Tories face seismic defeat as Labour eye power for first time in 14 years
The Labour Party is set to form a government for the first time in 14 years after storming to victory in the 2024 General Election, according to an exit poll.
After four and a half years as the leader of the opposition, Sir Keir Starmer will become his party’s seventh prime minister and the first since Gordon Brown lost in 2010, if the projection proves correct.
His chancellor Rachel Reeves is also set to become the first woman in UK history to lead the Treasury.
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The poll suggests Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives, battered by numerous scandals in recent years and a gaffe-filled election campaign, will suffer the worst defeat in the party’s 200-year history.
A stretch in power that began with David Cameron’s coalition deal with the Liberal Democrats following the 2010 election appears to be at an end, and Sunak’s tenure as leader appears almost certain to end with it.
It’s a result that has been predicted in opinion polls for months, with the only real disagreement over the potential scale of a Labour landslide.
If the seats are distributed as forecast, the party will win 410, with the Conservatives on 131, and the Liberal Democrats becoming the third-largest party in the House of Commons with 61 seats.
Reform UK would win 13 seats, and the SNP would be left with just 10 – meaning the Scottish nationalists would lose 38 of their seats.
In recent weeks, the Tories have actively encouraged the idea that the opposition were set to win a massive majority in the House of Commons.
Less than 24 hours before polls opened, Pensions Secretary Mel Stride told the Today programme it was ‘highly likely’ Labour would win ‘the largest majority that any party has ever achieved’.
The apparent aim was to boost the sense of a foregone conclusion among undecided voters, and to convince potential Reform UK backers to go Conservative.
How successful that strategy has been will become clear once results have come in for each of the UK’s 650 constituencies.
But the exit poll, considered the clearest indication yet of the country’s decision, implies a Labour government is now locked in.
Commissioned jointly by major British news broadcasters, it is based on research carried out by interviewers at 133 polling stations in marginal constituencies around the country.
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