New Delhi:

Out with the old, and in with the new (sort of), UK voters said Friday, handing Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives a thumping defeat in the general election, stripping it off nearly 250 seats in the 650-seat House of Commons. And Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour has been handed the keys to the castle.

Mr Starmer and his ‘new’ Labour will now form the next government. Addressing a cheering crowd of party faithfuls at a dawn victory rally in central London, he declared the UK “gets its future back”.

The scale of the Tories defeat is singular; in power for 14 years, the party was routed in Wales and Scotland, and saw some of its biggest leaders, including ex-Prime Minister Liz Truss, beaten.

Labour’s Landslide

But perhaps the most chastening blow – the BBC is reporting the Conservatives have lost seats, in the shire counties of England, that they have held since the early 20th century. For example, Labour’s Joe Morris beat the Tory’s Guy Opperman to end the Tory’s 100-year hold on the Hexham seat.

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The Conservatives are set for one of their worst ever returns in a general election, and Labour, with over 400 seats, its best. Exit polls had predicted just such a scenario, giving Mr Starmer 405 seats.

Conservatives’ Collapse

Rishi Sunak, the outgoing PM, called for an early election in May.

The warning signs were present then; indeed, they had been present for several weeks, if not months, prior, as UK voters battled a cost-of-living crisis, a growing immigration problem, and poor infrastructure and healthcare, among other issues, and the Tories a serious image problem.

READ | Labour Sweeps UK Polls, Rishi Sunak’s Part’s First Loss Since 2010

At that point the Conservatives – asking the British public for permission to install a sixth Prime Minister since 2010 – were already 20 points behind a rejuvenated Labour, but Mr Sunak seemed to believe he could close and overhaul the gap. Unfortunately, this did not happen.

Why Labour Beat Conservative?

Take your pick. But the crumbling NHS, or National Health Service, and the state of the economy, and attendant concerns like price rise, are high on the list of reasons for the defeat.

A poll by IPSOS Issues Index in June said concerns over slashing of funding for the NHS – a free public healthcare scheme that any other country would love to have – was top of the list, followed by the economy, immigration, price rise, housing and schools, defence and anti-terrorism, and crime.

Mr Sunak scored poorly on all these points, including overseeing the country’s lowest growth rate since the early 19th century and a steep cost-of-living increase, the highest in 41 years.

The British economy has slowed significantly over the past decade, even accounting for the global crisis triggered by the Covid pandemic. GDP per capita grew just 4.3 per cent from 2007 to 2023.

In the previous 16 years that figure was a massive 46 per cent.

This meant incomes stagnated.

A report by the nonpartisan Centres for Cities research institute indicated Britons, on average, had £10,200 less to save or spend between 2010 and 2022, compared to 1998-2010 growth rates.

And the UK’s national debt – £2.7 trillion – is higher than at any point since the 1960s.

There did seem to be some relief soon; in May the International Monetary Fund spoke of a “soft landing” for the economy, and upgraded the growth forecast by 0.2 percentage points to 0.7.

And it was, perhaps, on the back of that expectation Mr Sunak called for the early election.

The NHS is seen by many to be the crown in the British government’s public services.

The Conservatives had repeatedly stressed the importance of the NHS, but that concern seemed not to translate into on-ground support for doctors, nurses, and medical professionals.

Budgetary allocations under the Tories paint a clear picture. Since they came to power in 2010 healthcare spending has grown by an average of 2.8 per cent per year, compared to 3.6 per cent in the past 50. This includes the period of the pandemic.

In April there were an estimated 7.6 million people waiting for treatment under the NHS scheme, of which over 50,000 had been on the list for more than a year. The median wait time was 14 weeks.

The number of people waiting for medical aid, including those with serious conditions, has tripled under Conservative rule, according to data from the NHS published by Al Jazeera.

Brexit had its say too, with movement restrictions meaning medical professionals from mainland Europe could either not be hired or chose not to sign up. As horrible as this sounds, this was good news for India, with the NHS turning to its former colony to fill over 2,000 doctors’ posts.

Immigration was also an issue. Mr Sunak’s government had promised to crack down on illegal entrants into the UK, but its Rwanda policy – supposed to act as a major deterrent – failed to deliver.

In fact, two years after its announcement not one plane has taken off for the African nation.

