Keir Starmer confirmed as Britain's new prime minister after Labour Party’s decisive win

A chaotic start to Nigel Farage’s address to supporters saw several hecklers being removed from the crowd within the first few minutes of the Reform U.K. leader’s speech.

“The anger,” Farage said, referring to his critics, saying it was “good preparation for the House of Commons.”

Farage, a key engineer of Brexit, vowed to lead a “mass movement across this country that will change politics for good — that will change politics forever.” But, suggesting a possible shift in Reform’s approach, he said the party’s plan going forward would look to “go after Labour votes.”

"Above all, what we are gonna do from today is we are going to professionalize the party, we are going to democratize the party and those few bad apples that crept in will be gone," he said, in an apparent reference to campaigners who were filmed making racist and homophobic remarks during Farage's election bid.

A lot has changed since Conservatives came into power in 2010. Here is Britain by the numbers in that time.

Some of the parameters, like growth in gross domestic product, have been influenced by the Covid-19 pandemic, arguably beyond the control of any government, but there are still visible trends since 2010.

GDP growth rebounded from minus 4.6% in 2009 to 2.2% when the Tories came to power in 2010, according to World Bank data. It varied between 1% and 3% in the following years until the pandemic tanked it to minus 10.4% in 2020. It bounced back to 8.7% the next year but has been on the decline since then, with a gain of only 0.1% last year. 

Waiting lists for hospital treatments under the beloved but cash-strapped National Health Service have grown sharply since 2010, according to the London-based Institute for Fiscal Studies. In England, the elective waiting list doubled from 2.3 million in January 2010 to 4.6 million just before the pandemic in December 2019, peaking at 7.8 million in September 2023. 

Along with the more serious candidates, Starmer faced Bobby "Elmo" Smith and Nick "The Flying Brick" Delves in the race to secure his seat in Parliament.

Needless to say, Starmer won more votes than "Elmo," whose bright-red outfit matched Starmer's Labour Party color.

President Joe Biden is planning to call Starmer today "to congratulate him on his victory," a source familiar with the president's schedule told NBC News today.

With Keir Starmer now ensconced in No. 10 Downing St., he's begun inviting the members of his shadow Cabinet through the black door one at a time, presumably to make them bona fide ministers. So who can we expect to be the key movers and shakers in the incoming prime minister's Cabinet?

Labour's deputy leader Angela Rayner, who has served as the MP for Ashton-under-Lyne since 2015, is expected to become the deputy prime minister, as well as the secretary of state for leveling up, housing and communities. She left school at 16 to have her first child, before rising through union ranks, joining the party and growing her influence.

Rachel Reeves has been an MP since 2010 and has served as shadow chancellor in recent years. She is expected to become the U.K.'s first female chancellor of the exchequer, taking over from Jeremy Hunt. Reeves has aggressively courted the business community in the run-up to the election in an attempt to dispel the perception of Labour as economically feckless.

Labour may have swept the vote across the country, but the final results won't be announced today due to a recount delay in Scotland.

A recount in the Inverness, Skye and West Ross-Shire constituency has been scheduled for tomorrow morning, British media reported, due to an alleged "discrepancy" between the total verified votes and the provisional number of counted votes. According to Scottish newspaper The Herald, the count will resume tomorrow, after staff worked through the night.

The pro-independence Scottish National Party (SNP) has already lost 38 seats, and it's unclear whether the SNP incumbent Drew Hendry can stave off a challenge from Liberal Democrat Angus MacDonald, after exit polls suggested it was too close to call.

One other seat in the east of the country, South Basildon and East Thurrock, remains undeclared as of 14:40 local time (09:42 ET), as the vote there is also subject of a recount, the BBC says. Exit polling suggests the winner will either be the Conservative Party incumbent Stephen Metcalfe or the Labour Party's Jack Ferguson.

The British government’s website has received an update, with a parliamentary headshot of Starmer replacing Sunak’s, under the heading 'Meet the Prime Minister.' Given the official nature of the photo, Starmer looks slightly less delighted than we've seen him over the past 24 hours.

The update is complete with biography of Britain’s new PM, noting his history being elected as the member for Holborn and St. Pancras in May 2015, before being elected leader of the Labour Party in April 2020. 

While Keir Starmer starts work as prime minister, Rishi Sunak will soon resign as Conservative party leader. The outgoing party of power faces an uncertain future, not least because Brexit engineer Nigel Farage has — on his eighth attempt — succeeded in becoming a member of parliament and won plaudits from former-President Donald Trump in the process.

