Britain’s Labour sweeping into power with huge majority, exit poll shows
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LONDON – Sir Keir Starmer will be Britain’s next prime minister on July 5 with his Labour Party set to win a massive majority in a parliamentary election, an exit poll indicated, forecasting Mr Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives would suffer historic losses.
Centre-left Labour was on course to capture 410 of the 650 seats in Parliament, an astonishing reversal of fortunes from five years ago, when it suffered its worst performance since 1935.
The likely result would give Labour a majority of 170 and would bring the curtain down on 14 years of increasingly tumultuous Conservative-led government.
“Tonight, people here and around the country have spoken, and they’re ready for change, to end the politics of performance, a return to politics as public service,” Mr Starmer said after winning his seat in London.
“The change begins right here. Because this is your democracy, your community and your future. You have voted. It is now time for us to deliver.”
Mr Starmer will likely come to power with a daunting in-tray, with a sluggish economy, creaking public services, and falling living standards – all factors which contributed to the Conservatives’ demise.
Mr Sunak’s party was forecast to take only 131 seats, the worst electoral performance in its history, as voters punished them for a cost-of-living crisis and years of instability and infighting which has seen five different prime ministers since the Brexit vote of 2016.
“What is crystal clear to me tonight is it is not so much that Labour won this election, but rather that the Conservatives have lost it,” British Defence Minister Grant Shapps said after he lost his seat
“We have tried the patience of traditional Conservatives voters with a propensity to create an endless political soap opera out of internal rivalries and divisions, which have become increasingly indulgent and entrenched.”
The centrist Liberal Democrats were predicted to capture 61 seats while the right-wing populist Reform UK party, headed by Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage, was forecast to win 13, far more than expected.
Results from more than 200 seats confirmed Labour and the Lib Dems were making gains from the Conservatives, while Reform also picked up four victories, including Mr Farage himself
“There is a massive gap on the centre right of British politics and my job is to fill it, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do,” Mr Farage said. “Believe me, folks, this is just the first step of something that is going to stun all of you.”
Overall, the exit poll did suggest British voters have shifted support to the centre-left, unlike in France where Ms Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party made historic gains in an election on June 30.
It was not just the Conservatives whose vote was predicted to have collapsed. The pro-independence Scottish National Party was forecast to win only 10 seats, its worst showing since 2010, after a period of turmoil which has seen two leaders quit in little over a year.
Labour Party leader Keir Starmer and his wife Victoria arriving to cast their votes at a polling station in London on July 4.
PHOTO: AFP
“If this exit poll is correct, then this is a historic defeat for the Conservative Party,” research director Keiran Pedley of Ipsos, which carried out the exit poll, told Reuters.
“It looked like the Conservatives were going to be in power for 10 years, and it has all fallen apart.”
Labour Party leader Keir Starmer (centre) reacting in a London location as the counting of British election votes continues on July 5.
PHOTO: REUTERS
‘Sunak is just the fall guy’
Mr Sunak stunned Westminster and many in his own party by calling the election
He had hoped that the gap would narrow as had traditionally been the case in British elections, but the deficit has failed to budge in a fairly disastrous campaign.
It started badly with him getting drenched by rain outside Downing Street as he announced the vote, before aides and Conservative candidates became caught up in a gambling scandal, early departure from D-Day commemorative events in France
If the exit poll proves right, it represents an incredible turnaround for Mr Starmer and Labour, which critics and supporters said was facing an existential crisis just three years ago when it appeared to have lost its way after its 2019 drubbing.
People reacting to the first exit polls predicting election results at a watch party in London on July 4.
PHOTO: NYTIMES
But a series of scandals – most notably revelations of parties in Downing Street during Covid-19 lockdowns
Ms Liz Truss’ disastrous six-week premiership, which followed Mr Johnson being forced out at the end of 2022, cemented the decline, and Mr Sunak was unable to make any dent in Labour’s now commanding poll lead.
“We deserved to lose. The Conservative Party just appears exhausted and out of ideas,” Mr Ed Costello, the chairman of the Grassroots Conservatives organisation, which represents rank-and-file members, told Reuters.
“But it is not all Rishi Sunak’s fault. It is Boris Johnson and Liz Truss that have led the party to disaster. Rishi Sunak is just the fall guy.”
The predicted Labour result would not quite match the record levels achieved by the party under Mr Tony Blair in 1997 and 2001 when the party captured 418 and 412 seats respectively.
“The electoral mountain that Labour have needed to climb is bigger than Tony Blair had to climb and he (Starmer) has climbed it with room to spare,” Professor Peter Sloman, a politics expert at the University of Cambridge, told Reuters. REUTERS