According to Sky News, the Conservatives have spent over £300 million on this scheme, which they said would deter illegal immigrants entering the UK on small boats across the English Channel.

Under this policy, those caught would be sent to Rwanda while they apply for asylum.

As of March-end a total of 1.18 lakh people are waiting for an initial decision on their application.

The rising cost of living and skyrocketing house prices, as well as steep increases in rental prices, have also been a problem the Conservatives seemed not to be able to control.

Truss, Johnson’s Contributions

It wasn’t just Mr Sunak’s failures that led to the Conservatives’ downfall.

Boris Johnson was elected as the Tories’ leader and the PM in July 2019, shortly before the pandemic struck. His dishevelled appearance and chaotic leadership precipitated a revolt by his ministers and, of course, the ‘Partygate’ scandal that referred to parties at 10, Downing Street during a lockdown.

Mr Johnson resigned in June last year following an investigation that he called a “witch hunt”.

He was followed by Ms Truss – the UK’s fourth female PM and its shortest-serving leader.

READ | UK In Crisis: Why Country Has Seen 3 PMs In 3 Years

Ms Truss – who lost her South West Norfolk seat – faced criticism for the way it handled the economy, including a controversial mini-budget that led to market turmoil. Her leadership was further undermined by U-turns on policy and a loss of confidence among MPs.

What Now For Labour?

Mr Starmer’s leadership has been pivotal in Labour’s revival.

Since taking up the role in early 2020, he has repositioned the party to the centre, and fixed problems within the party that include in-fighting and anti-Semitism. 

Looking forward, he will want to avoid repeats of the Tories’ mistakes, including October 2022, when Ms Truss’ government proposed unfunded tax cuts that spooked markets and tanked the pound.

That ill-advised move cost her her job.

“We did it. Thank you truly… you have changed our country,” Mr Starmer told triumphant supporters at a victory rally in central London. “(But) a mandate like this comes with a great responsibility… Today we start the next chapter… begin the work of change, the mission of national renewal, and start to rebuild.”

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On the eve of polls opening in the UK general election, Keir Starmer allowed himself a moment to reflect on how far he had come since he became leader of the Labour Party four-and-a-half years ago. Back then, the party was reeling from one of the worst defeats in its 100-year history.

“The optimists said it will take 10 years to fix this party and get it back,” he told reporters ahead of a final rally in the East Midlands. “The pessimists said you’re never going to fix this party, it’s never going to be in government again.” adding “Here we are.”

He has now led the Labour Party to victory, on track for the biggest majority in Parliament since at least Tony Blair’s New Labour landslide in 1997.

The UK’s presumptive prime minister has far outperformed the expectations of his chances when he took over from the hard-left Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in 2020. Bland, boring, “no Tony Blair,” as focus groups often describe him, this relative newcomer to the world of politics has, in part, been a beneficiary of circumstances.

Boris Johnson’s “partygate” scandal and Liz Truss’s “mini-budget” – which tanked the pound – came at the tail-end of years of Conservative austerity that left deep cuts to many public services. All have contributed to the result we have now seen in the British general election. But Starmer has had his part to play too, demonstrating a quiet ruthlessness in changing his party, purging the Corbynites, even expelling Corbyn himself, and bringing it into a position to win and govern again.

“It feels good, I have to be honest,” Starmer told Labour supporters in London after the party crossed the crucial 326-seat threshold in the House of Commons, adding that he knew “a mandate like this comes with a great responsibility.”

He’ll now have to show whether those same skills that got him into 10 Downing St. will help him resolve a staggering list of challenges. Britons are bruised by the impact of Brexit, the pandemic and a historic squeeze on living standards. His government faces a more dangerous world and has little money to spend on improving the situation at home without raising broad-based taxes, something he’s said he doesn’t want to do.

Despite being known as “Sir Keir” – he was knighted for his legal career before entering politics – the UK’s new prime minister had humble beginnings, something he has been at pains to remind voters throughout the election campaign. He grew up, as he often recounts, in a “pebble-dashed” semi-detached house in Oxted, a London commuter town in the Surrey countryside. He was one of four children to a toolmaker father and a mother with a debilitating autoimmune condition, which meant she had to give up her work as a nurse while Starmer was a child.

Starmer’s father raised his four children and looked after his sick wife on his own, and money was often tight. “I remember when our phone was cut off because we couldn’t pay the bill,” Starmer has recalled during the campaign. “How hard it was to make ends meet.”

