Rishi Sunak bade an emotional final goodbye to Downing Street today after leading the Tories to their worst ever election result – with Keir Starmer waiting in the wings to take over.
Flanked by clearly emotional wife Akshata Murty, the outgoing Prime Minister delivered his parting statement as he prepared to head for Buckingham Palace to formally tender his resignation to the King and bring an end to 14 years of Conservative government.
The weather held off – in contrast to when he called the election back in May – as he said he was ‘sorry’ and had ‘heard the anger’ of the country and the ‘clear message’ delivered via the ballot box.
‘I have given this job my all. But you have sent a clear message, and yours is the only judgement that matters,’ he said.
‘This is a difficult day, but I leave this job honoured to have been prime minister of the best country in the world.’
Mr Sunak said he would resign as Tory leader once a replacement had been chosen. He also paid tribute to Sir Keir as a public servant, wishing him and his family well in their new duties.
After his short speech the couple – not accompanied by their daughters and with Akshata carrying an umbrella – walked hand-in-hand to a waiting car and were driven away to see the King.
A statement from Buckingham Palace a short time later said: ‘The Right Honourable Rishi Sunak MP had an audience of The King this morning and tendered his resignation as Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury, which His Majesty was graciously pleased to accept.’
Sir Keir is basking in a massive general election win following a brutal night for the Conservatives – but Labour’s victory is being dubbed a ‘loveless landslide’ and a ‘super meh-jority’.
With nearly all constituencies having declared their results, Labour were found to have won barely one in three votes across the UK.
Polling experts highlighted how Labour’s vote share of 33.8 per cent is likely to be less than any of Sir Tony Blair’s general election victories in 1997, 2001 or 2005.
It is even less than the 40 per cent vote share hard-left Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn secured in 2017 and lower than the 36.1 per cent David Cameron got for the Conservatives in 2010 when that year’s election ended in a hung parliament.
Some newly-elected Labour MPs suggested the public will be thinking about overhauling Britain’s voting system in the wake of the party’s triumph, while Corbyn’s allies swiped that Sir Keir had won ‘by default’ due to the dramatic collapse in Conservative support.
Mr Sunak flew back to London this morning from his Yorkshire constituency, where he conceded that Sir Keir has won and issued a grovelling apology in a shell-shocked speech.
The premier will return to Downing Street, where he is expected to say a few valedictory words before heading to see the King and formally resign.
In an ironic full-circle moment, rain has been falling in Westminster – echoing the miserable start to Mr Sunak’s ill-fated gamble, when he was drenched while announcing the snap election.
Sir Keir will follow Mr Sunak into Buckingham Palace, before returning to enter the famous black door of No10.
The traditional choreography comes as Labour’s majority ticks up to 170, just short of Blair’s 179 in 1997, with just a few seats left to declare. The Tories look to be struggling to reach 130 MPs, easily worse than their previous nadir of 156 in 1906.
The Lib Dems also inflicted massive pain on the Tories, racking up a record 71 seats as Reform leeched millions of votes and came second in around a hundred constituencies – but only scored four MPs of their own.
Sir Keir trumpeted his victory at a rally in central London after the party formally crested the 325 seats needed to control the Commons, saying ‘we did it!’
Sealing his triumph by embracing wife Victoria, he said the British people had ‘voted to turn the page’ on 14 years of Conservative rule – and delivered a riposte to his critics saying there was ‘nothing inevitable’ about the outcome.
In a jaw-dropping moment, Liz Truss was among the casualties – giving up a monumental 24,000 majority as she was edged out by Labour in South West Norfolk.
Earlier, Penny Mordaunt and Grant Shapps fell victims to a brutal Tory cull as Labour swept towards election victory.
A glum-looking Defence Secretary suffered a ‘Portillo Moment’ as he was defeated by Labour in Welwyn Hatfield by around 3,000 votes.
In his parting shot, Mr Shapps said the Conservatives had ‘lost’ the election rather than Labour winning it – and ‘tried the patience’ of the public by being divided.
