Labour sweeps UK, exit polls show

The Labour Party of Keir Starmer achieved the coveted historic “supermajority” in the British elections against the Conservative Party of Rishi Sunak,according to exit polls. The Labour leader, who will complete the changing of the guard in Downing Street on Friday, proclaimed a “new era of hope” after 14 years of Conservative governments marked by austerity, Brexit and chaos under five successive prime ministers.

Polls predicted a “landslide” for Keir Starmer comparable to that achieved by Tony Blair about John Major in 1997. Early projections estimated that Labour could win up to 410 of the 650 seats, compared to 131 for the Tories and 61 for the Liberal Democrats, which would once again become the third political force. The populist leader Nigel Farage would confirm its entry into Westminster with Reform UK and with 13 deputies.

Keir Starmer managed to turn most of England and Wales red and consolidated his advance against the Scottish National Party, which achieved its worst results in a decade. The exit poll confirmed the collapse of the Conservative Party, with the lowest number of deputies obtained since 1935relegated to 16% of the vote in London and 18% in their traditional “blue wall” in the south of England.

The first official victory was that of the Labour MP Bridget Phillipson in Sunderland, which won by 18,847 votes over the Reform UK candidate Sam Wood-Brass,capable of relegating the conservative to third place Chris Burnicle, setting the tone for the evening’s electoral battles.

Starmer thanked his team and campaign volunteers for their work and said, in his first message on social media, that the results demonstrate “the trust that people have placed in a changed Labour Party.” The future prime minister took the helm of Labour in 2019, after the defeat suffered by Jeremy Corbyn ante Boris Johnson,and brought about a shift towards the political centre that has borne fruit at the polls.

“Nothing is going to be easy, almost everything is in a very precarious state, but I have to be prepared and I am confident,” said Starmer, who will be confirmed in his post on Friday. “We have prepared ourselves thoroughly on the basis that we have to hit the ground running from day one, which is what I hope to do.”

“I am delighted to have this opportunity”he added. “I cannot express how frustrating it has been to be in the opposition. I came into politics relatively late, when I could have done other things. I sat in the opposition benches and it has been the least productive nine years of my life. It has seemed very long.”

Starmer comes to power with an agenda marked by the utmost caution, promising “change” and emphasizing the message of “stability” and “economic growth.” The Labour leader managed to maintain a 20-point lead throughout a campaign marked by discipline and strict control.

In stark contrast, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak lost his cool from the moment he announced the early elections to 4 July, in a downpour that left his shoulders dripping wet. Many of his MPs expressed their surprise and did not hide their frustration at the haste of the announcement, which is now considered a serious political miscalculation.

Sunak defied his own strategist, Isaac Levido, who is in favour of holding elections in the autumn to give more time to close the gap in the polls and consolidate the economic recovery. The prime minister who promised “stability” in the end made his own bet on the chaos that characterised his predecessors and that is how he fared during the campaign.

His high-profile absence from the D-Day celebrations in France was the first derailment, followed by the election betting scandal. Sunak barely regained his composure in the television debates, which, however, did not have much of an impact on voters.

“Don’t give in to Labour!” was his last plea in the conservative tabloid, The Dialy Mailalmost the only one who remained faithful to him during the campaign (The Sun (He switched sides at the last minute and backed Starmer, as he did with Tony Blair). Conservative media acknowledged the Labour “avalanche” in big headlines and highlighted the drain of votes from the Tories to the populist Reform UK party. Nigel Farage.

Sunak even expressed to his aides his fear of electoral humiliation, starting with the possible loss of his own seat in Richmond and Northallerton. Half of his cabinet members also see their position at Westminster in jeopardy and their political survival. These include Treasury Secretary Jeremy Hunt, Defence Minister Grant Shapps and the government’s parliamentary spokesperson and former Conservative leadership candidate Penny Mordaunt.

The rise of the Liberal-Democratic Party, which would gain 61 seats in the new Parliament, was celebrated by its leader Ed Davey as “the best result in a generation”. The Scottish National Party (SNP) would lose 38 seats and would be left with 10 seats, its worst result in almost two decades.

“Rather than a spectacular result for the Labour Party, we are witnessing the collapse of the Conservative Party in its historical strongholds,” said the professor. John Curtice,who led the poll of 20,000 voters in 133 polling stations that served as a preview of the very slow British-style count. “We have also seen a greater than expected rise in support for Reform UK and a significant decline in Scottish nationalism.”

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