CNN – Labour’s Keir Starmer looks set to become the UK’s next prime minister after an exit poll projected a landslide win for his party.
The poll predicts a disastrous night ahead for the Conservative Party, forecasting its lowest-ever total number of seats and bringing a brutal end to Rishi Sunak’s premiership.
Votes are now being counted, with dozens of seats already declared and further constituencies being declared over the coming hours.
The Labour Party’s projected victory marks a historic moment in modern British political history and a huge personal triumph for Keir Starmer, the Labour leader who is set to become the country’s next prime minister.
The UK broadcasters’ exit poll suggests Labour will have a parliamentary majority of 170, returning the party to office for the first time since it lost the 2010 election to the Conservatives, who have been in power ever since.
Starmer’s victory is all the more remarkable considering the journey that Labour has been on since the last general election in 2019. Then, the party suffered its worst loss in a generation under former leader Jeremy Corbyn, who stood on a hard-left platform.
A path back to credibility and even being competitive in a general election looked potentially a decade off, as the Conservatives emerged triumphant from the carnage of Brexit under the charismatic – but chaotic – leadership of Boris Johnson.
Johnson not only defeated his political rivals, but completely upended the norms of British politics. Under his leadership, his party won seats in traditional working-class Labour areas once deemed out of reach to Conservatives. For a year at least, he seemed untouchable.
It was in this context that Starmer took control of a broken Labour Party on April 4, 2020. On that day, David Lammy, one of his Labour colleagues, took him to one side and warned Starmer: “Set yourself a 10-year cycle. You might just lose the next election, and then you can go again.”