In other rollercoaster developments:
It came minutes after a broken PM acknowledged that Sir Keir had won as he nervously took a victory in his own incredibly safe Richmond & Northallerton seat.
‘The British people have delivered a sobering verdict tonight, there is much to learn… and I take responsibility for the loss,’ he said.
‘To the many good, hard-working Conservative candidates who lost tonight, despite their tireless efforts, their local records and delivery, and their dedication to their communities. I am sorry.’
‘Good morning.
‘I will shortly be seeing His Majesty the King to offer my resignation as Prime Minister.
‘To the country, I would like to say first and foremost, I am sorry.
‘I have given this job my all, but you have sent a clear signal that the Government of the United Kingdom must change.
‘And yours is the only judgment that matters.
‘I have heard your anger, your disappointment, and I take responsibility for this loss.
‘To all the Conservative candidates and campaigners who worked tirelessly but without success: I’m sorry that we could not deliver what your efforts deserved.
‘It pains me to think how many good colleagues, who contributed so much to their communities and our country, will now no longer sit in the House of Commons.
‘I thank them for their hard work and their service.
‘Following this result, I will step down as party leader – not immediately but once the formal arrangements for selecting my successor are in place.
‘It is important that after 14 years in government the Conservative Party rebuilds.
‘But also that it takes up its crucial role in opposition professionally and effectively.
‘When I first stood here as your prime minister I told you my most important task I had was to return stability to our economy.
‘Inflation is back to target, mortgage rates are falling and growth has returned.
‘We have enhanced our standing in the world, rebuilding relations with allies, leading global efforts to support Ukraine and becoming the home of new generation of transformative technologies.
‘And our United Kingdom is stronger too with the Windsor Framework, devolution restored in Northern Ireland, and our Union strengthened.
‘I’m proud of those achievements. I believe this country is safer, stronger and more secure than it was 20 months ago.
‘And it is more prosperous, fairer and resilient than it was in 2010.
‘Whilst he has been my political opponent, Sir Keir Starmer will shortly become our prime minister.
‘In this job, his successes will be all our successes, and I wish him and his family well.
‘Whatever our disagreements in this campaign, he is a decent, public-spirited man who I respect.
‘He and his family deserve the very best of our understanding as they make the huge transition to their new lives behind this door.
‘And as he grapples with this most demanding of jobs in an increasingly unstable world.
‘I’d like to thank my colleagues, my Cabinet, the Civil Service, especially here in Downing Street, the team at Chequers, my staff, CCHQ.
‘But, most of all, I’d like to express my gratitude to my wife Akshata and our beautiful daughters.
‘I can never thank them enough for the sacrifices they have made so that I might serve our country.
‘One of the most remarkable things about Britain is just how unremarkable it is that two generations after my grandparents came here with little, I could become Prime Minister.
‘And that I could watch my two young daughters light Diwali candles on the steps in Downing Street.
‘We must hold true to that idea of who we are. That vision of kindness, decency and tolerance that has always been the British way.
‘This is a difficult day at the end of a number of difficult days. But I leave this job honoured to have been your Prime Minister.
‘This is the best country in the world. And it is thanks entirely to you, the British people, the true source of all our achievements, our strengths and our greatness.
‘Thank you.’
Polling expert Sir John Curtice noted how Labour’s vote share was expected to be up by just under two percentage points across the country from 2019.
He said Labour’s victory was ‘largely on the back of a dramatic 20 point decline in Conservative support’.
In an article for the BBC, Sir John added the increase in Labour’s vote share was ‘entirely as a result of a 17 point increase in support in Scotland’.
‘In Wales, the party’s vote has actually fallen back by four points, while in England the party’s vote is largely unchanged from 2019,’ he wrote.
‘It is possible that Labour will secure its landslide on a lower share of the vote (35 per cent in Great Britain) than any of Tony Blair’s victories, including the 36 per cent the party won in 2005.
‘That itself was hitherto the lowest share of the vote won by a majority single party government. In many ways, this looks more like an election the Conservatives have lost than one Labour has won.’
