Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer and prosecutor, has become Britain’s new prime minister after winning a landslide election on Thursday, July 4, ending 14 years of Conservative Party rule and moving toward a new government dominated by the centre-left
At a triumphant party rally in central London, Starmer, 61, told cheering activists that “change begins here” and promised a “decade of national renewal”, putting “country first, party second”.
But he cautioned that change would not come overnight, even as Labour snatched a swathe of Tory seats around the country, including from nine Cabinet members, and former prime minister Liz Truss.
Truss’s disastrous 49-day tenure effectively sealed the Tories’ fate with the public two years ago, when her unfunded tax cuts spooked markets and crashed the pound.
She had been facing a campaign to oust her by grassroots activists — dubbed “the Turnip Taliban” — in her rural constituency and lost by just 630 votes.
Labour raced past the 326 seats needed to secure an overall majority in the 650-seat parliament at 0400 GMT, with the final result expected later on Friday morning.
An exit poll for UK broadcasters published after polls closed at 2100 GMT on Thursday put Labour on course for a return to power for the first time since 2010, with 410 seats and a 170-seat majority.
The Tories would only get 131 seats in the House of Commons — a record low — with the right-wing vote apparently spliced by Nigel Farage’s anti-immigration Reform UK party.
In another boost for the centrists, the smaller opposition Liberal Democrats ousted the Scottish National Party as the third-biggest party.
The results buck a rightward trend among Britain’s closest Western allies, with the far right in France eyeing power and Donald Trump looking set for a return in the United States.
British newspapers all focused on Labour’s impending return to power for the first time since Gordon Brown was ousted by David Cameron in 2010.
“Keir We Go,” headlined the Labour-supporting Daily Mirror.
“Britain sees red,” said The Sun, the influential Rupert Murdoch tabloid, which swung behind Labour for the first time since 2005.
