Friday Briefing: Labour Projected to Win U.K. Election

Britain’s Labour Party was projected to win a landslide election victory yesterday, sweeping the Conservative Party out of power after 14 years.

An exit poll conducted for the BBC and two other broadcasters predicted that Labour won 410 seats to the Tories’ 131 in the 650-member House of Commons. Here’s the latest.

The results were a blow for the Tories and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Britain’s electorate showed its weariness with a turbulent era that spanned austerity, Brexit, the Covid pandemic, the serial scandals of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the ill-fated tax-cutting proposals of his successor, Liz Truss.

“It is a classic anti-incumbent vote,” said Mark Landler, our London bureau chief. “British voters are desperate for a change.”

“They’re not persuaded that the Labour Party can deliver radically different results than the Conservatives,” Landler added, “but at this point, they’re willing to take the chance.”

Keir Starmer, the Labour leader who is set to become the next prime minister, will be faced with problems that many British voters worry are intractable. They include immigration, fixing the National Health Service — which is deeply underfunded and faces chronic staffing shortages — and righting the economy, which is struggling with high inflation that is contributing to a cost of living crisis.