After more than a decade in opposition, Britain’s Labour Party won a landslide victory on Friday. However, the party now has the huge task of bringing hope back to a nation and an economy that have been stagnant.
Later today, Keir Starmer, the leader of the Labour Party, will become prime minister. He will lead his party back to power less than five years after its worst loss in almost 100 years.
In the cruel dance of British politics, he will take over at 10 Downing Street hours after the votes are counted on Thursday, as Rishi Sunak, the leader of the Conservative Party, is rushed out of the building.
In a speech to supporters, Starmer said, “A mandate like this comes with a great responsibility.” He also said that the fight to win back people’s trust after years of disappointment “is the battle that defines our age.”
He said that Labour would be “the sunlight of hope, pale at first but getting stronger through the day” as dawn broke in London.
Sunak gave up and said that the voters had given him a “sobering verdict.”
Labour’s victory and problems
All but a few of the results were in, and Labour had won 410 of the 650 seats in the House of Commons. The Conservatives had won 118.
Starmer has won a huge victory, but he will now have to deal with a very tired electorate that is eager for change against a dark background of bad economic conditions, growing mistrust of institutions, and a weakening social fabric.
James Erskine, a voter from London, said, “Nothing has gone well in the last 14 years.” He was hopeful for change in the hours before the polls closed. “I only see this as the chance for a huge change, and that’s what I want.”
And Starmer kept his word when he said, “Change starts now.”
Anand Menon, a professor of European Politics and Foreign Affairs at King’s College London, said that the unstable “politics as pantomime” of the last few years would soon be replaced by a very different state of politics for the people of Britain.
He said, “I think we’ll have to get used to a government that is pretty stable, where ministers stay in power for a long time, and where the government can think about goals beyond the very short term and the medium term.”
Britain has had a rough few years, some of which were caused by the Conservatives and some of which were not. This has made many voters doubtful about the future of their country.
The economy was hurt by the U.K.’s decision to leave the European Union, the COVID-19 pandemic, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. At the same time, people were angry about the parties that then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his staff held to break the lockdown.
People complain that “Broken Britain” is dangerous because of rising poverty, crumbling infrastructure, and a National Health Service that is too busy to help everyone.
Liz Truss, who took over for Johnson, shook up the economy even more with a package of big tax cuts. She was only in office for 49 days. Truss lost her seat to Labour. She was one of many high-ranking Tories who were thrown out of office in a harsh election battle.
Even though the outcome seems to go against recent shifts to the right in European elections, such as those in France and Italy, many of the same populist currents can be felt in Britain. Nigel Farage, leader of Reform UK, has stirred up the race with his party’s anti-immigrant “take our country back” message. This has hurt support for the Conservatives and even taken some voters away from Labour.
The Conservatives lose votes as smaller parties gain them.
Voters punished the Conservatives for 14 years of running the country through austerity, Brexit, a pandemic, political scandals, and fights within the party.
The historic loss—the fewest seats in the party’s 200-year history—leaves it broke and disorganised, and there will probably be a race right away to replace Sunak as leader.
The new Parliament will have a wider range of political views and be more divided than any in years. This shows how angry and unstable the public mood is. A lot of votes went to smaller parties, like Farage’s Reform UK and the moderate Liberal Democrats. It won four seats, and Farage won one in the seaside town of Clacton-on-Sea, making it his eighth attempt to get into Parliament.
The Liberal Democrats won about 70 seats, even though they got a slightly smaller share of the vote than Reform. This is because Reform’s votes were spread out more evenly. The winner in Britain’s first-past-the-post system is the person who gets the most votes in each constituency.
It used to only have one seat, but now the Green Party has four.
The Scottish National Party lost a lot of seats. Before the election, they had most of Scotland’s 57 seats, but it looked like they would lose all but a few, mostly to Labour.
Labour was careful but dependable.
Labour’s promises to boost the slowing economy, spend money on infrastructure, and turn Britain into a “clean energy superpower” did not get people excited.
But the cautious, safety-first campaign of the party got the job done. A lot of businesspeople backed the party, and conservative newspapers, like the Rupert Murdoch-owned Sun tabloid, said good things about Starmer for “bringing his party back to the centre ground of British politics.”
Bad moves by conservatives
On the other hand, the Conservative campaign had a lot of mistakes. Sunak’s announcement outside of 10 Downing St. was soaked in rain, which was a bad start to the campaign. After going to France to remember the 80th anniversary of the D-Day invasion, Sunak got home early.
A group of Conservatives close to Sunak is being looked into because it is thought they used inside information to bet on the election date before it was made public.
People in Henley-on-Thames, which is about 40 miles (65 km) west of London, felt like the country was ready for a change. One such person is retired Patricia Mulcahy. The area has always voted Conservative, but this time they switched to the Liberal Democrats.
“Younger people are much more interested in change,” Mulcahy said before the results came in. The person who gets in, though, has a huge job ahead of them. It’s not going to be simple.
