Lucknow:

A Labour Party candidate’s landslide victory in the UK general elections sparked celebrations thousands of kilometres away in Uttar Pradesh’s Kanpur and Gorakhpur.

Navendu Mishra, elected to the House of Commons for a second consecutive term from the Stockport constituency, was born in Kanpur in 1989. His mother’s paternal home is in Gorakhpur.

Mr Mishra’s maternal uncle Nilendar Pandey, a social worker and businessman who now lives in Lucknow, told PTI that some people in Gorakhpur, Lucknow and Kanpur celebrated his victory by distributing sweets and setting off crackers.

Mr Pandey said Mr Mishra left for the UK with his parents when he was four years old. His father was a marketing manager for Indian Petrochemicals Corporation Limited and moved to the UK after taking charge of a British company.

Mr Mishra grew up in the UK with his brother and a sister.

He entered politics after completing his studies in London and was elected to the House of Commons in the 2019 elections on a Labour Party ticket from Stockport.

It’s an honour to be officially nominated as the Labour candidate for Stockport constituency.

Since 2019, I have always put the priorities of local residents first. If re-elected, I will continue to work hard for Brinnington, Edgeley, Davenport, the Heatons and Reddish. pic.twitter.com/Ctv1CHn58F

— Navendu Mishra (@NavPMishra) June 5, 2024

Mr Pandey said Mr Mishra entered politics through the trade union movement.

Mr Mishra is very close to him, Mr Pandey said and added that his nephew called him after winning the election to seek his blessings.

Mr Pandey said, “He (Mishra) likes coming to India. He is always keen on doing something for his country.” “He visits India once every year or two and makes it a point to visit relatives from Gorakhpur to Delhi. He is a vegetarian and loves home-cooked food common in eastern Uttar Pradesh,” he said.

Praising his nephew, Pandey said, “You can guess his popularity by his victory margin. In the UK, where elections are won by margins of only 1,000-2,000 votes, Mishra won by about 16,000 votes.”

Mr Mishra secured 21,787 of the votes cast. His closest contender, Reform UK candidate Lynn Schofield, got 6,517 votes.

Mr Pandey said Mr Mishra returned to India for the first time after about seven years in the UK and spent time at the home of his maternal grandparents in Gorakhpur.

“Mishra used to fly kites and play cricket in the streets with the children of locals, including my two sons and daughter. My children are also ecstatic over his victory,” he added.

During a recent visit to India, Mr Mishra led a delegation to meet Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel. The delegation also met External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar in Delhi.

Following this, he spent time with his family in Delhi and Lucknow, Mr Pandey said.

Political experts claimed that Mr Mishra’s victory and his connection with India would strengthen bilateral relations and cultural, political and social ties between the two nations.

Mr Pandey said Mr Mishra had also planned to visit the Ram temple in Ayodhya but that programme did not materialise.

Ishwar Singh, an associate of Mr Pandey in Gorakhpur, told PTI, “Mishra was inspired to join politics and social service by his maternal uncle Nilendar Pandey.”

“When he visited Gorakhpur at a young age, he used to see the crowds gathering to meet Pandey and got inspired,” he added.

Mr Mishra’s paternal home in Kanpur’s Arya Nagar was also teeming with locals, gathered to congratulated the family on his second successive election victory.

Mr Mishra last visited his family home in Arya Nagar about two years ago.

On Friday, Keir Starmer became the UK’s new prime minister after his Labour Party secured a landslide victory in a general election in which weary voters inflicted a “sobering verdict” on Rishi Sunak-led Conservatives.

The Labour Party secured 412 seats in the 650-member House of Commons. Mr Sunak’s Conservatives won just 121 seats.

Discussing plans to invite his nephew to India, Mr Pandey said, “We have invited Mishra to come here soon and a welcome ceremony will be organised in Lucknow after his arrival.” 

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

Lucknow:

A Labour Party candidate’s landslide victory in the UK general elections sparked celebrations thousands of kilometres away in Uttar Pradesh’s Kanpur and Gorakhpur.

Navendu Mishra, elected to the House of Commons for a second consecutive term from the Stockport constituency, was born in Kanpur in 1989. His mother’s paternal home is in Gorakhpur.

Mr Mishra’s maternal uncle Nilendar Pandey, a social worker and businessman who now lives in Lucknow, told PTI that some people in Gorakhpur, Lucknow and Kanpur celebrated his victory by distributing sweets and setting off crackers.

Mr Pandey said Mr Mishra left for the UK with his parents when he was four years old. His father was a marketing manager for Indian Petrochemicals Corporation Limited and moved to the UK after taking charge of a British company.

Mr Mishra grew up in the UK with his brother and a sister.

He entered politics after completing his studies in London and was elected to the House of Commons in the 2019 elections on a Labour Party ticket from Stockport.

