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Rishi Sunak has conceded defeat in Britain’s general election, as Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour party heads for a huge House of Commons majority of about 170 seats.
“The Labour party has won this general election,” Sunak said at his election count in Richmond at 4.40am, adding he had called Starmer to congratulate him. “I take responsiblity for the loss.”
A national exit poll suggested Starmer would become prime minister with 410 House of Commons seats out of 650, with Sunak’s party facing the worst result in its history, with 131 seats.
A victorious Starmer declared that it was time to replace “the politics of performance” with a new ethos of public service, adding: “The change begins right here. It’s now time for us to deliver.”
Labour’s win is a personal triumph for Starmer, who became party leader in 2020 after the party’s worst postwar election defeat. His projected victory is similar in scale to Sir Tony Blair’s 1997 Labour landslide.
But the party’s success was projected to be delivered on a smaller vote share than the 40 per cent secured by leftwing Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in his 2017 general election defeat.
Turnout was on course to be about 60 per cent, close to a record low, suggesting general public dissatisfaction with mainstream politics, and the Tories lost ground to Reform UK, the populist party whose leader Nigel Farage won a parliamentary seat at his eighth attempt.
Speaking at his count in Clacton, Farage said his party would come second in swaths of seats as well as securing a “bridgehead” in parliament, adding: “This is the start of something that is going to stun all of you.”
At 4.10am, Labour had won 212 seats, the Conservatives 35, the Liberal Democrats 24 and Reform UK four. If the polls are correct, Labour is likely to have a clear majority by 5am.
According to the exit survey, the centrist Liberal Democrats were on course to win 61 seats, close to the party’s 62-seat record in 2005, making big gains in the Tory “blue wall” of well-heeled seats in the south of England.
The Scottish National party was set to come behind Labour in Scotland with just 10 seats, according to the exit poll, putting a serious dent in the party’s dream of securing independence.
The survey laid bare the overwhelming sentiment reported by candidates from all parties that Britain wanted “change”, with many senior Tories admitting during the campaign that the party looked exhausted.
Grant Shapps, defence secretary, Penny Mordaunt, Leader of the House of Commons, Gillian Keegan, education secretary, and Alex Chalk, justice secretary, were among the high-profile Tory casualties. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt narrowly held on to his seat.
Corbyn held his Islington North seat, standing as an Independent, while George Galloway, the leftwing pro-Palestinian MP for Rochdale, lost his seat to Labour.
Under 14 years of Conservative rule, five prime ministers presided over economic austerity, Brexit, a pandemic and an energy price shock, while frequently engaging in bouts of civil war. “We forgot a fundamental rule of politics,” Shapps said. “People don’t vote for divided parties.”
Starmer is set to become only the seventh Labour prime minister in the party’s history, and his victory is the first since 2005 for the centre-left party. Labour last ousted the Tories from power in 1997.
He will move into 10 Downing Street on Friday and immediately form his cabinet, with an instruction to ministers to quickly deliver policies to jolt Britain out of its low-growth torpor.
The exit poll indicated that Starmer’s avowedly pro-business agenda has paid off, as Labour bucked international political trends. Far-right parties have performed strongly in recent European and French elections, while Donald Trump is leading in polls for the US presidential race.
Chancellor-in-waiting Rachel Reeves has said she hopes investors will now see the UK as a “safe haven”.
Starmer has promised to work with business to stimulate growth, with an agenda that includes planning reform and state investment in green technology. Labour will also pursue a traditional agenda of reforms to worker rights.
For Sunak, the result looks set to be a personal disaster. He chose to hold an early election — against the advice of his campaign chief Isaac Levido — and ran an error-strewn six-week attempt to turn around his party’s fortunes.
The party’s projected total of 131 seats is lower than the party’s worst-ever result of 156 in 1906. Starmer’s expected seat haul is close to the 418 seats won by Tony Blair in his 1997 landslide victory.
Defeats for Tory cabinet members including Shapps and Mordaunt has reduced the cast list of potential contenders for the party leadership if, as expected, Sunak stands down.