AP – The Labour Party has officially won enough seats in the UK’s 2024 general election to have a majority in parliament, as vote counting continues. Labour Leader Keir Starmer will become prime minister and can form a majority government.
An exit poll and partial returns indicated, as voters punished the governing Conservatives after 14 years of economic and political upheaval.
As the sun rose, official results showed Labour had 326 of the 650 seats, as vote counting continued. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak had already acknowledged the defeat and said he called center-left Labour’s leader Keir Starmer to congratulate him on becoming the country’s next prime minister.
Liz Truss, the former prime minister whose premiership lasted just 49 days, has lost her lawmaker’s seat in the election.
Truss lost her Norfolk South West seat to Labour by just several hundred votes.
Several other high-profile and senior Conservative lawmakers also lost their seats, including House of Commons leader Penny Mordaunt.
Mordaunt lost her Portsmouth North seat in the south of England to Labour’s Amanda Martin by fewer than 1,000 votes.
Mordaunt came to international attention during King Charles III’s coronation when she held a large sword aloft through the ceremony.
Others who lost seats included education secretary Gillian Keegan and former business secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg.
Keir Starmer has led Britain’s Labour Party to a landslide election victory, and will become prime minister — the first leader from the center-left party to win a U.K. national election since Tony Blair, who won three in a row starting in 1997.
Like Blair, who refashioned the party as “New Labour” in the 1990s, 61-year-old Starmer led Labour to victory over Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party in Thursday’s election after dragging the party towards the political middle ground.