It’s an honour to be officially nominated as the Labour candidate for Stockport constituency.

Since 2019, I have always put the priorities of local residents first. If re-elected, I will continue to work hard for Brinnington, Edgeley, Davenport, the Heatons and Reddish. pic.twitter.com/Ctv1CHn58F

— Navendu Mishra (@NavPMishra) June 5, 2024

Mr Pandey said Mr Mishra entered politics through the trade union movement.

Mr Mishra is very close to him, Mr Pandey said and added that his nephew called him after winning the election to seek his blessings.

Mr Pandey said, “He (Mishra) likes coming to India. He is always keen on doing something for his country.” “He visits India once every year or two and makes it a point to visit relatives from Gorakhpur to Delhi. He is a vegetarian and loves home-cooked food common in eastern Uttar Pradesh,” he said.

Praising his nephew, Pandey said, “You can guess his popularity by his victory margin. In the UK, where elections are won by margins of only 1,000-2,000 votes, Mishra won by about 16,000 votes.”

Mr Mishra secured 21,787 of the votes cast. His closest contender, Reform UK candidate Lynn Schofield, got 6,517 votes.

Mr Pandey said Mr Mishra returned to India for the first time after about seven years in the UK and spent time at the home of his maternal grandparents in Gorakhpur.

“Mishra used to fly kites and play cricket in the streets with the children of locals, including my two sons and daughter. My children are also ecstatic over his victory,” he added.

During a recent visit to India, Mr Mishra led a delegation to meet Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel. The delegation also met External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar in Delhi.

Following this, he spent time with his family in Delhi and Lucknow, Mr Pandey said.

Political experts claimed that Mr Mishra’s victory and his connection with India would strengthen bilateral relations and cultural, political and social ties between the two nations.

Mr Pandey said Mr Mishra had also planned to visit the Ram temple in Ayodhya but that programme did not materialise.

Ishwar Singh, an associate of Mr Pandey in Gorakhpur, told PTI, “Mishra was inspired to join politics and social service by his maternal uncle Nilendar Pandey.”

“When he visited Gorakhpur at a young age, he used to see the crowds gathering to meet Pandey and got inspired,” he added.

Mr Mishra’s paternal home in Kanpur’s Arya Nagar was also teeming with locals, gathered to congratulated the family on his second successive election victory.

Mr Mishra last visited his family home in Arya Nagar about two years ago.

On Friday, Keir Starmer became the UK’s new prime minister after his Labour Party secured a landslide victory in a general election in which weary voters inflicted a “sobering verdict” on Rishi Sunak-led Conservatives.

The Labour Party secured 412 seats in the 650-member House of Commons. Mr Sunak’s Conservatives won just 121 seats.

Discussing plans to invite his nephew to India, Mr Pandey said, “We have invited Mishra to come here soon and a welcome ceremony will be organised in Lucknow after his arrival.” 

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

Britain’s first woman finance minister Rachel Reeves.
| Photo Credit: AP

Rachel Reeves, Britain’s first woman finance minister, is a former child chess champion and Bank of England economist who has pledged to grow the nation’s economy while showing strong fiscal discipline.

Reeves, 45, becomes chancellor of the exchequer after her centre-left Labour party won Thursday’s U.K. general election by a landslide, ending 14 years of rule by the right-wing Conservatives.

Also Read :Landslide win for Labour; Keir Starmer appointed new PM

“It is the honour of my life to have been appointed chancellor of the exchequer,” Ms. Reeves wrote on social media platform X after her appointment by new Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

“To every young girl and woman reading this, let today show that there should be no limits on your ambitions.”

Labour had put the economy at the heart of its election manifesto, targeting growth and wealth creation as key priorities in government, while its emphasis on the latter is not normally associated with the party’s traditionally leftist policies.

“Economic growth was the Labour Party’s mission,” Ms. Reeves added on Friday.

“It is now a national mission. Let’s get to work,” said the married mother of two children.

‘Iron chancellor’

Ms. Reeves recently told company bosses that Labour had become “the natural party of British business”, adding that the party would show “iron discipline” over public finances.

The comments drew comparisons with ‘Iron Lady’ Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s first woman prime minister.

Unlike Conservative leader Thatcher, who privatised key sectors after becoming prime minister in 1979, Ms. Reeves wants a form of renationalisation, notably for energy, as she takes inspiration from policy enacted by US President Joe Biden.

Labour has pledged to create Great British Energy, a publicly owned company that would spearhead funding, alongside the private sector, for the “green” transition away from fossil fuels.

James Wood, senior teaching associate in political economy at the University of Cambridge, said Labour and Reeves were seeking a “responsible” approach to the public purse.

“When she talks about being an iron chancellor, I think what she means is: we’re going to balance the books and we’re going to be responsible — and we’re going to try and get Britain’s economy running… in a responsible way,” he told AFP.

