bring the party back to the centre, eliminating the infighting and anti-Semitism that had eroded its support.
Opinion polls since Truss’s resignation have consistently shown Labour 20 points ahead of the Tories, making a Labour victory – which would be the first since Tony Blair in 2005 – seem inevitable.
But as the count neared its end, the gap narrowed to about 11 percentage points, and Labor appeared to have won fewer votes than in 2019, partly reflecting lower voter turnout.
Starmer faces many challenges, from weak economic growth to overstrained and underfunded public services and financially strapped families.
He has promised a return to political integrity after a chaotic period of five Tory prime ministers in 14 years, marked by scandal and corruption.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
