Friday Briefing

Results of an exit poll are projected onto the BBC Broadcasting House in London on Thursday night.Credit…Oli Scarff/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

A decisive end to 14 years of Conservative rule

Britain’s Labour Party won a landslide election victory last night, sweeping the Conservative Party out of power after 14 years.

As of the time of sending this newsletter, the Labour Party had won 388 of the 650 votes in the British House of Commons, versus 97 for the Conservatives, in the worst defeat in the nearly 200-year history of the party. Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer, will be Britain’s next prime minister.

Earlier this morning, the outgoing prime minister, Rishi Sunak, conceded defeat, and he said that he had called Starmer to congratulate him. “The British people have delivered a sobering verdict tonight,” he said.

While a Labour victory had long been predicted, the magnitude of the Tory defeat will reverberate through Britain for months, if not years. Here’s our recap of the night.

I spoke to Mark Landler, our London bureau chief, about the result.

What does Labour’s landslide victory tell us about the mood in Britain?

This is an electorate that is fed up with its government after 14 years marked by chaos, by turbulence and, in the last few years, by some real economic hardship. British voters are desperate for a change. They’re not persuaded that the Labour Party can deliver radically different results than the Conservatives, but at this point, they’re willing to take the chance. So it is a classic anti-incumbent vote.