London-born Ms. Reeves tapped into public anger over Mr. Sunak’s predecessor Liz Truss, whose unfunded 2022 mini-budget crashed the pound and sent mortgage rates soaring, worsening a cost-of-living crisis.

“They want to distance themselves from fiscal irresponsibility, not making big promises about spending that they can’t possibly keep,” Wood added.

Banking career

Ms. Reeves, whose parents were teachers, is no stranger to outmanoeuvring opponents.

She became British girls’ chess champion aged 14 before studying philosophy, politics and economics at the University of Oxford, which was followed by a Master’s degree at the London School of Economics.

After graduating, she worked as an economist for a decade, first at the Bank of England before switching to the private sector.

While working for British retail bank HBOS, the global financial crisis struck in 2008, resulting in her employer receiving a huge bailout, along with other lenders, from Gordon Brown’s Labour government.

In 2010, when the Conservatives entered power in a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, Reeves was elected Labour MP for Leeds West in northern England.

Eleven years later, Starmer appointed her as Labour’s finance spokesperson. Her sister Ellie Reeves is also a Labour MP.

Scottish First Minister John Swinney speaks to the media at The Port of Leith Distillery, following the landslide General Election victory for the Labour Party, in Edinburgh, Scotland, Friday, July 5, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

The pro-separatist Scottish National Party was virtually obliterated at the U.K. General Election on July 5, suffering a devastating blow to its withering independence movement.

Keir Starmer’s Labour party overturned more than a decade of SNP domination by storming to a majority of Scotland’s 57 seats, as it rode to power in Westminster.

The SNP lost dozens of lawmakers as it recorded its worst result in a British general election since 2010, with leader John Swinney lamenting a “very, very difficult and damaging” night for his party.

Mr. Swinney had targeted winning 29 seats as a mandate for reopening negotiations with the British government for another independence referendum, but it returned only nine MPs, with one result still to declare.

That was down from the 48 it won at the last election in 2019.

Labour returned just one Scottish Labour MP last time round but sealed its comeback in its former heartland by sweeping every Glasgow seat as well as numerous others in Scotland’s central belt.

Also Read | U.K. General Election 2024 highlights

The crushing loss for the SNP means it relinquished its position as Britain’s third-biggest party, which brings a high-profile slot during the weekly Prime Minister’s Questions session in parliament.

It will also lose out on public funding and key positions on parliamentary select committees.

“There will have to be a lot of soul-searching as a party as a consequence of these results that have come in tonight,” SNP leader John Swinney admitted to the BBC.

Finance scandal

The SNP has dominated in Scotland in the last three UK elections, peaking with the 2015 vote when it won 56 seats out of 59 seats. In 2010, it got only six seats.

But the party has been under pressure from the resurgence of Labour in its former fiefdom north of the English border, as it rides a wave of displeasure against the Tories nationwide.

The SNP has been in turmoil for months as voters tire of its 17 years in charge of the devolved Scottish parliament in Edinburgh.

Critics have also accused it of focusing on independence at the expense of key issues such as the cost-of-living crisis, education and health.

Support for the SNP has also slumped amid a finances scandal that saw former SNPleaser Nicola Sturgeon’s husband, Peter Murrell, charged with embezzlement. Murrell is the party’s former chief executive.

Ms. Sturgeon herself was arrested, but released without charge.

Mr. Swinney only took charge in May following the resignation of Humza Yousaf after the collapse of the SNP’s power-sharing deal with the Scottish Greens in Edinburgh.

Mr. Yousaf was in power for just over a year.

The result leaves the SNP with a massive fight on its hands to remain in control of the devolved government in Edinburgh when voters elect a new Scottish parliament in 2026.

“The Scottish National Party needs to be healed and it needs to heal its relationship with the people of Scotland, and I am absolutely committed to doing that,” said Swinney.

Labour and the Conservatives insist independence was dealt with at the 2014 referendum when 55 percent of voters in Scotland opted to remain part of the UK.

Despite the SNP’s slump, the number of Scots favouring independence has held at around 40 percent, according to surveys, providing the SNP with some solace.

Britain’s Labour Party swept to power on July 5 after more than a decade in opposition, as a jaded electorate handed the party a landslide victory — but also a mammoth task of reinvigorating a stagnant economy and dispirited nation.

Labour leader Keir Starmer will officially become prime minister later in the day, leading his party back to government less than five years after it suffered its worst defeat in almost a century.

U.K. General Election 2024 LIVE updates

In the merciless choreography of British politics, he will take charge in 10 Downing St. shortly after Conservative leader Rishi Sunak and his family left the official residence and King Charles III accepted his resignation at Buckingham Palace.

“This is a difficult day, but I leave this job honored to have been prime minister of the best country in the world,” Sunak said in his farewell address.

