Keir Starmer will be Britain’s next prime minister, ending 14 years of Conservative government. A fragmented vote saw the Conservatives crash to the worst result in their long history.
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A new prime minister was preparing to take office in Britain on Friday after the center-left Labour Party won a landslide election victory, sweeping the Conservatives out of power after 14 years in an anti-incumbent revolt that heralded a new era in the nation’s politics.
Keir Starmer, the Labour leader and incoming prime minister, was expected to deliver a speech outside No. 10 Downing Street shortly after noon local time (7 a.m. Eastern). Appearing before a crowd of supporters in the early morning hours in London, Mr. Starmer promised to “rebuild our country.”
The outgoing prime minister, Rishi Sunak, delivered brief, conciliatory remarks in Downing Street, accepting responsibility for his party’s resounding defeat and saying to voters that he had “heard your anger.” He congratulated Mr. Starmer, and would travel to Buckingham Palace to deliver his formal resignation to King Charles III.
With almost all 650 races declared, Labour had won more than 410 seats and the Conservatives were on course for fewer than 130. That would be the worst defeat for the Conservatives in the nearly 200-year history of the party.
But it was also an exceptionally fragmented result, with gains not only for Reform U.K., an anti-immigrant party, but for the Green Party and for pro-Palestinian independent candidates in formerly safe Labour seats. The BBC estimated Labour’s nationwide share of the vote at about 35 percent. That would be the “the lowest share of the vote won by any single party majority government,” according to Prof. John Curtice, a polling expert.
Here’s what else to know:
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Quick transition: Changes of government in Britain take hours, not months. Mr. Sunak was set to meet with the king at Buckingham Palace, followed closely behind by Mr. Starmer, who will then go to speak in Downing Street.
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Unhappy electorate: Voter turnout was predicted to be at 60 percent, close to a record low, in a shift that appeared to reflect disillusionment with politics. Many Britons are skeptical of the government’s ability to fix the ailing National Health Service, revive a torpid economy and shore up public services, which have faced deep cuts over the last decade.
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Labour’s makeover: For Mr. Starmer, a low-key lawyer who only entered Parliament in 2015, it was a remarkable vindication of his four-year project to pull the Labour Party away from the left-wing policies of his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, and rebrand it as a plausible alternative to the increasingly erratic rule of the Conservatives.
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Sunak’s future: Mr. Sunak said he would resign as party leader, “not immediately” but once arrangements to choose his successor were in place. He offered a robust case for his achievements in less than two years in office: cutting inflation, resolving a trade dispute with the European Union, and steadying Britain’s economy.
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Right-wing ferment: Reform U.K.’s strong showing was a victory for Nigel Farage, the party’s leader and a veteran political disrupter who won a seat after failing in seven previous bids to get into Parliament. From his new perch, Mr. Farage could try to poach the remnants of the debilitated Conservatives.
