Keir Starmer’s Labour Party wins UK election in landslide

Keir Starmer will become Britain’s new prime minister on Friday after his center-left opposition Labour Party won a landslide victory in the general election, ending 14 years of rule by the right-wing Conservatives.

“The Labour Party has won this election and I have called Sir Keir Starmer to congratulate him on his victory,” Rishi Sunak said grimly after being re-elected MP.

The Conservative leader added: “Today, power will change hands in a peaceful and orderly manner, in good faith on all sides.” He called the election results “sobering” and said he took responsibility for the defeat.

At his party’s victory rally in central London, Starmer, 61, told cheering campaigners that “change starts here” and pledged a “decade of national renewal” that would put “country first, party second”.

But he warned that change would not happen overnight, even if Labour picked up a significant number of Conservative seats across the country, including from at least eight cabinet members.

Defence Secretary Grant Shapps was the highest-profile loser of the night so far, with other ministers, including senior minister Penny Mordaunt and Brexiteer leader Jacob Rees-Mogg, also losing.

Jeremy Hunt, the finance minister, remained an MP but won by just 891 votes.

UK Labour Party leader Keir Starmer speaks during a victory rally at the Tate Modern in London in the early hours of July 5, 2024. Photo: AFP

“Kyle, let’s go.”

At 04:00 GMT, Labour quickly won the 326 seats it needed to secure an outright majority in Parliament’s 650 seats, with final results expected later on Friday morning.

A BBC exit poll published after voting closed at 21:00 GMT on Thursday showed Labour on track to return to a general election for the first time since 2010 with 410 seats, with a majority of 170.

The Conservatives won just 131 seats in the House of Commons, a record low, while right-wing votes were clearly being split by Nigel Farage’s anti-immigration Reform UK Party, which could pick up 13 seats.

Another positive for centrists is that the smaller opposition Liberal Democrats will win 61 seats, replacing the Scottish National Party as the third largest party.

The projected overall result bucks a rightward trend among Britain’s closest Western allies, with the far right vying for power in France and Donald Trump looking set to return to power in the United States.

Ever since Gordon Brown was ousted by David Cameron in 2010, the focus of British newspapers has been on the Labour Party’s return to power.

The Labour-supporting Daily Mirror ran a headline: “Kyle, let’s go”. Rupert Murdoch’s influential tabloid The Sun said: “Britain is in rage”, as it swung to Labour for the first time since 2005.

British Prime Minister and Conservative Party leader Rishi Sunak reacts after retaining his Richmond and Northallerton MP seat in Northallerton, northern England, in the early hours of July 5, 2024. Photo: AFP

The future of the Conservative Party

Sunak will submit his resignation to King Charles III, who will ask Starmer, the leader of the largest party in Parliament, to form a government.

The Conservatives’ previous worst election result was 156 seats in 1906. Former leader William Hague said in an interview with Times Radio that the forecast “would be a historically catastrophic result”.

But Tim Bell, professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London, said the situation was “not as catastrophic as some had predicted” and the Conservatives now needed to decide how best to fight back.

Both Suella Braverman, the right-wing former home secretary, and Mordaunt, then leader of the Commons, said the Conservatives had lost because they had failed to listen to the British people.

But Brexit advocate Farage, who finally succeeded in becoming an MP in his eighth election, has made no secret of his ambition to take over the party.

“There is a huge gap on the centre-right in British politics and my job is to fill that gap,” he said after his comfortable win in Clacton, eastern England.

To-do List

Labour’s recovery is a stunning turnaround from five years ago, when far-left former leader Jeremy Corbyn led the party to its worst defeat since 1935 in an election dominated by Brexit.

Starmer came to office in early 2020 and set out to bring Labour back to the centre, making it a more electorally viable party and clearing out the infighting and anti-Semitism that had cost it support.

For nearly two years, opinion polls have consistently shown Labour leading the Conservatives by 20 percentage points, making a Labour victory seem inevitable – the first since Tony Blair in 2005.

Starmer faces a daunting task: economic growth is weak, public services are stretched thin by deep cuts, funds are insufficient and household finances are strained.

He also promised to restore political integrity after a tumultuous period of five Conservative prime ministers – three of them within four months – marred by scandal and corruption.