Keir Starmer’s Labour set to win landslide

U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Friday conceded defeat in the country’s parliamentary election and said that the opposition Labour party won.

“The Labour Party has won this general election and I have called Sir Keir Starmer to congratulate him on his victory,” Sunak said. He was speaking after having won his seat in parliament in Richmond and Northallerton.

Sunak spoke of a “difficult night” for the Conservative Party, and said he took responsibility for the results.

“The British people have delivered a sobering verdict tonight. There is much to learn and reflect on,” he said.

— Sophie Kiderlin

The Conservative’s Rishi Sunak, who has been prime minister since October 2022, held onto his seat in Richmond and Northallerton in the U.K. parliamentary election.

Sunak won 47.5% of the votes, which was however an over 15% decline from the previous election. Labour’s Tom Wilson garnered 22.4% of the vote, coming in second place.

— Sophie Kiderlin

U.K. Defence Secretary Grant Shapps lost his seat in Welwyn Hatfield in Thursday’s parliamentary election.

He was defeated by Labour’s Andrew Lewin who got 41% of the votes versus Shapps’ 33.2% share.

The Conservative MP, who received 16,078 votes, has sat in parliament since 2005.

— Lee Ying Shan

Populist politician Nigel Farage has won his first-ever seat in British parliament, after seven prior failed attempts.

The infamous Brexiteer won 46.2% of the vote in the Clacton constituency, with the Conservative Party coming in second with 27.9%.

The result comes amid a surprisingly strong election performance by Reform UK, which has a hardline stance on immigration and was born out of the Brexit Party. Exit polls indicate that the party could secure 13 parliamentary seats, having failed to win any in the 2019 election.

Read more here.

— Katrina Bishop

Labour leader Keir Starmer — the likely next prime minister of Britain — has made his first comments after exit polls suggested a landslide victory for his party.

“Tonight people here and around the country have spoken. And they’re ready for change,” he said.

“To end the politics of performance. A return to politics as public service. You have voted, it is now time for us to deliver.”

He spoke after winning his seat — Holborn and St. Pancras in London — with 48.9% of the vote.

— Katrina Bishop

After winning a chaotic by-election just months ago, George Galloway has lost the parliamentary seat of Rochdale.

Labour won with 32.9% of the vote, to Galloway’s Workers Party of Britain’s 29% share.

On Feb. 29, the controversial former Labour politician won a by-election, giving his party its first-ever Member of Parliament in Britain’s House of Commons.

Galloway ran a campaign heavily focused on the plight of Palestinians, appealing to the Muslim voters that make up around 30% of the local electorate, many of whom voiced anger about the war in Gaza and the failure of the country’s two main parties to push for an immediate ceasefire.

— Katrina Bishop and Elliot Smith

Reform UK won its first seat in Britain’s 2024 general election, taking the East Midlands constituency of Ashfield from the Conservatives.

Reform’s Lee Anderson secured 42.8% of the vote, followed by Labour’s Rhea Keehn with 29%.

Exit polls indicate that the right-wing populist Reform party could gain 13 seats in this election — after winning none in the 2019 vote.

— Katrina Bishop

Labour’s Rachel Reeves, shadow finance minister, has held her seat with 49.3% of the vote.

It means she’s set to become Britain’s first-ever female chancellor (the equivalent of a U.S. Treasury secretary).

In a post on X following the result, she said: “It is an honour and a privilege to be returned as the Member of Parliament for Leeds West and Pudsey. You have put your trust in me. And I will not let you down.”

— Katrina Bishop

After 14 years in opposition, the Labour Party is near-guaranteed to win a sizeable majority in the next parliament, according to exit polls.

Many of its senior figures, including party leader Keir Starmer, deputy leader Angela Rayner and finance chief Rachel Reeves, have never served in government.

In a manifesto released in June, the party said it would focus on “wealth creation” and “economic growth.” Reeves, who has long been on a charm offensive with the British business community, has repeatedly stated she will prioritize fiscal discipline in all policymaking.

