Exit polls predict Labour landslide victory, with Sir Keir Starmer expected to take over 10 Downing Street

Exit polls show Sir Keir Starmer will take over Downing Street and his Labour Party will win a landslide victory.

Exit polls for the broadcaster showed the Labour leader would be elected prime minister on Friday with a clear majority in parliament.

Rishi Sunak’s premiership looks set to end in an electoral disaster, with the Conservative Party expected to suffer heavy losses.

It is a dramatic turnaround since the 2019 general election, when Boris Johnson won an outright majority of 80 seats for the Conservatives and Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party achieved its worst result since 1935.

Exit polls showed Labour would gain 410 seats, with the Conservatives reduced to 131 seats.

This means that Labour will enter 10 Downing Street for the first time in 2010, while the Conservatives will face a possible civil war as the battle over the future direction of the party and the possible replacement of Sunak begins.

Elections have always been tough for the Conservatives after 14 years in power, but a sometimes chaotic campaign – sparked by Sunak’s timing – has led to a potential defeat for the party.

From a speech in the rain announcing the surprise July 4 election result, to the D-Day fiasco caused by leaving Normandy early to record a TV interview, to a muddled campaign message about Labour securing an “outright majority”, Sunak has struggled to convince voters he is the right person to lead the country.

Choosing to hold an election in the summer rather than waiting until the autumn was always going to be a gamble, and the scandal over Conservative candidates and officials allegedly heading to casinos with inside information about election dates has not helped the prime minister.

Sunak is expected to resign following the defeat for his party, but many candidates vying to be his successor are nervously awaiting results from their respective constituencies to see if their leadership dreams can survive the night.

Penny Mordaunt, Grant Shapps, Sulla Braverman, Steve Baker and Robert Jenrick are among those facing a fight to return to Parliament.

Former home secretary Suella Braverman and former Dame Priti Patel, security secretary Tom Tugendhat and health secretary Victoria Atkins are likely to remain in the race for the leadership.

Exit polls showed Labour would secure a majority of 170 votes, with forecasts suggesting the Conservatives would have their lowest number of MPs ever.

Polls show the Liberal Democrats will win 61 seats, Reform Britain will win 13 seats and the Greens will win 2 seats.

In Scotland, the SNP is expected to win 10 seats and the Welsh party four.

Labor deputy leader Angela Rayner said the forecasts were “encouraging” but many seats were still “on the edge”.

“If you look at where we were in 2019, we would have had to have a much bigger majority than Tony Blair had in 1997 to get a majority,” she told the BBC.

“So we know from our own data that many seats are at risk, but I also know that all of our campaigners and candidates have been working hard to not take anything for granted and to speak to voters about the issues that they care about.”

A Conservative source said: “It is clear from this result that we have lost some very good and hard-working candidates.”

Northern Ireland Secretary John Baker, who has said he would run for leadership if he survives but expects to lose his seat, said it was “a pretty devastating night for the Conservative Party”.

He told the BBC he expected Sunak would now “do what he thinks is in the national interest”.

Stewart Hosie, the SNP’s campaign director, described the forecast as “grim”, but added it was “just an exit poll”.

“In 2005, I remember we were down to five or six MPs, but we won the Scottish Parliament election in 2007,” he said.

“In 2010, I think we had six constituencies back and in 2011 we won a majority at Holyrood Palace.

“So I’m not worried about what this means for the SNP, but clearly if this result or something like it materialises, it tells us that the primary motivation for almost everyone going into this election was simply to get the Conservatives out of office, and people seem to have decided that voting Labour is the way to achieve that.”

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said his party was “on track for its best result in a century, thanks to our vigorous campaigning with health and care at its heart”.