Labour bounceback, Tory collapse: five key takeaways from the general election

Keir Starmer is the UK’s new prime minister after the Labour party’s landslide general election victory. He has taken over from Rishi Sunak, whose Conservative party suffered a collapse in support.

As of Friday, left-of-centre Labour had won 412 seats, returning to power with a huge parliamentary majority of 174, just short of the 179 majority won by Tony Blair in 1997. The Conservatives’ vote share fell by 20 points and their number of MPs fell from 251 to 121, the party’s worst electoral performance in modern times.

The result marks a historic turnaround for Labour, which took 202 seats in 2019. Its share of the national vote rose by about 2%. Sunak said he would resign as the Conservatives’ leader once the formal process for choosing a successor was in place.

Labour’s landslide victory after a remarkable turnaround

Labour had secured 63% of the seats in the House of Commons, albeit it with just over one-third of the national vote. The victory, which few would have predicted five years ago, was aided by a divided opposition, in which the insurgent rightwing party Reform UK, led by Nigel Farage, took votes from the Conservatives, who were weakened and tarnished by the unpopular premierships of Sunak and his predecessors Boris Johnson and Liz Truss.

Despite this emphatic victory, Labour lost a number of former strongholds to independent candidates campaigning on pro-Gaza platforms. The shadow minister Jonathan Ashworth lost his Leicester South seat, where he previously had a majority of more than 22,000. Wes Streeting, who was one of Labour’s most high-profile figures during the campaign and who is now the health secretary, saw his majority in Ilford North, in London, reduced from more than 9,000 to just 528.

Another thorn in Labour’s side: the former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn continues to represent the constituency he has held since 1983. Corbyn won Islington North as an independent candidate, having being blocked from being a Labour candidate in March 2023 by Starmer.

An anti-Conservative vote rather than a pro-Labour one

Liz Truss, Sunak’s short-lived predecessor, lost her South West Norfolk constituency to Labour by 630 votes, having previously held a 24,180 majority.

Twelve ministers who attended cabinet lost their seats. They include the Commons leader, Penny Mordaunt, who was tipped as a future Conservative leadership contender; the defence secretary, Grant Shapps; the justice secretary, Alex Chalk; and the education secretary, Gillian Keegan. The former cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg also lost his seat. Jeremy Hunt, the outgoing chancellor of the exchequer, managed to retain his with a slim 891 majority.

The Conservatives lost every seat they had held in Wales, and they lost a string of seats in southern England to the Liberal Democrats.

Liberal Democrats make historic gains

Having had just eight MPs pre-election, the Liberal Democrats had claimed 71 seats by Friday, beating its previous best of 62 in 2005. They become the third largest UK party. Among their wins were the seats of two former prime ministers: David Cameron and Theresa May.

The party made significant gains in Surrey, winning six seats: Epsom and Ewell, Woking, Esher and Walton, Guildford, Dorking and Horley, and Surrey Heath, the latter going to a non-Conservative candidate for the first time.

The party’s strategy had been to target the seats where it had previously come second. Ed Davey now leads a party with a record number of MPs, even though its vote share (about 12%) was barely changed from 2019. When party went into coalition government in 2010, its share was almost twice as high at 23%.

Gains for the Greens and Reform UK

The Green party quadrupled its number of MPs to four, its most successful night ever. It held the East Sussex constituency of Brighton Pavilion and added Bristol Central, Waveney Valley and North Herefordshire.

Meanwhile, Nigel Farage’s hard-right Reform UK gained five seats and 14% of the vote. The pro-Brexit, anti-immigration Farage won Clacton to finally achieve his ambition of becoming an MP at the eighth attempt.

Scotland’s independence movement suffers a major setback

The previously dominant Scottish National party was knocked for the first time in a decade, setting back its struggle for independence. The SNP, which was defending 48 of the 57 seats in Scotland, won only nine. In Glasgow, Labour took all six seats from the SNP.

Though the SNP failed in its attempt to secure Scottish independence at a referendum in 2014, it had won a majority of Scottish seats at every UK election since 2015 and has run Holyrood since 2007.

The party campaigned on the argument that if it won a majority of Scotland’s 57 seats, it would have a mandate to renegotiate a second independence referendum.