LONDON: Britain’s Labour Party is heading for a landslide victory in a general election on Friday, exit polls and partial results suggest, as voters punished the ruling Conservatives after 14 years of economic and political upheaval.
As the sun rose, official results showed Labour had won 326 of the 650 seats as votes were counted. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak had already conceded defeat and said he had called left-wing Labour leader Keir Starmer to congratulate him on becoming prime minister.
Starmer will have to face a fed-up electorate eager for change, all against the backdrop of a grim economic crisis, growing distrust of institutions and a fraying social fabric.
“Today, people here and across the country have spoken and they are ready for change,” Starmer told supporters in his north London constituency as official results showed he had won his seat. “You voted. Now it’s time for us to do it.”
As thousands of poll workers counted millions of ballot papers at counting centres across the country, the Conservatives were left reeling from the shock of a historic defeat that threw a weakened party into chaos and likely set up a struggle to replace Sunak as leader.
“Nothing has gone right for the last 14 years,” said London voter James Erskine, who was optimistic about the changes hours before polls closed. “I just see the potential for seismic change and that’s what I’m counting on.”
While results so far suggest Britain will defy recent right-wing electoral shifts in Europe, including France and Italy, many of the same populist currents are running through the country. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has inflamed the race with his party’s anti-immigration sentiment, bent on “taking our country back”, and has eroded support for the Conservatives, who already face bleak prospects.
Exit polls predict the party will win about 410 seats in the 650-seat House of Commons, to the Conservatives’ 131.
With more than half of the official results in, the broad picture of a Labour victory was confirmed, although estimates of the final seat count varied. The BBC predicted Labour would win 410 seats and the Conservatives 144. Even this higher figure for the Tories would leave the party with the fewest seats in its almost two-hundred-year history and would cause confusion.
“It is clear today that Britain will have a new government in the morning,” said future former Defence Secretary Grant Shapps after losing his job – one of several Conservative cabinet ministers to suffer defeat.
In a sign of the unstable public mood and anger at the system, some smaller parties, including the centrist Liberal Democrats and Reform UK, appeared to do well. Farage won the race in the seaside town of Clacton-on-Sea, securing his seat in Parliament on his eighth attempt.
A key unknown was whether Farage’s far-right party would be able to translate its success in grabbing public attention into more than a few seats in Parliament.
Britons will vote on paper ballots, marking their choices in pencil and then counting them by hand. Final results are expected on Friday morning.
Britain has experienced a series of turbulent years — some caused by the Conservatives, some not — that have left many voters pessimistic about the country’s future. Britain’s exit from the European Union, followed by the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, have battered the economy, while lockdown-breaking events by then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his staff have sparked widespread anger.
Johnson’s successor, Liz Truss, further shook up the economy with a drastic tax cut package and lasted just 49 days in office. Rising poverty and cuts to public services led to complaints of a “Broken Britain”.
Hundreds of communities were embroiled in bitter disputes, with traditional party loyalties taking a back seat to more pressing concerns about the economy, crumbling infrastructure and the National Health Service.
In Henley-on-Thames, about 40 miles (65 kilometres) west of London, voters like Patricia Mulcahy, who is retired, sensed that the nation was looking for something different. A community that usually votes Conservative may change its views this time.
“The younger generation is much more interested in change,” Mulcahy said. “So I think whatever happens in Henley, in the country, there will be a huge change. But whoever gets there will have a hell of a job ahead of them. It won’t be easy.”
Anand Menon, professor of European politics and foreign affairs at King’s College London, said British voters would soon see a marked change in the political atmosphere from the turbulent “politics as pantomime” of the past few years.
“I think we will have to get used to a relatively stable government again, where ministers stay in power for a long time and the government is able to think ahead, going beyond the short-term and medium-term goals,” he said.
Labour has failed to lift living standards with its promises to revive the sluggish economy, invest in infrastructure and make Britain a “clean energy superpower”.
But nothing went wrong in her campaign either, with the party winning the support of much of the business community and endorsement from traditionally conservative newspapers, including Rupert Murdoch’s Sun tabloid, which praised Starmer for “restoring the party to the centre of British politics”.
Meanwhile, the Conservatives were beset by setbacks. The campaign got off to a rocky start when rain soaked Sunak as he made the announcement outside 10 Downing St. Then Sunak returned home early from commemorating the 80th anniversary of the D-Day invasion of France.
Several Conservatives close to Sunak are under investigation over allegations they used confidential information to bet on the election date before it was called.
Sunak is finding it hard to shake the stigma of political chaos and mismanagement that has clustered around the Conservatives.
However, for many voters the lack of trust applies not only to the ruling party, but to politicians in general.
“I don’t know who’s behind me as a working person,” said Michelle Bird, a port worker in Southampton on England’s south coast, who was undecided about whether to vote Labour or Conservative in the days leading up to the election. “I don’t know if it’s the devil you know or the devil you don’t.”
