UK’s Labour Party poised for landslide victory after 14 years of Conservatives in power
Britain’s left-wing Labour Party was poised Thursday for a landslide victory over the ruling Conservative Party after 14 years out of power.
According to an exit poll commissioned by all three major UK broadcasters and released as soon as the polls closed at 10 p.m., Labour was set to win 410 seats in the 650-member House of Commons, a majority of 170.
The result means that Keir Starmer, 61, a former public prosecutor and human rights lawyer who has led Labour since early 2020, will be the next prime minister after guiding the party to its first general election victory since 2005.
“To everyone who has campaigned for Labour in this election, to everyone who voted for us and put their trust in our changed Labour Party – thank you,” Starmer wrote in a post on X soon after the exit poll results were released.
The Conservatives, led by outgoing PM Rishi Sunak, were projected to claim just 131 seats, their worst result since the modern party’s founding in 1834.
The centrist Liberal Democrats were projected to take 61 seats, up 50 from the last election in 2019.
Contesting just its second general election, the right-wing Reform UK party, led by Brexit architect Nigel Farage, was projected to capture 13 Commons seats while taking a big bite out of the Conservative vote.
Farage won a seat in the country’s parliament for the first time on Friday, defeating Conservative incumbent Giles Watling.
“There is a massive gap on the center right of British politics and my job is to fill it and that’s exactly what I’m gonna do,” he said after the result was announced.
“My plan is to build a mass national movement over the course of the next few years and hopefully be big enough to challenge the general election properly in 2029.”
The pro-independence Scottish National Party suffered a collapse in its support, and was projected to take just 10 seats after winning 48 in 2019.
A Labour landslide had been expected for months as pre-election opinion polls showed British voters fatigued with a Conservative government beset by infighting and scandal.
Sunak, 44, was anointed as PM in October 2022 following the resignation of Liz Truss, whose 44-day tenure at 10 Downing Street was the shortest in British history.
He will reportedly announce his resignation Friday morning, “but will stay on until another leader is selected,” Tim Shipman of the Sunday Times wrote on X.
Truss, who resigned after an uproar over her plans to stimulate the UK economy through large-scale tax cuts and borrowing, had assumed the role in September 2022 after Boris Johnson resigned following revelations that social functions had been held at 10 Downing Street in violation of pandemic-era restrictions on public gatherings, a scandal that later came to be known as “Partygate.”
Johnson was also criticized over a sexual misconduct scandal involving the party’s deputy chief whip, Chris Pincher. After the PM initially denied knowing of any complaints about Pincher at the time of his appointment in February 2022, Johnson was later forced to admit he did know of complaints but did not dismiss him.
Starmer has pledged to end the “chaos” the country has experienced under post-Johnson Conservative rule and work to boost relationships with the rest of Europe following the UK’s exit from the European Union in January 2020.
Thursday’s general election is the first to be held in the reign of King Charles III, who ascended the throne in September 2022 upon the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II.
At some point Friday morning, once the result is confirmed, Starmer will go to Buckingham Palace, where he will “kiss hands” with the king and be invited to form the next government.
