According to Brian Wheeler, Political reporter
BBCLabor is set to win a general election landslide with a majority of 170, according to exit polls for the BBC, ITV and Sky.
If the forecast is accurate, Sir Keir Starmer will become prime minister with 410 Labor MPs – just short of Tony Blair’s 1997 total.
The Conservatives are predicted to drop to 131 MPs, the lowest number ever.
The Liberal Democrats are expected to come third with 61 MPs.
The Scottish National Party will see its number of MPs rise to 10, while British Reform is predicted to gain 13 MPs, according to the poll.
The Green Party of England and Wales is predicted to double its number of MPs to two and Plaid Cymru will gain four MPs. Others are predicted to get 19 seats.
The exit poll, overseen by Sir John Curtice and a team of statisticians, is based on data from voters at around 130 polling stations in England, Scotland and Wales. The poll does not cover Northern Ireland.
In the past five general elections, polls have been accurate to within 1.5 and 7.5 seats.
If the polls are correct, it would be a remarkable turnaround for the Labor Party, which had its worst post-war election result in 2019, when the Conservatives under Boris Johnson won an 80-seat majority.
The Conservatives may have avoided the wipeout predicted by some polls, but they still suffered the worst result in the party’s history, losing 241 MPs – a devastating blow after 14 years in government.
It will be a Labor prime minister in Downing Street for the first time since 2010 and a battle for the future direction of the Conservatives if, as seems likely, Rishi Sunak stops as leader.
The Tories are also facing an onslaught from the resurgent Liberal Democrats and Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, who look set to win more seats than predicted.
Former attorney-general Sir Robert Buckland, the first Tory MP to lose his seat as a result since the results were released, told the BBC his party was facing “electoral Armageddon” and a possible Labor victory was a “huge vote for change”.
And he was furious with his colleagues, such as former home secretary Suella Braverman, for what he called “unprofessional and undisciplined behavior” during the campaign.
“I’m tired of personal agendas and jockeying for position,” he added, warning that the upcoming Tory leadership contest “will be like a bunch of bald guys arguing over combs”.
Labour’s landslide forecast is just short of the 179 majority won by Tony Blair in 1997 and the party may get a smaller number of votes than former leader Jeremy Corbyn won in 2017, according to Sir John Curtice.
Labour’s shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson, who holds the seat of Houghton and Sunderland South, said: “Tonight the British people have spoken, and if the polls come out this evening again they are a guide to the results in our country as they often are, then after 14 years people England has opted for change.
“They voted Labor and voted for leader Keir Starmer. Today our country with its proud history has voted for a brighter future.”
In a pattern repeated in the other two early results from the North-East of England, the UK Reform candidate came second ahead of the Conservatives by a large margin.
In a social media message, British Reform leader Nigel Farage predicted his party would win “many, many seats,” adding: “This, man, is huge.”
P.AThe Liberal Democrats, meanwhile, are setting up the Tory vote in the south of England, where several Conservative cabinet members, including Chancellor Jeremy Hunt and Defense Secretary Grant Shapps, appear vulnerable.
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said: “It looks like this will be the best result for a generation.”
The Lib Dems have taken Harrogate and Knaresborough from the Conservatives, with larger majorities than the polls predicted.
Former cabinet minister Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, who is also under threat from the Lib Dems, said it was “clearly a terrible night” for the Conservatives.
He said voters had been thrown off by the revolving door in No 10 which saw Boris Johnson replaced first by Liz Truss and then by Mr Sunak.
Scotland’s Deputy First Minister Kate Forbes said the SNP faced a “very difficult night”, as opinion polls predicted it would lose 38 seats.
He added: “Of course we are taking what the Scottish people, the voters, have said in this election and we will set out an agenda to win back and rebuild the trust of the voters in Scotland.”
Rishi Sunak insists he can still win in the end despite failing to make the Labor Party leadership polls during the six-week campaign.
Mr. Sunak surprised many in his own party by announcing the summer election.
But his campaign was hit by a series of gaffes, from the rain announcement in Downing Street to his decision to leave the D-Day celebrations in Normandy early to record a TV interview and confused messaging about Labour’s “super majority”.
