Keir Starmer on Friday will become Britain’s new prime minister, as his centre-left opposition Labour party swept to a landslide general election victory, ending 14 years of right-wing Conservative rule.
“The Labour Party has won this general election, and I have called Sir Keir Starmer to congratulate him on his victory,” a sombre-looking Rishi Sunak said after he was re-elected to his seat.
“Today, power will change hands in a peaceful and orderly manner with goodwill on all sides,” the Tory leader added, calling the results “sobering” and saying he took responsibility for the defeat.
At a triumphant party rally in central London, Starmer, 61, told cheering activists that “change begins here” and promised a “decade of national renewal”, putting “country first, party second”.
But he cautioned that change would not come overnight, even as Labour snatched a swathe of Tory seats around the country, including from nine Cabinet members, and former prime minister Liz Truss.
Truss’s disastrous 49-day tenure effectively sealed the Tories’ fate with the public two years ago, when her unfunded tax cuts spooked markets and crashed the pound.
She had been facing a campaign to oust her by grassroots activists — dubbed “the Turnip Taliban” — in her rural constituency and lost by just 630 votes.
Labour raced past the 326 seats needed to secure an overall majority in the 650-seat parliament at 0400 GMT, with the final result expected later on Friday morning.
An exit poll for UK broadcasters published after polls closed at 2100 GMT on Thursday put Labour on course for a return to power for the first time since 2010, with 410 seats and a 170-seat majority.
The Tories would only get 131 seats in the House of Commons — a record low — with the right-wing vote apparently spliced by Nigel Farage’s anti-immigration Reform UK party.
Sunak will tender his resignation to head of state King Charles III, with the monarch then asking Starmer, as the leader of the largest party in parliament, to form a government.
Starmer is facing a daunting to-do list, with economic growth anaemic, public services overstretched and underfunded due to swingeing cuts, and households squeezed financially.
He has also promised a return of political integrity, after a chaotic period of five Tory prime ministers in 14 years, scandal and sleaze. AFP
