Labour Wins Landslide Victory in UK Election

15 government ministers lost seats following a surge for Reform UK.

Sir Keir Starmer will become British prime minister, with Labour winning 412 seats in Parliament in a general election landslide victory.

ADDENDUM:

Keir Starmer was knighted in 2014 for his services to criminal justice. He received the honor for his work as the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) and head of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) between 2008 and 2013.

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All but two of the 650 seats have now been declared.

Labour gained 211 seats overall. In his victory speech, Sir Keir said: “We did it. Change begins now ... We are ready to restore Britain to the service of working people.”

The Labour Party passed the majority threshold of 326 at around 5 a.m. just after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak conceded defeat, having clung on to his own seat.

Mr. Sunak has led the Conservatives to a defeat which could see them win their lowest number of seats in the history of the party.

In 1997 the Tories were reduced to 165 seats, but their worst ever result was in 1906 when they won just 156 seats.

So far they have won only 121 seats.

Mr. Sunak, who held on to his own seat at Richmond and Northallerton, said at the count, “The British people have delivered a sobering verdict ... and I take responsibility for that.”

He said Labour had clearly won the election and he had already rung Sir Keir and congratulated him, and he also apologised to all the Tory candidates who lost.

The Labour leader told a crowd of cheering supporters, “a mandate like this comes with a great responsibility.”

Starmer Calls for ‘National Renewal’

Sir Keir said, “Our task is nothing less than renewing the ideas that hold this country together, national renewal, whoever you are, wherever you started in life, if you work hard, if you play by the rules, this country should give you a air chance to get on, it should always respect your contributions, and we have to restore that.”

Reform UK saw a surge in its vote, helping it to win four seats with leader Nigel Farage, in Clacton, and party Chairman Richard Tice, in Boston, both being elected.

The Green Party won more than a million votes nationwide and won three more seats, ousting Labour’s Thangam Debonnaire in Bristol Central, and gaining Waverley Valley and North Herefordshire from the Tories.

The Liberal Democrats have won 71 seats, while in Scotland the SNP lost heavily, with Labour gaining 37 seats off the Scottish nationalists.

The SNP’s leader at Westminster, Stephen Flynn, said the party’s candidates had been overcome by the “Starmer tsunami” and he said it was no reflection on them as people.

Other key results saw Jeremy Corbyn, who was ejected from the Labour Party after refusing to accept a key report on anti-Semitism under his leadership, retained his Islington North seat as an independent.

In Rochdale, George Galloway of the Workers’ Party lost the seat he won at a by-election earlier this year, with Labour’s Paul Waugh, a political journalist, winning back the seat.

Mordaunt Says ‘Democracy Is Never Wrong’

For the Tories, it was a massive turnaround since December 2019, when Boris Johnson won an 80-seat Conservative majority after promising to “get Brexit done.”

Among the Cabinet ministers losing their seats were the leader of the House of Commons, Penny Mordaunt, who said, “Democracy is never wrong.”

In her speech after losing Portsmouth North to Labour’s Amanda Martin, she said: “Tonight, the Conservative Party has taken a battering because it failed to honour the trust that people had placed in it. You can speak all you like of security and freedom, but you can’t have either if you are afraid.”

“Afraid about the cost-of-living or accessing health care, or whether the responsibility you shoulder will be recognised and rewarded. That fear steals the future, and it only makes the present matter and that is why we lost,” she added.

She also warned, “Our renewal as a party and a country will not be achieved by us talking to an ever smaller slice of ourselves but being guided by the people of our country.”

Defence Secretary Grant Shapps lost his seat in Welwyn Hatfield, as did Justice Secretary Alex Chalk in Cheltenham, and Education Secretary Michelle Keegan in Chichester.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt hung on to his seat in Godalming and Ash by just 891 votes.

Mr. Hunt described it as a “crushing victory” and said the Tories needed to have the “humility” to ask themselves what they had done wrong.

He wished the Labour government well and said he hoped they would be able to make the reforms to the NHS, which “the Conservative Party often finds difficult to do.”

Home Secretary James Cleverly also retained his seat after what he described as a “painful” night for the Conservatives.

In a rare setback for Labour, shadow paymaster general Jonathan Ashworth lost in Leicester South to an independent, Shockat Adam, who stood on a strongly pro-Palestinian platform.

This article has being updated with latest seat declaration numbers, and will be updated further.

PA Media contributed to this report.