The party’s flagship pledges include the creation of a new publicly owned energy company, a ban on awarding new North Sea oil and gas licenses, reducing patient waiting times in the strained National Health Service, and renationalizing most passenger rail services.

It also plans to raise money for public services by cracking down on tax loopholes for so-called nondomiciled individuals, removing tax breaks for independent schools, closing what has been described as a “tax loophole” for private equity investors, and raising taxes on the purchases of residential properties by non-U.K. residents. It said it would make additional green investments through a “time-limited windfall tax” on oil and gas firms.

The party said it would recognize a Palestinian state, calling statehood “the inalienable right of the Palestinian people.” 

— Jenni Reid

Leader of Reform UK Nigel Farage said the gains his party has seen so far are “almost unbelievable.”

Speaking after the earliest official results put Reform in second place, the populist Brexiteer noted this outcome was “way more” than anyone expected.

“What does it mean? It means we’re going to win seats, many, many seats,” he said in a video post on X.

“Mainstream media are in denial, just as much as our political parties. This is going to be 6 million votes plus. This vote is huge.”

In terms of vote share, at the time of writing, Reform was in second place with 23.8% of the vote — a 14 percentage point increase on 2019. Exit polls put the party’s seats at 13.

— Katrina Bishop

Labour’s shadow finance minister Rachel Reeves is expected to become the U.K.’s first female chancellor, which she said would be a “huge privilege.”

Speaking to Sky News, Reeves said she was under “no illusions about the scale of the challenge” she will face” if she does take up the role. Labour is forecast to win a landslide victory in the U.K.’s general election, and Reeves is also expected to hold her seat.

“The severity of the inheritance from the Conservatives is truly awful. But we will get to work, starting to rebuild our economy, returning stability to the economy, and improving our health service and our schools after 14 years of chaos, division and decline,” she said.

Reeves has long been on a charm offensive with the British business community, repeatedly stating she will prioritize fiscal discipline in all policymaking.

— Katrina Bishop

Along with a huge vote for Labour and severe losses for the Conservatives, one of the major themes of the night so far has been the apparent gains by Reform UK.

It is forecast to win 13 seats and has significantly increased its vote share in early seats that have been declared.

The populist, right-wing party with a hardline stance on immigration was born out of the Brexit Party, which was founded by Nigel Farage and focused on calling for a “no-deal Brexit” between 2016 and 2021. After the completion of the Brexit process, it campaigned on issues such as opposition to Covid lockdowns.

The Brexit party did not win any seats in the 2019 general election.

Farage, who has served in the European Union parliament (on a pro-Brexit stance) but repeatedly failed to win a seat in the U.K. legislature, stepped down as party leader in March 2021. After previously stating he would not stand as an MP in 2024 in order to focus on supporting Donald Trump’s U.S. presidential campaign, he reversed course in June and said he would both stand and resume his role as Reform UK leader.

Numerous analysts argued that the return of the well-known figure would boost the party at the expense of the Conservatives.

David Bull, co-deputy leader of Reform UK, told the BBC during overnight vote counting that pollsters had underestimated the party’s support, as they had with the number of people who would back a Brexit vote.

“I think what you’re seeing is actually the shy Reformers coming out in droves. We saw this with Brexit didn’t we, the shy Brexiteers, so the pollsters were caught off-guard and once again they’ve been caught off guard,” Bull said. “If that is true and we win 13 seats that is extraordinary.”

A “shy” voter refers to someone who does not reveal in polls which way they will eventually vote.

— Jenni Reid

Exit polls have a strong track record of getting it right in Britain.

Investec notes they have correctly called the largest party (Conservatives) in the last four elections, with a mean absolute error of the overall majority of just 11.

“Exit polls ask the way that voters have actually voted in contrast with polls published during the campaign, which model voting intentions,” Investec U.K. chief economist Philip Shaw wrote late Thursday.

“One can expect the actual outcome to be reasonably close to the [exit poll] figures … With tactical voting perhaps more widespread than in previous elections however, perhaps one should not be too confident about this.”

