UK election 2024: Shattered Sunak conceded defeat as Keir Starmer’s Labour head for biggest win since 1997

Britain’s Labour Party has ended the Conservative party’s 14 years in power, winning 326 seats in the parliamentary election, meaning it now holds a majority in the 650-seat-strong House of Commons to cap off a comprehensive Tory implosion at the polls. A shattered Prime Minister Rishi Sunak conceded defeat, announcing that the Labour Party was out of opposition and its leader into No. 10 Downing Street. “The Labour Party has won this general election and I have called Sir Keir Starmer to congratulate him on his victory,” Mr Sunak said after winning his own seat in northern England. “Today, power will change hands in a peaceful and orderly manner, with goodwill on all sides. That is something that should give us all confidence in our country’s stability and future.” Earlier, Sir Keir Starmer said the country was “ready for change” as his party appeared on course for a landslide win in the UK general election. Mr Starmer was speaking after being re-elected in his seat of Holborn and St Pancras, as counting continued to confirm what exit polls had already predicted just hours after voting had opened. Labour was forecast to have a 170-seat majority in the Commons, with the Conservatives reduced to their lowest number of MPs on record. Mr Starmer, set to become the UK’s next Prime Minister, said: “you have voted, it is now time for us to deliver”. In his acceptance speech after his re-election was made official, Mr Starmer said: “Tonight, people here and around the country have spoken and they are saying they’re ready for change. “To end the politics of performance and return to politics as public service.” Shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson held Houghton and Sunderland South for Labour in the first confirmed result of the night, but Reform UK pushed the Conservatives in an early indication of the advances made by Brexit champion Nigel Farage’s fledgling party. “Tonight the British people have spoken and if the exit poll this evening is again a guide to results across our country - as it so often is - then after 14 years the British people have chosen change”, Ms Phillipson said. “They have chosen Labour and they have chosen the leadership of Keir Starmer. Today our country with its proud history has chosen a brighter future.” Labour was on course to win 410 seats, the party’s most dominant win since Tony Blair’s 1997 landslide victory. Meanwhile the Tories have been reduced to 131, which would be their worst ever performance and has already seen some of the party’s biggest names voted out of Parliament, including former Prime Minister Liz Truss, who lost her South West Norfolk seat to Labour by 630 votes. The centrist Liberal Democrats are forecast to win 61 seats, Reform UK four and the Green Party two. The results mean a Labour Prime Minister for the first time since 2010 and the Conservatives facing a fight for the future direction of the party. Former justice secretary Sir Robert Buckland was the first high-profile Tory casualty as he lost to Labour in Swindon South. He warned that a lurch to the right after an election in which Mr Farage’s Reform ate into the ruling party’s vote would be “disastrous” for the Conservatives and took aim at “ill-discipline” within the Conservative Party after losing his seat. Former Cabinet minister Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, who was also lost his seat, said it is “clearly a terrible night”, suggesting voters had been put off by the revolving door in No 10 which saw Boris Johnson replaced first by Liz Truss and then by Mr Sunak. “Voters expect the prime minister they have chosen to remain the prime minister and for it to be the voters who decide when that person is changed”, Mr Rees-Mogg told the BBC. It also completes a remarkable turnaround for Mr Starmer since his left-wing predecessor Jeremy Corbyn led Labour to its worst performance in more than eight decades just five years ago. When he took over in 2020, it was predicted the Johnson-led Tories would keep Labour out of power for at least another decade. But Mr Johnson’s administration collapsed under the weight of chaos and scandal, not least when he became the first sitting premier to be fined by the police over a rule-breaking party in Downing Street during the pandemic. His successor, Ms Truss, lasted 49 days - the shortest tenure in history but long enough to trigger a financial market meltdown. Since taking over in October 2022, Mr Sunak - who had also been fined in the ’Partygate’ scandal - failed to shake the sense that Britons had simply had enough of the Tory rule. It