Labour’s Keir Starmer claims victory in UK election

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But turnout was on course to be about 60 per cent, down 7 per cent and close to a record low, suggesting general public dissatisfaction with mainstream politics.

Labour secured about 34 per cent of the vote – also a historically low figure for a winning side, while the Conservatives vote was down to 23 per cent – cannibalised by Nigel Farage’s insurgent populist Reform UK with 15 per cent.

The Conservatives are on track to win fewer than 130 seats, down by more than 230 from 365 at the previous election, after a six-week catalogue of errors and self-inflicted damage. Their previous worst result at a general election was 156 seats in 1906.

Former British prime minister Liz Truss, defence secretary Grant Shapps, leader of the Commons Penny Mordaunt, justice minister Alex Chalk, education minister Gillian Keegan, culture minister Lucy Frazer, science minister Michelle Donelan and Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, one of the architects of Brexit, are among senior Conservatives to lose their seats.

Foreign leaders have begun congratulating Starmer, with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese posting on social media platform X: “Congratulations to my friend and new UK Prime Minister [Keir Starmer] on his resounding election victory,” he wrote. “I look forward to working constructively with the incoming [Labour] Government.”

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau described Starmer’s victory as historic while Israel’s president Isaac Herzog said he was looking forward to deepening “the close friendship between Israel and the United Kingdom”.

Labour won scores of seats because of the rise of Reform UK, which split the right-wing vote, punishing the Conservatives under the UK’s first past the post electoral system. Farage won his first seat in the House of Commons on his eighth attempt.

“There is a massive gap on the cent right of British politics and my job is to fill it and that’s exactly what I’m going to do,” Farage said after the result for Clacton-on-Sea was announced.

“My plan is to build a mass national movement over the course of the next few years and hopefully be big enough to challenge the general election properly in 2029.”

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Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, expelled from his own party after 41 years as an MP, pulled off a shock win in Islington North, where he ran as an independent. Beating Labour candidate Praful Nargund by 24,120 votes to 16,873, he said: “This result is to me a resounding message from the people of Islington that they want something different, they want something better.”

Labour also lost two seats — including one held by campaign spokesman Jonathan Ashworth — to pro-Palestinian independent candidates, an indication of how Starmer’s position on the Israel-Hamas war has hurt his party among many Muslim voters.

Rwith agencies

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