Mr. Sunak had conceded defeat earlier in the morning, saying the voters had delivered a “sobering verdict.”

In a magnanimous farewell speech in the same place where he had called for the snap election six weeks earlier, Sunak wished Starmer all the best but also acknowledged his missteps.

“I have heard your anger, your disappointment, and I take responsibility for this loss,” Sunak said. “To all the Conservative candidates and campaigners who worked tirelessly but without success, I’m sorry that we could not deliver what your efforts deserved.”

With almost all the results in, Labour had won 410 seats in the 650-seat House of Commons and the Conservatives 118.

“A mandate like this comes with a great responsibility,” Mr. Starmer acknowledged in a speech to supporters, saying the fight to regain people’s trust after years of disillusionment “is the battle that defines our age.”

Speaking as dawn broke in London, he said Labour would offer “the sunlight of hope, pale at first but getting stronger through the day.”

For Mr. Starmer, it’s a massive triumph that will bring huge challenges, as he faces a weary electorate impatient for change against a gloomy backdrop of economic malaise, mounting distrust in institutions and a fraying social fabric.

“Nothing has gone well in the last 14 years,” said London voter James Erskine, who was optimistic for change in the hours before polls closed. “I just see this as the potential for a seismic shift, and that’s what I’m hoping for.”

And that’s what Mr. Starmer promised, saying “change begins now.”

Anand Menon, professor of European Politics and Foreign Affairs at King’s College London, said British voters were about to see a marked change in political atmosphere from the tumultuous “politics as pantomime” of the last few years.

“I think we’re going to have to get used again to relatively stable government, with ministers staying in power for quite a long time, and with government being able to think beyond the very short term to medium-term objectives,” he said.

Britain has experienced a run of turbulent years — some of it of the Conservatives’ own making and some of it not — that has left many voters pessimistic about their country’s future. The U.K. divorce from the European Union followed by the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine battered the economy, while lockdown-breaching parties held by then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his staff caused widespread anger.

Rising poverty, crumbling infrastructure and overstretched National Health Service have led to gripes about “Broken Britain.”

Mr. Johnson’s successor, Liz Truss, rocked the economy further with a package of drastic tax cuts and lasted just 49 days in office. Truss, who lost her seat to Labour, was one of a slew of senior Tories kicked out in a stark electoral reckoning.

While the result appears to buck recent rightward electoral shifts in Europe, including in France and Italy, many of those same populist undercurrents flow in Britain. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage roiled the race with his party’s anti-immigrant “take our country back” sentiment and undercut support for the Conservatives and even grabbed some voters from Labour.

The result is a catastrophe for the Conservatives as voters punished them for 14 years of presiding over austerity, Brexit, a pandemic, political scandals and internecine conflict.

The historic defeat — the smallest number of seats in the party’s two-century history — leaves it depleted and in disarray and will spark an immediate contest to replace Sunak, who said he would step down as leader.

In a sign of the volatile public mood and anger at the system, the incoming Parliament will be more fractured and ideologically diverse than any for years. Smaller parties picked up millions of votes, including the centrist Liberal Democrats and Farage’s Reform UK. It won four seats, including one for Farage in the seaside town of Clacton-on-Sea, securing a place in Parliament on his eighth attempt.

The Liberal Democrats won about 70 seats, on a slightly lower share of the vote than Reform because its votes were more efficiently distributed. In Britain’s first-past-the-post system, the candidate with the most votes in each constituency wins.

The Green Party won four seats, up from just one before the election.

One of the biggest losers was the Scottish National Party, which held most of Scotland’s 57 seats before the election but looked set to lose all but handful, mostly to Labour.

Labour did not set pulses racing with its pledges to get the sluggish economy growing, invest in infrastructure and make Britain a “clean energy superpower.”

But the party’s cautious, safety-first campaign delivered the desired result. The party won the support of large chunks of the business community and endorsements from traditionally conservative newspapers, including the Rupert Murdoch-owned Sun tabloid, which praised Starmer for “dragging his party back to the center ground of British politics.”

The Conservative campaign, meanwhile, was plagued by gaffes. The campaign got off to an inauspicious start when rain drenched Sunak as he made the announcement outside 10 Downing St. Then, Sunak went home early from commemorations in France marking the 80th anniversary of the D-Day invasion.

Several Conservatives close to Sunak are being investigated over suspicions they used inside information to place bets on the date of the election before it was announced.

In Henley-on-Thames, about 40 miles (65 kilometers) west of London, voters like Patricia Mulcahy, who is retired, sensed the nation was looking for something different. The community, which has long voted Conservative, flipped to the Liberal Democrats this time.

“The younger generation are far more interested in change,’’ Mulcahy said ahead of the results. “But whoever gets in, they’ve got a heck of a job ahead of them. It’s not going to be easy.”