set the UK up for a massive political whiplash. Mr Starmer capitalised on the Tory disarray by taking to the political centre ground, where British elections are traditionally won. He expelled Mr Corbyn, and presented Labour as the party of economic stability. What had been a relatively low-key campaign has produced an extraordinary result. Rachel Reeves, a former Bank of England economist who is set to be the UK’s first female Chancellor of the Exchequer, has been central to Labour’s pitch for business to get behind Labour. Markets have been sanguine in the face of a projected Labour victory, sending gauges of volatility to near multi-year lows across currency and bond markets. The pound was little changed against both the dollar and the euro in the immediate aftermath of the exit poll results. “Nobody in 2019 would’ve imagined this was possible,” Peter Mandelson, a former Labour minister and key force behind the 1997 win, said on the BBC. Labour went into election day with a 20-point lead in Bloomberg’s UK poll of polls, a rolling 14-day average using data from 11 polling companies. The gap to the Tories had barely narrowed since Mr Sunak caught his own party by surprise when he called a snap summer vote rather than wait until the autumn. The more accurate exit poll is different, based on a survey of tens of thousands of people after they have cast their ballots. For Mr Starmer and Labour, the result looks set to end a miserable 14 years on the political sidelines as the Conservative government imposed years of austerity and led the UK out of the European Union, triggering political turmoil. The pressure on Mr Starmer to follow up - as Mr Blair did - with future wins is immense. Yet there’s unlikely to be the same Cool Britannia-driven euphoria that greeted Blair in 1997. Brexit is still taking a toll on the UK economy, and Britons have endured a historic squeeze on living standards in the aftermath of the pandemic and Russia’s war in Ukraine. Mr Starmer has said there’s “no magic wand” for a quick fix. But five years after the Corbyn-led nadir, it’s still the case that Labour is in a position almost nobody thought was possible, albeit aided by the Tories’ self-inflicted wounds. Mr Starmer’s manifesto fell short of what some progressives and especially the left of his Labour Party wanted. But Labour’s argument is that in a cost-of-living crisis and against a Conservative Party - aided by supportive newspapers - determined to campaign on tax cuts, it was impossible for Mr Starmer and Ms Reeves to be more ambitious. The seismic result reflects Britain’s winner-takes-all electoral system and a general political realignment extending across the UK. According to exit polls, Labour’s final vote is likely to be similar to the 40 per cent it secured under Mr Corbyn in 2017. In that election it won just 262 seats; this time round the party’s voters are spread much more efficiently. However, the surge in support for smaller parties - the Lib-Dems and Reform - has helped to take scores of seats off the Tories. The Liberal Democrats’ major gains were made in the traditional Tory heartlands of southern England. And Reform UK’s swag of seats includes projected wins in Hartlepool, Barnsley North and Great Yarmouth. Reform’s success is one of the key factors that has helped Labour, polling expert John Curtice said on the BBC. “Although this looks like Labour is going to get a landslide in seats, it does not necessarily follow that Labour had got a landslide in votes,” Mr Curtice said. “Much of the damage being done to the Conservative Party tonight is done by Reform, even if it is Labour that is the beneficiary.” Compare that to the Scottish National Party, the dominant force in Scotland for over a decade with its campaign for independence, which was on course to take just 10 of Scotland’s 57 districts, down from 48 in 2019. The party has been in disarray after long-time leader Nicola Sturgeon stepped down, its governing partnership with the Scottish Greens imploded and police launched an investigation into its finances. But for the Conservatives, this heavy defeat has been on the cards for months. Mr Sunak has said he will stay on as an MP even if he’s removed or steps down as Tory leader. His party, meanwhile, faces a fractious battle over how to recover. “It’s going to be an incredibly difficult night,” former Conservative minister Steve Baker said on the BBC, as the exit poll projected he would lose his seat. “It’s a pretty devastating night for the Conservative Party.”

UK election 2024: Shattered Sunak conceded defeat as Keir Starmer’s Labour head for biggest win since 1997

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