Newsman: The U.K. Labour Party is back in power in Britain after winning a historic landslide election victory over the ruling Conservatives. A human rights lawyer Keir Starmer (61) became the New Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He was appointed prime minister by King Charles at Buckingham Palace on Friday afternoon. Starmer met King Charles III immediately after Rishi Sunak resigned and ask for permission to form a government, a formality that was granted by the reigning monarch.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak resigned on Friday morning after losing the snap election. The devastating defeat of his party was the worst-ever in its 190-year history putting a crushing end to the 14-year rule of the Conservative Party. Outgoing Prime Minister Rishi Sunak held his own seat.
“We did it!” a beaming Keir Starmer (61) the New UK Prime Minister declared at a raucous victory rally in London in the early hours of Friday morning.
The result was extraordinary. Labour has won over 400 seats, gaining a huge majority of more than 190, comparable to Tony Blair’s sweeping victory in 1997. The Tories meanwhile have lost hundreds of seats, on track for the worst result since the party’s founding in the 1830s with only two results still to be declared, the Tories were stuck on just 121 of the Commons’ 650 seats — the lowest total in the party’s illustrious history.
The election saw other milestones, including the highest number of women MPs elected to parliament.
The Conservative Party which had run the U.K. for the past 14 years was simply swept away in a wave of public anger at Britain’s stuttering economy, failing public services and a succession of political scandals. Many of the party’s best-known figures lost their seats on Thursday, including a record number of cabinet ministers, including former Prime Minister Liz Truss who was unceremoniously swept aside, as well as a lead campaigner of Brexit, Jacob Rees-Mogg.
“Across the country, people will be waking up to the news relieved that a burden has been lifted, a weight lifted from the shoulders of this great nation. The sunshine of hope is returning to our great country” the new PM Keir Starmer said,
Starmer paid tribute to his Sunak but it made clear his government would draw a line under what he described as the Tory years of scandal and mismanagement,
“When the gap between the sacrifices made by people and the service they receive from politicians grows this big, it leads to a weariness in the heart of a nation, a draining away of the hope, the spirit, the belief in a better future that we need to move forward together now” starmer said.
Starmer has begun appointing his Cabinet soon after his return from the Palace, with senior party figures including Deputy Leader Angela Rayner, Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves and elections supremo Pat McFadden walking up Downing Street and in though the famous door to No. 10 to learn their new roles in government. Reeves becomes the U.K’s first female finance minister while Rayner is officially the deputy PM.
Speaking as he left No. 10 Downing Street for the last time, Sunak said he had “heard the anger” of British voters as he heaped praise upon his winning opponent.
“In this job, [Starmer’s] successes will be all our successes, and I wish him and his family well,” the defeated Tory leader said. “Whatever our disagreements in this campaign, he is a decent, public-spirited man who I respect.”
The Tory bloodbath swept away many key Conservative figures. Former Prime Minister Liz Truss lost her seat in a humiliating defeat which saw her seemingly-impregnable 26,195 majority overturned by Labour. The Conservatives lost many other heartland seats, including those previously held by former prime ministers Boris Johnson, Theresa May and David Cameron.
The scale of Labour’s victory makes Starmer the U.K.’s most powerful leader since Blair, with complete command of parliament and a second term beckoning in five years’ time.
Over the course of the six-week campaign, Starmer urged voters to give him their backing and “turn the page” on years of scandal, division and economic turmoil under former PMs Johnson and Truss.
Starmer ran on a platform to “end the chaos” and to begin slowly reinvigorating Britain’s services and infrastructure. He has also promised to move away from culture war debates, including Brexit, saying the U.K. will not rejoin in his lifetime.
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Starmer only became the Labour leader in 2019 and has dragged his party back to the center ground, wrestling it away from the influence of Bernie Sanders-like left-wing former leader Jeremy Corbyn.
Keir Starmer, a human rights lawyer from a small town in southern England, is the new prime minister of the United Kingdom. His victory on July 4 was overwhelming. Yet Britain barely knows who he is.
Starmer has been a politician for only nine years and since being crowned U.K. Labour leader in 2020 has steered his party from its worst election defeat in almost a century to become the dominant force in British politics.
