Britain’s Labour Party was headed for a landslide victory in a parliamentary election on Thursday, an exit poll suggested, as voters punished the governing Conservatives after 14 years of economic and political upheaval.
The poll released moments after voting closed indicated that Labour Leader Keir Starmer will be the country’s next prime minister. He will face a jaded electorate impatient for change against a gloomy backdrop of economic malaise, mounting distrust in institutions and a fraying social fabric.
Starmer, a human rights lawyer and former Crown prosecutor, would be the first Labour prime minister since Gordon Brown.
With the Labour Party projected to take a large majority in the U.K. Parliament, some voters explained why they or people they know couldn’t bring themselves to vote for the incumbent Conservatives.
The apparent defeat for the Conservatives will leave the party depleted and likely spark a contest to replace Rishi Sunak as leader.
“Nothing has gone well in the last 14 years,” said London voter James Erskine, who was optimistic for change in the hours before the poll closed. “I just see this as the potential for a seismic shift, and that’s what I’m hoping for.”
While the suggested result appears to buck recent rightward electoral shifts in Europe, including in France and Italy, many of those same populist undercurrents flow in Britain. Reform U.K. Leader Nigel Farage has roiled the race with his party’s anti-migrant “take our country back” sentiment and undercut support for the Conservatives, who already faced dismal prospects.
Labour is on course to win about 410 seats in the 650-seat House of Commons and the Conservatives 131, according to the exit poll. That would be the fewest number of seats for the Tories in their nearly two-century history.
Former Conservative leader William Hague said the poll indicated “a catastrophic result in historic terms” for the party.
Still, Labour politicians, inured to years of disappointment, were cautious, with full results still hours off.
“The exit poll is encouraging, but obviously we don’t have any of the results yet,” Angela Rayner, the party’s deputy leader, told Sky News.
In a sign of the volatile public mood and anger at the system, some smaller parties appeared to have done well, including the centrist Liberal Democrats and Reform U.K.
Polls suggest Labour Party leader Keir Starmer is set to become Britain’s next prime minister with a majority government in Thursday’s national election. This would end 14 years of often tumultuous Conservative Party rule that saw Brexit, scandals and multiple leadership changes.
The exit poll is conducted by pollster Ipsos and asks people at scores of polling stations to fill out a replica ballot showing how they voted. It usually provides a reliable, though not exact, projection of the final result.
“If this exit poll is correct, then this is a historic defeat for the Conservative Party, one of the most resilient forces that have we have seen in British political history,” said Keiran Pedley, research director at Ipsos.
Full results will come in over the next hours.
Britain has experienced a run of turbulent years — some of it of the Conservatives’ making and some not — that has left many voters pessimistic about their country’s future. The U.K.’s exit from the European Union followed by the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine battered the economy, while lockdown-breaching parties held by then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his staff caused widespread anger.
Johnson’s successor, Liz Truss, rocked the economy further with a package of drastic tax cuts and lasted just 49 days in office. Rising poverty and cuts to state services have led to gripes about “Broken Britain.”
Sunak followed Truss as prime minister in 2022 — making him the third Conservative to hold the role that year.
But Britain has had five Conservative prime ministers — Sunak, Truss, Johnson and Theresa May and David Cameron before them — since Labour last led the U.K. government.