Farage is not the only member of his right-wing Reform party to see success in yesterday's election, with Reform UK claiming four seats. While that's the same number as the Green party, there's a stark contrast in the number of votes those two parties received.

The Greens took just under 2 million votes, while Reform was the third largest party when it comes to the popular vote, receiving more than 4 million votes. Those numbers suggest that while not enough to take it over the line in more than a handful of seats, Reform's popularity runs deep. Farage's party drew 14% of yesterday's votes, meaning it has seen some success in its bid to draw disillusioned voters away from the Conservative Party.

Many will interpret the red tide that has swept across the U.K. as less of a victory for Keir Starmer's Labour party and more of a walloping for the Conservatives. That impression is borne out by the numbers of votes Labour received.

Labour claimed a dazzling 400-plus seats in yesterday’s election, in stark contrast with the Conservatives' 121 — the fewest seats in the party’s history. But this election has also seen the rise of Farage’s Reform UK party, which, along with other campaigns, cut into both Labour's and the Conservatives’ voting shares. 

As of this morning, Labour had claimed nearly 34% of the vote, up just around 1.5 percentage points from its dismal loss in 2019 — and more than five percentage points less than Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party received in 2017. Meanwhile, the Conservatives have claimed just under 24%.

Smaller parties such as Reform UK performed much better than expected, with the party of Donald Trump ally Nigel Farage claiming more than 14% of the vote, while the Liberal Democrats took 12% and the Greens received 7%. 

Keir Starmer and his wife Victoria have arrived at the prime minister's residence at 10 Downing Street after a short journey from Buckingham Palace. At the palace, King Charles formally appointed Starmer as the United Kingdom's new prime minister following a landslide victory for the Labour party in yesterday's general election.

The prime minister and his wife were met by cheering crowds and Starmer will now address the nation.

Keir Starmer has now been formally appointed by King Charles as the United Kingdom's new prime minister.

A statement from Buckingham Palace says: "The King received in Audience The Right Honourable Sir Keir Starmer MP today and requested him to form a new Administration. Sir Keir accepted His Majesty’s offer and kissed hands upon his appointment as Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury."

The prime minister was offered the role by the monarch in a ceremony at Buckingham Palace and accepted. He has now left the palace and will make the short drive to 10 Downing Street to address the nation, appoint his cabinet and begin work as prime minister.

Prime Minister-Elect Keir Starmer has travelled to Buckingham Palace to be officially appointed prime minister by King Charles III.

It's an important and historic formality that's part of Britain’s status as a constitutional monarchy. During the meeting, the king will formally ask Starmer to form a new government.

Charles will hold his first audience with Starmer in a highly choreographed ceremony behind closed doors known as the "Kissing of Hands," although no actual kissing will be involved. His late mother, Queen Elizabeth II, performed the same ceremony on 15 occasions, the last of which came just days before her death when she appointed Liz Truss. Last night, Truss lost her seat to Labour.

Starmer becomes the second prime minister Charles has appointed in his time as reigning monarch, after outgoing PM Rishi Sunak. Afterwards, Starmer is expected to travel to Downing Street, which Sunak has already vacated, to make a statement and start running the country.

Buckingham Palace has released an official statement shortly after former-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak left his resignation meeting with King Charles.

"The Right Honourable Rishi Sunak MP had an Audience of The King this morning," the statement says, "and tendered his resignation as Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury, which His Majesty was graciously pleased to accept."

For a brief period between Sunak's resignation and Keir Starmer's appointment by the king, the U.K. currently has no prime minister. That won't last long, though. Starmer is expected to visit the palace in the next hour to receive executive responsibility from the monarch.

For the first time ever, the Conservative party has been totally wiped out in Inner London — the boroughs that form the core of the British capital — losing its three remaining seats to Labour. 

Conservative trade policy minister Greg Hands lost Chelsea and Fulham to Labour’s Ben Coleman by just a handful of votes, while the constituency of Cities of London and Westminster — which includes much of central London, Downing Street and Buckingham Palace — and the new seat of Kensington and Bayswater also went to Labour. 

That means there are no Conservative MPs in Inner London, while in Outer London — the borough’s surrounding the city’s core —  the party performed better than polls had predicted. 

Last night, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was fired by the British public, but he can't officially go until he tenders his formal resignation to King Charles III.

Sunak has traveled to Buckingham Palace for a departure audience with the king, after swiftly vacating the the prime minister’s official residence at 10 Downing Street. He has made the short trip just hours after leading his party to a crushing defeat at the polls.

