UK’s Labour to win massive election majority, exit poll shows

LONDON — Keir Starmer will be Britain’s next prime minister with his Labour Party set to win a massive majority in a parliamentary election, an exit poll on Thursday indicated, while Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives are forecast to suffer historic losses.

The poll showed Labour would win 410 seats in the 650-seat parliament and a majority of 170, ending 14 years of Conservative-led government.

Sunak’s party were forecast to only take 131 seats, down from 346 when parliament was dissolved and the worst electoral performance in its history, as voters punished them for a cost-of-living crisis, and years of instability and in-fighting which has seen five different prime ministers since 2016.

“Britain’s future was on the ballot at this election. And, if we are successful tonight, Labour will get to work immediately with our first steps for change,” Pat McFadden, Labour’s campaign coordinator said in statement.

The centrist Liberal Democrats were predicted to capture 61 seats while Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage’s right-wing populist Reform UK was forecast to win 13.

While the forecast for Reform was far better than expected, the overall outcome suggests the disenchanted British public appears to have shifted support to the centre-left, unlike in France where Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party made historic gains in an election last Sunday.

It was not just the Conservatives whose vote was predicted to have collapsed. The pro-independence Scottish National Party was forecast to win only 10 seats, its worst showing since 2010, after a period of turmoil which has seen two leaders quit in little over a year, a police investigation into the party’s finances and splits on a range of policies.

In the last six UK elections, only one exit poll has got the outcome wrong – in 2015 when the poll predicted a hung parliament when in fact the Conservatives won a majority. Official results will follow over the next few hours.

Sunak stunned Westminster and many in his own party by calling the election earlier than he needed to in May with the Conservatives trailing Labour by some 20 points in opinion polls.

He had hoped that the gap would narrow as had traditionally been the case in British elections, but the deficit has failed to budge in a fairly disastrous campaign.