After 14 years of conservative rule, a landslide victory in Great Britain has brought the Labour Party back to power. At around six o’clock in the morning, the previous opposition party exceeded the number of 326 votes in the constituency count, thus passing the absolute majority mark in the House of Commons. The BBC’s predictions that morning predicted that Labour would have a majority of around 410 seats.
“We have done it,” said future Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Friday night. The change begins now. After 14 years, a burden has been lifted from the nation’s shoulders.
The current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who has to move out of 10 Downing Street on Friday to make way for his successor, took responsibility for the Conservatives’ defeat. His party lost more than half of its seats and, according to forecasts, can still count on a good 120 seats in the opposition.
The Liberal Democrats, however, are also among the election winners, having established themselves as the third strongest force in the House of Commons with around 70 seats. The Scottish nationalists, who previously held this position, suffered dramatic losses. They were predicted to receive fewer than 10 seats instead of the previous 49.
Sunak: We have a lot to think about
Sunak defended his own constituency in Yorkshire and announced that he would continue to serve the country as a member of parliament. He called the election result “a sobering verdict”. The Conservatives now have “a lot to think about and learn from”. There will be a transfer of power this Friday “in a peaceful and orderly manner”; Britain can trust in the stability of its democracy.
Historic defeat: outgoing Prime Minister Sunak on Friday nightAFP
Penny Mordaunt, one of the Conservative leaders who was considered as a successor to the hapless Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, lost her own constituency of Portsmouth North to her rival from the Labour Party. “Democracy is never wrong,” Mordaunt said afterwards. She has represented Portsmouth in the House of Commons since 2005 and must now look for a job outside of politics, since according to British politics, leadership positions in parties – and functions in government – can only be held by elected representatives in Parliament. This limits the fight for a new Conservative leadership to the 150 or so parliamentary group members who have been elected to the House of Commons.
In addition to Mordaunt, Defence Secretary Grant Shapps and Education Secretary Gillian Keegan also lost their seats. The Liberal Democrats, who won Keegan’s seat, celebrated their victory with the announcement “School is out for Keegan”. The former finance minister, Jeremy Hunt, whose constituency is in rural Surrey in southern England, did not know even after sunrise whether he had won the majority there again – the close result meant that the count had to be repeated.
In several constituencies, the results were dramatically close. Richard Holden, who as “Chairman” has the role of General Secretary of the Conservatives – and was also largely responsible for his party’s election campaign – won the seat in Basildon and Billericay by 20 votes ahead of his Labour rival.
The results in this constituency show how dramatically the balance of votes has shifted: the Conservatives previously held this seat with 20,750 votes. Now they received 12,905 votes, 20 more than Labour – and both parties were closely followed by Nigel Farage’s right-wing populist Reform UK with 11,354 votes.
Right-wing populist Farage wins mandate
Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman, on the other hand, defended her seat in Fareham and Waterlooville. She had already opened the contest to succeed Sunak as party leader with an article in the Daily Telegraph the day before the general election. In it, she attributed the Conservatives’ defeat to the Prime Minister’s overly moderate course and announced that there would be “a battle for the soul of the party” which, in her view, would have to be won by those who wanted to move the Conservatives further to the right. This was the only way to win back voters who had switched to the “startup party” Reform UK.
Reform leader Nigel Farage won a seat in Clacton-on-Sea, but the hopes raised by the polls after the polls closed were not fulfilled. Instead of the 15 seats predicted, Reform only managed four by Friday morning.
In addition to Farage, former Reform Party leader Richard Tice was also successful; one of the right-wing populists’ major donors, who was unceremoniously pushed aside by Farage in the second week of the election campaign when he decided to run as head of Reform himself; an organisation that formally belongs to him as a registered company.
