BREAKING: UK GENERAL ELECTION: LABOUR PARTY WINS LANDSLIDE
BREAKING: UK GENERAL ELECTION: LABOUR PARTY WINS LANDSLIDE The Labour Party has secured a landslide victory in the United Kingdom election to end 14 years of Conservative rule. “We did it!” Keir Starmer, the Labour leader and incoming prime minister, said in his victory speech. “Change begins now.” Outgoing Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak concedes defeat, saying it has been a “difficult night”. There was a surge in support for the Liberal Democrats, while the populist right wing Reform UK party picked up support from disgruntled Conservative voters to win a clutch of parliamentary seats. The Scottish National Party had what party leader John Swinney called a “very poor result” losing dozens of seats. Key issues for voters in the UK included the cost of living, the health service and housing. ‘We are going to be beat in Scotland, and we are going to be beat well’ The Scottish National Party (SNP) has had its worse showing in more than a decade, projections showed. It is predicted to get only between 6-11 of 57 contested seats, the party’s lowest since the six it won at the 2010 British parliamentary election. “We are experiencing something that we have not experienced in quite some time. We are going to be beat in Scotland, and we are going to be beat well,” the SNP’s Westminster leader Stephen Flynn said after retaining his own seat. Labour, meanwhile, is projected to win a big majority in the British parliament overall, and has thus far won 15 out of 20 seats in Scotland, its most since the 41 won under the leadership of Gordon Brown, a Scot, in 2010. The results are seen as derailing a Scottish independence push, as the SNP had said that winning a majority of Scottish seats would give it an impetus to pursue independence talks. The SNP had dominated the British parliament’s Scottish seats since 2015. But it has been embroiled in turmoil, with two leaders who quit in a little over a year and a police investigation into the party’s finances, and splits. Starmer, meanwhile, has ruled out another independence referendum. Recent polling has indicated that Scots favour remaining part of the UK by a narrow margin. The former prime minister has lost her seat of South West Norfolk by just over 600 votes, to Labour. Truss became the country’s shortest-serving leader, at just 44 days, when she caused a bond market meltdown and a collapse in sterling in 2022. Truss secured 11,217 votes behind 11,847 votes for Labour candidate Terry Jermy. Tories facing ‘fundamental debate’ after election calamity Diamond has also told Al Jazeera that the Conservatives are about to enter a long period of self-reflection following their dismal election showing. “It will be very difficult and no doubt in the months ahead there will be recriminations and arguments about why they’ve lost just so badly,” he said. “There will be a big debate in the party about fundamentally, did the Tories make a mistake by moving away from the kind of centrist, moderate politics that we saw under leaders like David Cameron, or did they make a mistake by trying to become another version of Reform by having very harsh positions on issues like immigration as well as Europe?” Diamond concluded: “I think we’ll see in the months ahead a really fundamental debate about what British conservatism is for and how it needs to change in order to be relevant to the Britain of today – not 20 or 30 years ago.” Labour has won more than 400 seats, with most of the votes counted. Country Starmer inherits ‘in a very different position’ than 1997’s UK under Blair There have been a lot of comparisons made with Labour’s win today and…
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