Rob Wood, chief U.K. economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, issued a note of caution, however, highlighting that in 1974, exit polls overestimated Labour’s seats by 61. In recent history — over the last 30 years — the largest exit poll mistake came in 2019, when the Conservative’s seats were underestimated by 15, Wood added.

After the first few results are announced before midnight London time, Investec said it expects a “particularly busy period of declarations between 03.00 and 04.00 a.m.”

“A full set of results is expected by 07.00 tomorrow morning, although this may be delayed by recounts in various constituencies,” Shaw wrote. “One further complication could arise if postal votes having been sent out late in certain areas were to lead to challenges by candidates who lost by a narrow margin.”

He added that currency markets have hardly reacted, given the forecasted result was widely expected. “What will matter more to markets, ultimately, is what a Labour government chooses to do if and when it takes office.”

— Katrina Bishop

Keir Starmer is on course to be the U.K.’s new prime minister, with exit polls suggesting his left-of-center party could have a majority of around 170 seats.

He will take the post from Rishi Sunak, who was elected between general elections by members of his Conservative Party in 2022.

Starmer, 61, has had a rapid political ascent after entering U.K. parliament less than a decade ago. But many Brits still know little about the man who has positioned himself as the country’s candidate for change.

Starmer was born in 1962 in London, England, to a father who worked as a toolmaker and a mother who worked as a nurse. A barrister (or trial lawyer), he served as a human rights adviser during former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair’s landmark Northern Ireland Good Friday Agreement, and in 2008 became the head of the U.K.’s Crown Prosecution Service.

Starmer was knighted in 2014 for his services to criminal justice and was elected to Parliament the following year, serving as shadow immigration minister and Brexit minister for the opposition.

Read the full story here.

— Karen Gilchrist

The first seat of the 2024 general election has been called for Labour in the constituency of Houghton and Sunderland South.

Bridget Phillipson, Labour’s education chief, was declared the first member of the U.K.’s new parliament. She said that if exit polls were correct, “then after 14 years, the British people have chosen change.”

Labour held the Houghton and Sunderland South seat, but the candidate for the Nigel Farage-led Reform UK party made a significant gain on its 2019 result (when it was called the Brexit Party), leapfrogging the Conservatives into second place.

Several constituencies in northern England race to be the first to declare in a general election.

In the 2017 and 2019 votes, Newcastle took that honor with announcements in less than 90 minutes of polls closing. Between 1992 and 2015, Sunderland was the first to declare its seat.

— Jenni Reid

The scale of the projected Conservative loss stems from smaller parties’ gains as well as Labour’s challenge, polling expert John Curtice told the BBC.

The seat forecast shows how the national share of the vote has “moved decisively against the Conservatives,” he said.

“Support for the Conservatives is falling much more heavily in places where they are trying to defend a seat than it is in places that Labour already hold,” he said.

“It’s not because Labour are doing spectacularly better in Conservative-held seats, it’s because Reform are. Much of the damage done to the Conservative Party tonight is being done by Reform, even if it is the Labour Party that proves to be the beneficiary.”

Reform UK is the populist right-wing party led by Nigel Farage.

He also noted that although there has not been a massive rise in overall Liberal Democrat support, the party is doing better in seats where it was challenging the Conservatives, he continued, cautioning that the patterns shown by the polls may not be exactly accurate.

“Although it looks like an election in which Labour win a landslide, it does not follow that this necessarily means Labour have got a landslide in terms of votes,” he told the BBC.

— Jenni Reid

The Scottish National Party is set to secure only 10 seat in British parliament, exit polls suggest — down from 48 seats in 2019.

It comes after a period of turbulence for the pro-Scottish independence party.

Former leader Humza Yousaf Yousaf resigned in April after serving as Scotland’s first minister for a little over a year, taking over from longstanding leader Nicola Sturgeon, who announced her surprise resignation in February 2023. Sturgeon was being investigated by police as part of a probe into party finances, and her husband Peter Murrell was charged with embezzlement earlier this year.

John Swinney took over the party leadership earlier this year.

— Katrina Bishop