Keir Starmer leads Labour to historic landslide in 2024 election as Conservatives crumble to devastating defeat

After the Prime Minister had held onto his Richmond seat, he said: “The Labour Party has won this General Election, and I’ve called Sir Keir Starmer to congratulate him on his victory. Today, power will change hands in a peaceful and orderly manner, with goodwill on all sides. That is something that should give us all confidence in our country’s stability and future.

“The British people have delivered a sobering verdict tonight, there is much to learn… and I take responsibility for the loss. To the many good, hard-working Conservative candidates who lost tonight, despite their tireless efforts, their local records and delivery, and their dedication to their communities. I am sorry.”

Starmer will become the seventh Labour Prime Minister later today, less than five years after the party’s devastating loss to Boris Johnson in 2019. At just after 5am, Labour officially won a majority, securing 326 seats. Labour is likely to win around 38% of the vote, less than Jeremy Corbyn won in 2017. However, Starmer’s vote share was spread more efficiently, and he will win a whopping majority of around 180 seats.

Beaming, Starmer said: “Tonight people here and around the country have spoken and they’re ready for change – to end the politics of performance and return to politics as public service. The change begins right here because this is your democracy, your community and your future. You have voted. It is now time for us to deliver.”

Tory decimation

The Conservatives are on track for their worst election in history. In Tory seats, their vote share dropped by an average of 26% and they are expected to win just 136 seats. An array of high-profile Cabinet ministers, Penny Mordaunt, Gillian Keegan and Grant Shapps, lost their seats on the night from hell. 

Fittingly it appears former Prime Minister Liz Truss, whose disastrous mini-Budget caused the Conservatives support to plummet, may also lose her South West Norfolk seat in one of the last declarations. Partygate, gamble-gate and other scandals weighed down the Tories across the country.

Jacob Rees-Mogg was defeated in North East Somerset, while former Justice Secretary Robert Buckland lost in Swindon. Buckland let rip against his own party, saying: “I think that we have seen in this election an astonishing ill-discipline within the party.

“We can see articles being written before a vote is cast at the General Election about the party heading for defeat and what the prognosis should be. It is spectacularly unprofessional, ill-disciplined. That is not the Conservative Party I joined and have been an active member of for now nearly 40 years.”

The Tories lost all their MPs in Wales, with Welsh Secretary David TC Davies losing his seat in Monmouthshire to Labour.

Reform surge

Helping twist the knife on the Tories was Reform UK. In dozens of seats, the insurgent anti-immigration group finished second ahead of the Tories, with huge swings in the vote.

Nigel Farage, chairman Richard Tice, Lee Anderson and former Southampton chairman Rupert Lowe all won seats. Farage said this election is the “beginning of the end” for the Tories.

After winning in Clacton, he said: “This is just the first step, I set out with a goal to win millions of votes, to get a bridgehead in Parliament and that’s what we’ve done so I’m very pleased … I’ve got to professionalise it, I’ve got to democratise it, I’ve got to get rid of a few idiots that found it too easy to get on board. They will all go, they will all go, this will be a non-racist, non-sectarian party. Absolutely and I give my word on that.”

And on the Tories, Farage said: “They’ve been around for 190 years. They’ve been amazingly resilient. But this could be, I think this is the beginning of the end of the Conservative Party.”

Lib Dem success

The other big victors of the night were the Liberal Democrats. Sir Ed Davey’s party are expected to win over 60 seats, a huge increase on the decimation of the 2019 election. Max Wilkinson took down Justice Secretary Alex Chalk in Cheltenham, while Jess Brown-Fuller beat Gillian Keegan in Chichester.

Davey said: “I think we’ve fought a positive campaign. I like to think that people enjoyed how we put over our ideas. But our policies on health and care, on helping people with the cost-of-living crisis, and on tackling the sewage scandal, they’ve been heard louder and clearer because of the way we presented ourselves in this positive light.

“I think it’s possible to have a serious debate as well as having a bit of fun. I don’t take myself as a politician seriously. I want to take the concerns of the British people seriously. I hope that the style we’ve gone about it has encouraged people to join the Liberal Democrats. It’s certainly encouraged them to vote for us. This is an exceptional result, a historic result for the Liberal Democrats.”

SNP disaster

The only other party that had a night as disastrous as the Tories was the Scottish National party. North of the border Labour went from one MP to nearly 40, while the SNP dropped from 43 to just six.

Scottish Labour won every part of Glasgow and Edinburgh. New leader John Swinney said that if his party won a majority of Scottish seats, then they would start independence negotiations with the UK government. That is looking further away than ever.

Westminster leader Stephen Flynn said: “We are experiencing something that we have not experienced for quite some time. We are going to be beat in Scotland, we are going to be beat well.”

He added: “Now is the time when we must learn and we must listen. We must listen to what the people of Scotland tell us. When you are knocked down, you have to get back up.”

Rise of the independents

The election was also notable for the rise of the independents and smaller parties. Green Party co-leader defeated Labour in Bristol Central. Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn won Islington North as an independent, the constituency he has represented since 1983. 

Corbyn said: “I think the figure is likely to be around 37% of the vote, which is not a great figure on which to have a huge parliamentary majority. It does call into question the first past the post system and that no doubt is going to be a debate.

“And so of course the Labour Party has a massive future but if the Labour Party is going to be the inclusive organisation it ought to be then it’s going to have to loosen up a bit, and open up a bit, otherwise this idea of imposed candidates and removal of democracy within the party is not good for the future and not very good for democracy.”

Labour frontbencher Jonathan Ashworth lost to a pro-Gaza independent candidate in his Leicester constituency. While Palestine campaigner Leanne Mohammed came within 500 votes of Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting in Ilford North.

In Chingford and Woodford Green, Faiza Shaheen, the previously deselected Labour candidate, effectively prevented her former party from winning. She ran as an independent and won more than 12,000 votes, with former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith victorious again. After the declaration, Shaheen told reporters that Labour "lied to people, they said there was no chance I could win ... they spread rumours about me ... they smeared my name".