Labor wins election in Great Britain: Keir Starmer wins – Tories lose – Nigel Farage wins respectable

MLabor leader Keir Starmer looks beaming as he celebrates his victory in the British general election. The 61-year-old and his party are celebrating an unprecedented victory. Across the country, the Social Democrats are wresting a large number of seats from the badly defeated Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives. King Charles III is expected to return on Friday. Starmer officially took on the task of forming a government.

“Change begins now,” Starmer cheered supporters in London. “Across the country, people will wake up to this news, relieved to see a burden lifted from their shoulders.”

Prime Minister Sunak’s conservative ruling party has achieved its worst result in its history, according to a post-election poll. It was more than just an electoral defeat for the head of government, it was a shame – especially since Sunak had unnecessarily brought up an election that should not have been held from 2025 until early July. A fruitless calculation. His party is now likely to face a complete overhaul.

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“Labour won this general election and I called Sir Keir Starmer to congratulate him on his victory,” says a visibly sad Sunak. He has announced that he will step down from the leadership of the party.

The latest BBC projection has Labor winning 410 of the 650 seats in the House of Commons, more than double the 202 it won in the 2019 election. The Conservatives fell from 365 to 114 seats. So Labour’s governing majority would be twice that of the Conservatives. The Liberal Democrats are the third largest party with 70 seats (plus 62).

The Conservatives lost several votes to the right-wing populist Reform UK Party, which was expected to win four seats. Its leader Nigel Farage, once instrumental in pushing Brexit forward, entered the House of Commons for the first time in his eighth attempt.

Counting continued in the morning, but no one was in any doubt about the most important result of the election: 14 years of dominance by the conservative Tories had come to a shattering end. Economy Minister Kemi Badenoch and former Home Secretary Suella Braverman, both from the party’s right wing, are seen as potential successors to Sunak at the top of the party.

Starmer: “People are ready for change”

In his first reaction, Prime Minister-designate Starmer promised changes in the country. “The people have spoken, they’re ready for change. They’ve voted, and it’s time for us to deliver,” he said.

The Labor leader won clearly in his London constituency of Holborn and St Pancras. However, compared to the previous polls in 2019, he lost around 17 percentage points. This is because an independent candidate who has been outspoken against Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip has received a lot of support. Labor leader Jonathan Ashworth suffered a stunning defeat in his constituency to a pro-Palestinian candidate and is therefore unlikely to win a cabinet post.

The election is a nightmare for Sunak’s conservatives. “Landslide” and “massacre” were some of the headlines in the British press after the disaster became known. A number of cabinet members lost their seats, including Defense Minister Grant Shabbs, Education Minister Gillian Keegan and Benny Mordant – the Parliamentary Affairs Minister was previously considered the favorite to succeed Chung.

Former British Prime Minister Liz Truss also came up empty-handed. The 48-year-old had to concede defeat to a Labor rival in his constituency. The conservative politician made history as the shortest-serving prime minister in Great Britain. He only held the keys to government headquarters at 10 Downing Street for 49 days after taking over from Boris Johnson in 2022.

“It’s clear to me that Labor didn’t win the election tonight, but the Tories lost it,” Shabbs said. “We have forgotten the basic rule of politics. People will not vote for divided parties.

The Conservatives didn’t just lose seats to Labour. The Liberal Democrats also appear to have made significant gains at the expense of the Tories. According to the latest BBC forecast, they will have 56 seats – up from just 11 previously. LibDem leader Ed Davey says his party will have its best result in a century.

A disastrous defeat for the Scottish SNP

It looks like a devastating defeat for the Scottish Independence Party, the SNP. It was forecast to fall to 48 to 6 seats – a “very weak” result, as Scottish First Minister John Swinney admitted.

On the other hand, the right-wing populists around Farage feel they have won, even if they have won a few mandates. In British majority voting, the candidate with the most votes wins the constituency – all other votes have no effect. With his surprise candidacy, Farage may have contributed significantly to the Conservatives’ poor results, as he alienated voters on the right-wing fringe.

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The Tories’ defeat was no surprise: pollsters had long seen a clear victory for the Social Democrats. Sunak could not be caught during the election campaign. His party had to contend with splits and corruption over illegal betting on the presumed election date.

According to John Curtis, a renowned pollster from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, the reason for the election’s clear result was not primarily enthusiasm for Labour, but frustration with the previous ruling party. Sunak was his party’s third head of government in the last legislative term, which was characterized by economic stagnation and sharply rising living costs.

Starmer has led his Labor party back to the political center in recent years after drifting to the left under his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn – who has now been re-elected as an independent. He took decisive action against anti-Semitic tendencies within his own ranks.

In terms of political content, previous opposition leader Starmer remained ambiguous in many areas. He did not elaborate on plans for a possible rapprochement with the EU. In other respects, he has so far been primarily concerned with remaining moderate, setting no targets and scaring away potential voters. Some commentators compare her gentle demeanor to carrying a porcelain vase from the Chinese Ming Dynasty.