Sunak has been driven to the palace in a ministerial car, but as he is now prime minister no longer, he will leave the palace privately.

Labour leader Keir Starmer, who will succeed Sunak as the prime minister, will be officially appointed by the king in a ceremony later today.

Just over six weeks ago, Rishi Sunak stood in pouring rain to call for a snap election on July 4 in a lasting image that’s likely to define his legacy. This morning the skies were more merciful to the outgoing prime minister, as he bid farewell to Downing Street after a devastating and historic defeat at the polls.

“To the country, I would like to say, first and foremost, I am sorry. I have given this job my all, but you have sent a clear signal that the government of the United Kingdom must change, and yours is the only judgment that matters,” said Sunak. “I take responsibility for this loss,” he added as his wife, Akshata Murty, stood by him. 

Sunak, who will go down in history as the least successful Conservative prime minister at the ballot box in modern times, also said he will step down as party leader once the formal arrangements for selecting his successor are in place.

He wished the incoming prime minister, Labour leader Keir Starmer, success and called him “a decent, public-spirited man who I respect.”

Many had expected a collapse in support for the Scottish National Party (SNP) at this election but the scale of the party's loss has still been surprising. The SNP, which has dominated Scottish politics for a generation, has lost 38 seats and won just nine.

The SNP's performance raises questions about the push for a second independence referendum, which it had spearheaded after Scotland voted to remain in the U.K. in 2014.

This morning, Labour gained all six of Glasgow's seats from the SNP. In Edinburgh, the Scottish capital, the SNP has lost three seats it previously held to Labour, according to the latest results.

The party has recently been in disarray, amid an investigation into its finances and with two leaders quitting in the last year and a half. Party leader John Swinney said on X that it had been "a very, very difficult night" for the SNP.

A wave of anti-conservative movement has swept the U.K. removing a record-breaking 12 incumbent cabinet ministers from office. A further 22 incumbent and former secretaries of state decided not to run.

Among the most high profile defeats were former Prime Minister Liz Truss, who became the U.K.’s shortest-reigning prime minister two years ago, defense secretary Grant Shapps, House of Commons leader Penny Mordaunt, education secretary Gillian Keegan and former Brexit secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg.

Elsewhere in the U.K., the Conservatives lost their Scottish leader Douglas Ross as Labour picked up seats from both the party in blue and the Scottish National Party. The outgoing party of power also lost all of its seats in Wales, where it had picked up some unlikely victories in recent years.

In another 30 races, a record number of Conservative party candidates lost their deposits due to winning less than 5% of the vote. Candidates are required to deposit 500 British pounds ($640) to stand for election.

Jeremy Hunt, the U.K.'s former finance minister has left his official residence at number 11 Downing Street.

Hunt, a Conservative lawmaker who was also health secretary and foreign secretary during 11 years at the top of government, held on to his parliamentary seat in southern England fending off a fierce challenge from the smaller Liberal Democrat party.

But he will now step down from his job as Chancellor of the Exchequer, widely considered the second most important job in British politics.

The centrist Liberal Democrat party will return to parliament as the House of Commons' third largest party just under a decade after losing that title. The party's leader Ed Davey called the party's election showing as "historic."

"We’ll now be the largest third-party force in parliament for over 100 years," he told the BBC. As of 09:20 local time (04:20 ET) the party had won at least 71 seats, a massive jump from 11 seats in the 2019 elections and the highest number since its founding in 1988.

In its wave of English and Scottish gains, the party beat out both the Conservative justice and education secretaries, taking swaths of affluent southern England that had previously been seen as Conservative heartlands.

Davey said he didn't expect so many seats but that "during the campaign it looked like we were doing better and better." He took an unusual tack in his campaigning, undertaking unusual stunts such as paddle-boarding, riding a rollercoaster and plummeting toward the ground attached to a bungee cord while screaming, “vote Liberal Democrat.”

Keir Starmer will inherit the war in Ukraine as one of the key foreign policy issues for the U.K.

His predecessor, Rishi Sunak, became a strong ally to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, visiting Kyiv several times and supplying Ukraine with military aid even as new U.S. aid was held up in Congress. The U.K. was the first country to provide lethal aid to Ukraine and also the first to send advanced systems like Western tanks.

Zelenskyy welcomed Starmer's victory this morning, vowing that Ukraine and the United Kingdom have been and will continue to be "reliable allies through thick and thin."

