Keir Starmer has entered Downing Street as Britain’s new prime minister after winning the general election in a historic Labour landslide, and named Rachel Reeves as the first female chancellor of the exchequer.
After securing a majority of more than 170 seats on a night of high political drama, Mr Starmer told flag-waving supporters outside Number 10 that he wanted to rebuild trust between the public and politicians.
“This wound, this lack of trust, can only be healed by actions not words,” he said, promising to prioritise economic growth. Announcements to liberalise planning and encourage housebuilding are expected soon.
Ms Reeves said she planned to run “the most pro-growth Treasury in our country’s history”, telling officials she wanted the department to deliver stability and play a big role “in a new era of industrial strategy”.
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Mr Starmer arrived in Number 10 on Friday afternoon as the seventh Labour leader to become prime minister and immediately began assembling his cabinet.
Ms Reeves will be part of an inner “quad” of senior ministers, led by Mr Starmer and also featuring Angela Rayner, deputy prime minister, and Pat McFadden, chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.
David Lammy was confirmed as foreign secretary; Yvette Cooper, home secretary; Jonathan Reynolds, business secretary; and John Healey, defence secretary. Most of Mr Starmer’s cabinet held the same brief in opposition.
Labour’s election victory is a triumph for Mr Starmer, a former chief prosecutor who became his party’s leader in 2020 after its worst postwar election defeat. His victory is similar in scale to Tony Blair’s 1997 Labour landslide.
By Friday evening, Labour had secured 412 seats, with just one constituency still to be declared. The result came largely at the expense of Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives, who collapsed to the worst defeat in the party’s history.
Nigel Farage’s Reform UK swallowed up Tory votes, leaving the Conservatives with just 121 seats. Labour was able to win its majority with only 34 per cent of the vote, the lowest-ever winning share.
The election result marked a historic Labour victory – the party last won in 2005 under Mr Blair – but Mr Starmer will become Britain’s new prime minister knowing that Labour’s public support is shallow.
Before the election, polls put Labour 20 points ahead. Former leftwing Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn won 40 per cent of the vote in his 2017 election defeat.
Mr Starmer’s avowedly pro-business agenda appears to have paid off, however, with housebuilding companies leading a UK stock market rally on Friday. Labour has pledged to build 1.5 million homes over the next five years.
Labour won scores of seats because of the rise of Reform UK, which split the rightwing vote, punishing the Conservatives under the UK’s first-past-the-post electoral system.
One of the victims was former prime minister Liz Truss, among many big Tory names to lose their seats. Her 49-day premiership, and the economic havoc it spawned, contributed to the Conservative meltdown.
“This looks more like an election the Conservatives have lost than one Labour have won,” pollster John Curtice told the BBC.
Speaking from Downing Street earlier on Friday, Mr Sunak announced his resignation as prime minister, adding that he would quit as Tory leader once procedures for choosing his successor were in place.
“To the country, I would like to say first and foremost, I am sorry,” he said. “I have given this job my all, but you have sent a clear signal that the government of the United Kingdom must change.”
“I have heard your anger and disappointment and I take responsibility for this loss,” he added.
Turnout in the election was on course to be about 60 per cent, close to a record low, suggesting general public dissatisfaction with mainstream politics.
Mr Starmer admitted that he faced an immediate task of reconnecting mainstream politics to voters. “The fight for trust is the battle that defines our age,” he said.
With almost all results in, Labour had secured a 34 per cent vote share, the Conservatives 24 per cent, Reform 14 per cent and the Liberal Democrats 12 per cent. Labour had won 411 seats, the Conservatives 121, the Lib Dems 71 and Reform five.
The centrist Lib Dems’ tally smashed the party’s modern-era 62-seat record in 2005, as it made big gains in the Tory “blue wall” of well-heeled seats in the south of England.
The Scottish National party was behind Labour in Scotland with an expected 10 seats, delivering a hammer blow to the party’s dream of securing independence.
Among the high-profile Conservative casualties on a night of Tory desolation were Grant Shapps, defence secretary; Penny Mordaunt, leader of the Commons; Gillian Keegan, education secretary; Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, former cabinet minister; and Alex Chalk, justice secretary.
Corbyn held his Islington North seat, standing as an independent, while George Galloway, the leftwing pro-Palestinian MP for Rochdale, lost his seat to Labour.
But Labour lost five seats – including one held by shadow cabinet member Jonathan Ashworth – to pro-Palestinian independent candidates, an indication of how Mr Starmer’s position on the Israel-Hamas war has hurt his party among many Muslim voters.
The Green Party also won all its four target seats in the general election, quadrupling the number of MPs it will send to Westminster.
Labour’s victory bucked international political trends, with far-right parties performing strongly in recent European and French elections, and Donald Trump leading in polls for the US presidential race.
The Conservatives’ total of 121 seats is lower than the party’s worst-ever result of 156 in 1906. Mr Starmer’s expected seat haul is close to the 418 seats won by Mr Blair in his 1997 landslide victory. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2024
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