The UK’s Labour Party Secures Landslide Win
The UK’s Labour Party has won the 2024 general election, pushing out the Conservatives after 14 years of rule. The Labour Party, headed by Sir Keir Starmer, won 412 parliamentary seats across the UK, securing a landslide majority well over the 326 seats mark and saw a gain of 211 seats since the last general election in 2019. Counting was still ongoing at the time of writing, with two seats yet to be accounted for.
As the following chart based on BBC reporting shows, the Conservatives, or Tories as they are commonly known, trailed some way behind, having lost 250 seats since the last parliamentary election - their worst defeat ever. Among the MPs to have lost their positions are Liz Truss, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Penny Mordaunt.
It’s brighter news for the Greens though, who secured four seats in parliament, up from just one seat in the House of Commons in the 2019 election. This puts them on par with the newly established far-right Reform UK, headed by Brexiteer Nigel Farage, the MP candidate for Clacton. Farage, who is a Member of the European Parliament, has now entered the House of Commons for the first time, after seven failed attempts.
Meanwhile, another notable success went to Jeremy Corbyn, who retained the Islington North seat as an independent candidate after having been expelled from the Labour Party which he formerly led. In Scotland, the Scottish National Party saw major losses, losing 38 seats, as swathes of voters chose to cast their ballot instead for Labour this time round, while in Northern Ireland, Sinn Féin had a greater number of MPs win seats than any other party for the first time.
Starmer has said that his UK government will now work towards starting “to rebuild our country”, having pledged in his manifesto to, among other promises, build 1.5 million homes over the next five years, cut NHS waiting times by adding more than 40,000 appointments a week by paying staff more to work weekends and evenings and to recruit 6,500 more teachers and introduce free breakfast clubs at every primary school in England.