While Labour has stormed to victory nationwide, its support for Israel appears to have reduced the party’s vote share in many constituencies with a substantial Muslim population.

The center-left Labour Party has come under fire for its pro-Israel stance in the Israel-Hamas war, which has had a devastating toll on civilians in the Gaza Strip, with Starmer saying in October that Israel “has the right” to withhold power and water from the densely populated enclave.

In a surprise defeat, a member of Labour’s shadow cabinet, paymaster general Jonathan Ashworth, lost to an independent candidate in Leicester South, where a third of the population is Muslim.

The Conservatives also won a rare seat off Labour in Leicester East, another constituency with a substantial Muslim population. Labour’s vote share there dropped by 29 points against multiple pro-Gaza independent candidates.

Congratulations are already coming in for Starmer, who is set to succeed Sunak as prime minister after a decisive win by his Labour Party.

“Congratulations to my friend and new UK Prime Minister @Keir_Starmer on his resounding election victory,” Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in a post on X. His congratulations were echoed by New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also congratulated Starmer on a “historic” victory. “Lots of work ahead to build a more progressive, fair future for people on both sides of the Atlantic,” he posted on X.

Israel President Isaac Herzog thanked Sunak “for standing with the Israeli people” during Israel’s war with Hamas and said he looked forward to working with Starmer “to bring our hostages home” from the Gaza Strip.

In the United States, election night is followed by a monthslong transition period before the new administration takes office. In Britain, by contrast, new leaders endure a sleepless, 24-hour maelstrom that takes them straight from the campaign trail to No. 10 Downing St., the prime minister’s official residence and office.

With the election result increasingly clear, Prime Minister-elect Keir Starmer must travel to Buckingham Palace to be formally appointed by King Charles III, a ceremonial ritual in Britain’s constitutional democracy. It will be the king’s first post-election appointment, but he has some way to go before he equals the 15 prime ministers who served under his mother, the late Queen Elizabeth II.

The new prime minister then travels to Downing Street, which will have been swiftly vacated by his predecessor. There he will address the nation outside its famous black door, then be applauded inside by civil servants. Then come the security briefings — including on protocols in case of nuclear attack — calls to world leaders, and finally the small matter of running the country.

Former Prime Minister Liz Truss has lost her South West Norfolk seat to Labour by just over 600 votes.

“The issue we faced as conservatives is we haven’t delivered sufficiently on the policies people want," Truss told the BBC. "And that means keeping taxes low... I was part of that.”

Truss was leader of the Conservative Party for just 44 days in 2022, during which time she announced a radical new economic agenda of tax cuts and spending that crashed Britain’s economy before she resigned.

She has since styled herself as a populist who took on the "deep state" during her time in office and she also appeared alongside Nigel Farage at the Conservative Political Action Conference in the United States.

The Labour Party is ready to “restore Britain to the service of working people,” Starmer said after the election was called for the center-left party.

The victory by Labour, which easily secured the 326 seats necessary for a parliamentary majority, ends 14 years of rule by the Conservative Party, with Starmer set to succeed Sunak as prime minister.     

“We did it,” Starmer told a cheering crowd in an early-morning speech in central London. “You voted for it and now it has arrived. Change begins now.”

“A weight has been lifted, a burden finally removed from the shoulders of this great nation, and now we can look forward again,” he said.

A grave-looking Sunak retained his seat but acknowledged it had been a “difficult night” as the opposition Labour Party looked set to win in a landslide.

“The Labour Party has won this election,” Sunak said after the results in his Yorkshire constituency of Richmond and Northallerton were announced. “I have called Starmer to congratulate him.”

“I take responsibility for the loss,” he added, apologizing to defeated Conservative candidates.

After having declared the election earlier than expected and presided over a campaign beset by scandals, PR failures and allegations of insider betting, Sunak may have led the Conservatives to their worst defeat ever, according to exit polls.

LONDON — Britain woke up today to the scene of a political earthquake. The opposition Labour Party, after 14 years in the political wilderness, has handed a brutal defeat to the ruling Conservatives.

Party leader Keir Starmer is now certain to become prime minister in the coming hours, replacing his Conservative Party counterpart, Rishi Sunak, who has presided over one of the worst electoral losses in British political history.

“We did it,” Starmer told a cheering crowd in central London. “You voted for it and now it has arrived. Change begins now.”

“A burden finally removed from the shoulders of this great nation,” he said. Now the country can “move forward again.”

Read the full story here.