Labour wins the UK general election in a landslide – Keir Starmer will be the new prime minister. After 14 years, the Conservatives lose power in a catastrophic defeat – they are set for the worst results in their history.
“Change begins now,” Starmer says; Rishi Sunak says Britain has delivered a “sobering verdict”. The Lib Dems make huge gains, while the SNP lose dozens of seats.
High-profile Conservative casualties include former Prime Minister Liz Truss, Defence Secretary Grant Shapps, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Penny Mordaunt. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage becomes an MP as the party nets four MPs; the Greens are also on four in their best election performance yet
Wow, wow and triple wow. We expected big changes tonight. We got that – and then some. First off: We live in a parliamentary democracy with 650 seats elected under the first-past-the-post system. Labour is going to have a vast majority in Parliament – the party will govern essentially as it pleases. That is the most important development for how we live our lives, for what this country is going to be like and become over the next four or five years.
And it’s an extraordinary turnaround for Sir Keir Starmer. Nobody — literally, nobody — in the Labour Party thought this was possible in the immediate aftermath of its dire defeat in December 2019. But it’s also clear that additionally, there is a seething, complicated cauldron of anger and apathy out there. Voters were clearly furious with the Conservative Party. But as well as going to Labour and in some cases the Lib Dems, they are more willing than ever before to consider parties outside the traditional mainstream — Greens, Reform UK and pro-Gaza independents.
That puts Labour on notice that we’re in an unusually volatile period – that the voters may be willing to turf them out rapidly if they fail. The evidence for that is there right now in Labour’s victory. Who’s talking about Boris Johnson’s inevitable decade in power now? Welcome, perhaps, to the new age of volatility.
Results in full: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2024/uk/results
Rawr
Article URL : https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cn09xn9je7lt