With the much predicted landslide victory in the general elections on Friday, the Labour Party leader Keir Starmer is all set to begin his tenure as Britain's next prime minister by ousting the Conservatives after 14 years as incumbent premier Rishi Sunak's Conservative Party underwent a crushing defeat this time.
While addressing the party workers and the cheering crowds, Labour leader Keir Starmer said, "We did it, you campaigned for it, you fought for it, you voted for it and now it has arrived, change begins now."
Sunak on Friday arrived at the Buckingham Palace to meet King Charles to formally resign as UK Prime Minister. He said he will also step down as a leader of the Conservative Party when formal arrangements for a successor will take place.
Labour ensures record-breaking election victory
In line with the exit poll predictions, the Labour on Friday comfortably surpassed the halfway mark of 650 constituencies to clinch the minimum 326 required for a majority in Parliament. It was predicted for them to make a remarkable turnaround from the disastrous 2019 result.
Exit poll predictions suggested Labour would bag 410 seats out of 650, well ahead of the 326 required for a majority. However, the winning party this time was also aided by a divided opposition including anti-immigrant rightwing party Reform UK took away votes from the Conservatives.
'Sobering verdict','We didn't deliver': Conservatives on defeat
Conceding the Conservative Party's crushing defeat and acknowledging the “sobering verdict” while taking "responsibility for the loss", the United Kingdom's first-ever British-Indian prime minister Rihi Sunak said, "The Labour Party has won this general election and I have called Sir Keir Starmer to congratulate him on his victory."
While Sunak comfortably won from his own Richmond and Northallerton seat in northern England with 23,059 votes, the party failed miserably to win people's verdict at a national level.
Speaking to BBC, former PM Liz Truss, who's lost her seat, said, "We haven't delivered sufficiently on the policies people want," while adding that the Conservative party failed to keep taxes low or reduce immigration.
Commenting on whether she wants to stay in front-line Conservative politics, she says she needs "a bit of time" to think.
Anti-Conservative or pro-Labour?
The electoral number-crunching made room for the question of whether the final numbers reflected an anti-conservative or a pro-Labour verdict as the Conservative vote percentage saw a significant collapse while the Labour vote percentage saw only a modest hike.
Sunak’s party managed to get about 22.3% of the vote with more than two-thirds of the seats declared reflecting a major fall of 20 percentage points from the 42.4% achieved in 2019.
Labour this time got 36.3% votes, 4.2 percentage points higher than in the previous election.
Anti-Immigration Reform UK tastes victory
Amid the win and loss narratives fr the Labour and the Conservative, the pro-Brexit, anti-immigration Nigel Farage managed to win a seat in the UK parliament at the eighth attempt.
The party in total won four seats whereas the eexit poll projections suggested 13. They clinched the Great Yarmouth and Boston and Skegness from the Conservatives and retained Ashfield in the east Midlands.
Other key facts
The Commons this time will welcome the highest-ever female MPs surpassing the 220 elected in 2019
The Liberal Democratic party this year showcased best electoral performance "for a century" after winning dozens of seats
Reform UK and the Greens also exhibited historic performances. With four each both of them are having higher margin of seats than ever before.
The House will also welcome the most independent MPs since 1950
