Britain’s Labour Party Leader Keir Starmer arrives with his deputy Angela Rayner ahead of the start of, Britain’s Labour Party annual conference in Liverpool, Britain, October 7, 2023. Phil Noble/Reuters/
It’s a Labour landslide for Sir Keir Starmer’s main British opposition party. A reliable exit poll is projecting victory for the opposition Labour Party in Thursday’s general elections.
If proven correct this will end 14 years of Conservative rule in the United Kingdom.
Turnout was strong among the 46 million eligible voters. The polls are closing now having opened at 7 Thursday morning.
Of the 650 seats up for grabs in the British House of Commons, the parallel to Jamaica’s House of Representatives, Labour is projected to win 410. That would give it a majority of 170 seats.
It’s a dramatic reversal of fortunes compared to the 2019 general elections when the Conservative Party secured 344 seats.
That gave them a comfortable majority of 85 seats.
Chevon Campbell tells us more.
All indicators pointed to a Labour landslide heading into Thursday’s election.
A YouGov poll conducted just days before predicted Keir Starmer’s Labour winning 431 seats, up 229 from 2019, with the Tories on 102, down 263 seats from the last election.
Thursday’s exit poll suggests the Labour Party will secure four-hundred-and-10 seats with the Conservatives holding on to just 131. The Labour Party has never had such a strong position in the House of Commons since Tony Blair’s landslide in 1997.
Despite a major victory in 2019 under Boris Johnson, the Conservative party has been mired in political scandal and further wounded by the cost of living crisis which rocked the globe following Covid-19 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The party has seen four leaders and consequently four prime ministers in less than eight years. Among them, Liz Truss, who served for only 50 days.
It’s in this climate that the current party leader, Rishi Sunak, took the country to the polls.
Having secured the more than 326 seats needed for a majority, Mr. Starmer will be called upon by King Charles III to form the next government and take up his post at 10 Downing Street.
Starmer took control of the Labour Party in 2020 following his successor Jeremy Corbyn’s disastrous showing at the 2019 polls.
A barrister by profession, he’s been a Member of Parliament for Holborn and St Pancras since 2015.
He joined the Labour caucus as a mere backbencher. He previously served as Director of Public Prosecutions from 2008 to 2013.
He ideologically identifies as progressive and as a centrist.
He is credited with returning the Labour Party to moderate politics following its extreme left-wing slant under Corbyn’s leadership.
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