With about a third of the official results in, the prospect of a landslide Labour victory appears to be looming. Keir Starmer’s party is expected to secure an absolute majority with around 410 seats.
ADVERTISEMENTAfter 14 years of Conservative rule in the UK, the centre-left Labour Party, led by Keir Starmer, is expected to win by a landslide with an absolute majority of 410 seats in Parliament, according to exit polls published by the BBC.
The Conservative Party would come second with 131 seats. (a loss of 141 seats compared to the last elections), the lowest score for the Tories since 1906 The Liberal Democrats would make a strong comeback with 61 MPs (+53).
Another surprise from this election: Reform UK, led by populist leader Nigel Farage, is set to enter parliament for the first time with 13 seats.As for the Scottish SNP, it is on the verge of collapsing, going from 38 seats to 10, according to exit polls.
The vote is a single-round majority vote. Each voter voted for one candidate from a list of names. The one who gets the most votes is elected, even with only 20% of the vote.
Historic victory for Labour
Keir Starmer, 61, is a former director of public prosecutions, the equivalent of an attorney general. The former human rights lawyer, who came from a modest background, entered politics late, becoming a Labour MP in 2015. In 2020, he replaced Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader and introduced a “zero tolerance” towards the anti-Semitism of which the party was accused.
Keir Starmer has presented centrist measures on behalf of the “serious”marked by budgetary rigor, firmness on security and immigration.* He promised to withdraw the controversial law on the expulsion of illegal migrants to Rwanda if he were prime minister. He also promised to eliminate laws limiting the right to strike, but does not intend to increase social benefits.
Addressing the audience after the announcement of the provisional results, He spoke of the need to bring politics back to “public service” and the need for “change”.
“It all starts with you. Change starts in this community”did he declare. “You voted, now it’s time for us to act”.
Labour’s Rachel Reeves, who is set to become the first woman to lead the Treasury if the provisional results are confirmed, is showing herself cautious in the face of the scale of the challenge it would have to face.
“The legacy of the Conservatives is truly terrible”she told Sky News.
Rachel Reeves noted that UK debt was 100% of national income and tax pressure was at its highest level for 70 years.
Adding that she “can’t promise to change everything right away”.
The Labour programme is divided into five parts, including: “rebuild the UK”, “getting the health system back on its feet” And “take back our streets”. Labour is proposing to reduce waiting times in public hospitals by increasing the number of carers, and to recruit 13,000 additional police officers.
A complicated campaign for the conservatives
The election marks the end of a turbulent campaign for the current prime minister. Several Conservatives close to Rishi Sunak are currently under investigation for allegedly using inside information to bet on the election date before it was called.
Appointed in October 2022 to replace the former Conservative Prime Minister Liz Truss, who only governed for 45 days, Rishi Sunak was supposed to embody a return to seriousness. A former investment banker and ex-finance minister, he set about restoring the image of the Conservatives, after the economic errors of his predecessor and the scandal of Boris Johnson’s illegal parties during the Covid-19 pandemic.
At the international level, the Prime Minister has managed to restore ties with Paris and the European Union, after a period of relative freeze linked to Brexit. He has found a solution to the trade impasse between Northern Ireland and Brussels. But he is most criticised for his highly controversial bill allowing the deportation to Rwanda of asylum seekers who have entered the UK illegally.
Internally, the country is going through multiple crises. Since 2022, inflation has caused energy bills, food prices, mortgages and rents to soar. This general increase in prices was however reduced from 11% at the end of 2022 to 2% in May, but the IMF warned of the “difficult choices” to come to stabilize this situation. The public health system is at the end of its rope. Caregivers have gone on strike on numerous occasions.
On the climate crisis, Rishi Sunak has drawn the ire of environmentalists by pushing back the ban on the sale of petrol and diesel cars from 2030 to 2035.
ADVERTISEMENTFormer Conservative leader William Hague said exit polls indicated “a catastrophic result of historic proportions for the Conservative Party”.
While the conservatives had bet everything on “Get Brexit Done” (“finalize Brexit”) in 2019, Rishi Sunak had notably promised the “financial security” to voters, with new tax cuts.
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