The British Labour Party, which has been out of power since 2010, has won a huge majority in the British Parliament — although the verdict of the electorate is not quite as overwhelming as the numerical results suggest. Keir Starmer, the moderate who has led Labour since the party's crushing defeat under left-wing legend Jeremy Corbyn in 2019, literally became prime minister overnight, after the resignation of Rishi Sunak, who has said he will also resign as leader of the Conservative Party after its devastating collapse at the polls.
At least Sunak managed to hold his own seat in Parliament, although many ministers in his outgoing government were defeated. Sunak conceded defeat in a congratulatory phone call to Starmer at around 6 a.m. British time, and announced his resignation a few hours later in front of the prime minister's famous front door at 10 Downing Street in London. In other headline-shaping events, far-right dissident Nigel Farage won a seat in Parliament for the first time, and his anti-immigrant Reform U.K. party clearly played a major role in the Conservatives' epic defeat. The Scottish National Party, which in the last decade became the leading political force in Scotland, was nearly wiped off the electoral map, losing most of its seats to a Labour surge.
