"Tonight people here and around the country have spoken, and they’re ready for change," Starmer told supporters in his constituency in north London, as the official count showed he'd won his seat. "You have voted. It is now time for us to deliver."
Official results show Britain’s Labour Party has won enough seats to have a majority in the UK Parliament and will form the next government. The party had won 326 of the 650 seats by 5 a.m. Friday as counting continued. That means leader Keir Starmer will become prime minister and can form a majority government.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak acknowledged the defeat and said he called center-left Labour’s leader Keir Starmer to congratulate him on becoming the country’s next prime minister. Starmer will face a jaded electorate impatient for change against a gloomy backdrop of economic malaise, mounting distrust in institutions and a fraying social fabric.
"Tonight people here and around the country have spoken, and they’re ready for change," Starmer told supporters in his constituency in north London, as the official count showed he'd won his seat. "You have voted. It is now time for us to deliver."
As thousands of electoral staff tallied millions of ballot papers at counting centers across the country, the Conservatives absorbed the shock of a historic defeat that would leave the depleted party in disarray and likely spark a contest to replace Sunak as leader.
"Nothing has gone well in the last 14 years," said London voter James Erskine, who was optimistic for change in the hours before polls closed.
"I just see this as the potential for a seismic shift, and that’s what I’m hoping for." While the result tallied so far suggest Britain will buck recent rightward electoral shifts in Europe, including in France and Italy, many of those same populist undercurrents flow in the country.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has roiled the race with his party’s anti-immigrant "take our country back" sentiment and undercut support for the Conservatives, who already faced dismal prospects.
The exit poll suggested Labour was on course to win about 410 seats in the 650-seat House of Commons and the Conservatives 131.With more than half of the official results in, the broad picture of a Labour landslide was borne out, though estimates of the final tally varied.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DNA staff and is published from AP/PTI)
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