The young Starmer was given a leg-up in life by attending Reigate Grammar, a state school, where he secured the grades to become the first in his family to attend university. He studied law at Leeds, graduating with honors, and got accepted to Oxford University to do a BCL – a prestigious year-long graduate law course. As a young man in London in the late 1980s, he lived in a “party flat” where there was sometimes vomit in the bathtub, hosting friends into the early hours and writing radical treatises for niche left-leaning publications. But by day he was climbing the ranks to become a respected human rights lawyer.

Starmer, who has denied being the inspiration for the dashing human rights lawyer Mark Darcy in the book and film Bridget Jones’ Diary, became known for his pro bono work, including defending individuals in the Caribbean against the death penalty. He had a brush with national fame for defending two activists, Helen Steel and David Morris, a gardener and a former postman, who sued for libel by McDonald’s for distributing leaflets criticizing the fast food chain, in what became known as the ‘McLibel’ case. He was appointed Queen’s Counsel in 2002, a few months before his 40th birthday.

Keir Starmer as Director of Public Prosecutions, in 2010.

The following year, Starmer took on a role that would rewrite his theory of change: human rights adviser to the Policing Board in Northern Ireland. His job was to ensure that the new police service, formed after the 1998 peace agreement, commanded the trust of all communities. Before this role, Starmer had seen himself as railing against the system from the outside. This was his first experience of going inside an organization to deliver change. He found this new way was far more effective.

He took on a major role leading after that, becoming director of public prosecutions from 2008 to 2013. The role put him in charge of delivering criminal justice in the UK, running a large organization of thousands of staff and lawyers during a period of major budget cuts. He led the organization when it successfully prosecuted senior media figures for phone hacking and politicians for fiddling with their expenses.

No one was surprised when the country’s former top prosecutor entered the world of politics. After his time as DPP ended, Starmer stood for election in the safe Labour seat of Holborn and St. Pancras in the May 2015 general election, expecting to be attorney general in Ed Miliband’s Cabinet. Instead, he went straight to the opposition benches and joined a Labour parliamentary party tearing itself apart after a shock defeat.

During the Jeremy Corbyn years Starmer, a remainer, rose through the shadow ministerial ranks to become shadow Brexit secretary. While colleagues like Rachel Reeves refused to serve under Corbyn or resigned from the party altogether over antisemitism, Starmer stayed. But by March 2018, Starmer and his allies – frustrated by the antisemitism problem and by Corbyn’s foreign policy stances – knew he would stand for party leader when the time came. For nearly two years, they held secret meetings every Monday morning to make sure he was ready for a leadership campaign when the time arose.

The time came in 2020. Starmer ran and won, a leadership campaign centered on 10 pledges to Labour members, essentially to retain the radical spirit of the Corbynite agenda with promises such as renationalizing, rail, mail, energy, and water. He memorably paid tribute to “my friend Jeremy Corbyn.”

Since taking over the leadership, Starmer has expelled Corbyn from the party, introduced mandatory antisemitism training, and vigorously vetted, and sometimes imposed, candidates who will be loyal to his leadership. Encouraged by his shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves and other close aides from the party’s right-wing, he has instilled a tight fiscal discipline, ditched almost all of his original leadership pledges, and draped his party in the union flag and embraced the language of security, discipline, and patriotism.

It has not all been plain sailing. He lost the Hartlepool by-election – seeing a safe Labour seat fall to Johnson’s Conservatives – early into his leadership in 2020, after which he considered resigning. The experience saw him fire some advisers, appoint new people, and hardened his determination to overhaul his party.

More recently, Starmer suffered a protracted and public disagreement among his top team over whether to ditch his party’s pledge to spend £28 billion ($36 billion) per year on green infrastructure, culminating in a major reversal. He has faced criticism and lost votes over an LBC radio interview in October in which he said Israel “has the right” to withhold power and water from Gaza, which he later apologized for.

The team of advisers around him has been referred to as a “boys’ club,” accused of heavy-handedness in their purging of the Corbynite wing of the party and in their wider attitude to the party’s elected representatives.

While his dissenters balk at how different he is from the man who stood for leader four and a half years ago, Starmer is proud of that difference. “I changed my party,” he says. “Now I want to change the country.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)