Britain’s Labour Party is on course for a landslide victory on Friday in a parliamentary electionan exit poll and partial results showed as voters punished the governing Conservatives after 14 years of economic and political turmoil.
As the sun rose, the official results showed Labour winning 326 of the 650 seats, as the vote count continued. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak had already conceded defeat, saying he had named the leader of the centre-left Labour Party Keir Starmer to congratulate him on his appointment as the country’s prime minister.
Sunak said the British people had delivered “a sobering verdict”.
Starmer faces a bored electorate impatient for change, against a backdrop of economic malaise, growing distrust of institutions and a crumbling social fabric.
“Tonight, people here and across the country have spoken and they are ready for change,” Starmer told supporters in his north London constituency as the official count showed he had won his seat. “You voted. Now it’s time for us to deliver.”
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As thousands of Electoral Commission staff counted millions of ballot papers at polling stations across the country, the Conservatives were reeling from the shock of a historic defeat. The party is now weakened and likely to culminate in a leadership battle for Sunak.
“Nothing has gone right for the last 14 years,” said London voter James Erskine, who was optimistic about change in the hours before polls closed. “I just see this as the potential for a seismic shift, and that’s what I’m hoping for.”
While the proposed outcome would seem to buck recent rightward electoral shifts in Europe, including in France and Italy, many of those same populist undercurrents are flowing in Britain. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has shaken up the race with his party’s anti-immigrant “take back our country” sentiment, undermining support for the Conservatives, who already faced bleak prospects.
Labour is on course to win around 410 seats in the 650-seat House of Commons, while the Conservatives are on course to win 131, according to the exit poll. That would be the Tories’ fewest seats in their nearly two-century history and would leave the party in disarray.
In a sign of the volatile public mood and anger at the system, some smaller parties appeared to have done well, including the centrist Liberal Democrats and Reform UK. A key unknown was whether Farage’s far-right party could translate its success in attracting attention into more than a handful of seats in parliament.
Former Conservative Party leader William Hague said the poll signalled “a catastrophic result in historic terms for the Conservative Party.”
Yet Labour politicians, disillusioned for years, were cautious.
“The exit poll is encouraging but obviously we don’t have the results yet,” vice-chair Angela Rayner told Sky News.
The poll, conducted by pollster Ipsos, asks people at dozens of polling stations to fill out a replica of their ballot showing how they voted. It usually provides a reliable, but not exact, prediction of the outcome.
Britons vote on paper ballots, marking their choice in pencil and then counting them by hand. The final results are expected on Friday morning.
Britain has endured a turbulent series of years — some at the hands of the Conservatives themselves, some not — that have left many voters pessimistic about the future of their country. The U.K.’s exit from the European Union, followed by the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, has battered the economy, while the lockdown-breaking parties of then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his staff have sparked widespread anger.
Johnson’s successor, Liz Truss, further shook up the economy with a package of drastic tax cuts, but lasted just 49 days. Rising poverty and cuts to public services have led to complaints about “Broken Britain.”
Hundreds of communities were embroiled in fierce fighting, 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 west of London, voters like Patricia Mulcahy, who is retired, felt the nation was looking for something different. The community, which normally votes Conservative, could change its tune this time around.
“The younger generation is much more interested in change,” Mulcahy said. “So, I think whatever happens in Henley, in the country, there’s going to be a big shift. But whoever comes in, they’ve got a great job ahead of them. It’s not going to be easy.”
Anand Menon, professor of European politics and foreign affairs at King’s College London, said British voters were expecting a marked change in the political climate, compared with the tumultuous “politics as pantomime” of recent years.
“I think we need to get used to a relatively stable government again, where ministers stay in power for a long time and the government can look beyond short-term goals and focus on medium-term objectives,” he said.
In the first hour after polls opened, Sunak made the short journey from his home to Kirby Sigston Village Hall in northern England to vote. He arrived with his wife, Akshata Murty, and walked hand-in-hand into the village hall, which is surrounded by rolling fields.
Hours later, Starmer walked with his wife Victoria to a polling station in north London to cast his vote.
Labour has failed to set pulses racing with its promises to grow the sluggish economy, invest in infrastructure and turn Britain into a ‘clean energy superpower’.
But nothing really went wrong in the campaign. The party has won the support of large parts of the business community and endorsements from traditionally conservative newspapers, including Rupert Murdoch’s Sun tabloid, which praised Starmer for “dragging his party back to the centre of British politics.”
Meanwhile, the Conservatives have been plagued by gaffes. The campaign got off to a bad start when Sunak was drenched in rain while making the announcement outside 10 Downing St. Then Sunak went home early from commemorations in France marking the 80th anniversary of the D-Day invasion.
Several Conservatives close to Sunak are under investigation over suspicions they used inside information to place bets on the election date before it was announced.
Sunak is struggling to shake off the smear of political chaos and mismanagement that has surrounded the Conservatives.
But 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 there for me as a working person,” said Michelle Bird, a dockworker in Southampton on the south coast of England who was undecided in the days before the election whether to vote Labour or Conservative. “I don’t know if it’s the devil you know or the devil you don’t know.”
