Sir Keir Starmer is poised to become the UK’s first Labour prime minister since 2010 after his party’s landslide victory in the general election. Labour secured a significant parliamentary majority of 174 seats following a dramatic decline in Conservative support.
Sir Keir will be formally appointed by the King at Buckingham Palace later today and is expected to make his first speech in Downing Street shortly afterward. He plans to begin appointing his new cabinet on Friday afternoon, with the first meeting scheduled for Saturday.
Addressing Labour supporters in central London, Sir Keir declared, “Change begins now,” adding, “It feels good, I have to be honest.”
Labour’s triumph is largely attributed to a significant 20-point drop in Tory support, resulting in the Conservatives falling to a historic low of 119 seats, down from 249. This victory marks a remarkable turnaround for Labour, which suffered its worst result in terms of seats—202—at the last election in 2019 under Sir Keir’s predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn.
Despite only a modest increase of about 2% in the national vote share, Labour has secured 411 seats, with only a few constituencies left to declare, nearly matching the historic 179-seat majority won by Tony Blair in 1997. Labour’s vote share increase was driven entirely by a 17-point surge in support in Scotland, where the party regained its position as the largest party, while the SNP’s seats plummeted from 48 to just nine.
The election also saw successes for smaller parties. The Liberal Democrats achieved their best result in a century with 71 seats, while Nigel Farage will join the House of Commons as one of four MPs for Reform UK, following a breakthrough night for the fledgling party.