Asked about her party’s low vote share but huge majority, Labour MP Dawn Butler said: ‘I think what the discussion will be about will be proportional representation.
‘The public will be talking about proportional representation and whether we need to have a debate about it. I’ve always said that we do need to have a debate about it.’
Channel 4 political editor Gary Gibbon said: ‘That massive figure has been delivered with a relatively small percentage of the people.
‘That looks like love but that is a loveless landslide. There has not been the sort of enthusiasm that you might expect out there.’
Mr Corbyn’s former spokesman, Matt Zarb-Cousin, said: ‘Labour is already peddling a narrative that this victory is down to a changed Labour Party.
‘The reality of course is Keir Starmer was holding the pass the parcel at the right time, when the Tories eventually imploded. So they’ve won by default, on a lower share of the vote than 2017.’
Welsh Secretary David Davies, Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer, Science minister Michelle Donelan, Education Secretary Gillian Keegan and Justice Secretary Alex Chalk were beaten during a traumatic night for the Tories.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt barely survived in Godalming & Ash. Altogether at least 16 ministers have gone, with Johnny Mercer and Therese Coffey beaten by Labour.
Jacob Rees-Mogg also tumbled in North East Somerset and Hanham. However, former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith surprised many by clinging on in Chingford.
There are now no Tory MPs in Wales after Craig Williams, a former Tory aide to Mr Sunak, came third in Mongomeryshire as an independent after being embroiled in a gambling row over the date of the election.
However, there were notable setbacks for Labour with frontbencher Jonathan Ashworth losing to a pro-Gaza independent in Leicester, and shadow health secretary Wes Streeting barely fending off a similar challenge.
Another shadow cabinet minister, Thangam Debonaire, was picked off by the Greens in Bristol Central.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage finally enters Parliament in Clacton after his eighth attempt to become an MP, while his party colleague Lee Anderson has retained Ashfield, Rupert Lowe won Great Yarmouth and Richard Tice scooped Boston and Skegness.
In his speech at the Tate Modern art gallery, Sir Keir said: ‘It feels good, I have to be honest. Four-and-a-half years of work changing the party, this is what it is for – a changed Labour Party ready to serve our country, ready to restore Britain to the service of working people.
‘And across our country, people will be waking up to the news, relief that a weight has been lifted, a burden finally removed from the shoulders of this great nation.
‘And now we can look forward, walk into the morning, the sunlight of hope, pale at first but getting stronger through the day, shining once again, on a country with the opportunity after 14 years to get its future back.’
At his acceptance speech after being re-elected in Richmond and Northallerton, Mr Sunak said: ‘The Labour Party has won this General Election and I have called Sir Keir Starmer to congratulate him on his victory.’
Mr Sunak added: ‘The British people have delivered a sobering verdict tonight, there is much to learn… and I take responsibility for the loss.’
The Labour leader said ‘change begins now’ as he was re-elected in Holborn & St Pancras, but his own majority was reduced by a left-wing independent.
Mr Shapps was the first confirmed Cabinet casualty and he hit out at the Tory ‘soap opera’ which had turned off voters.
‘On door after door, voters have been dismayed by our inability to iron out our differences in private and do that and then be united in public,’ he said.
‘Instead we have tried the patience of traditional Conservative voters with a propensity to create an endless political soap opera out of internal rivalries and divisions which have become increasingly indulgent and entrenched.’
He said there was a danger the Tory party could ‘go off on some tangent, condemning ourselves to years of lacklustre opposition’.
Ms Mordaunt, who is likely to have been a leadership contender if she had survived, said her party had taken a ‘battering because it failed to honour the trust that people had placed in it’.
She too warned against a retreat to the right: ‘Our renewal as a party and a country will not be achieved by us talking to an ever smaller slice of ourselves but being guided by the people of our country. And if we want again to be the natural party of government, then our values must be the people’s.
Former home secretary Suella Braverman, who will now be considered a leading contender to replace Mr Suank, said the party had let the British people down.
‘You, the great British people, voted for us over 14 years and we did not keep our promises,’ she said.
‘I will do everything in my power to rebuild trust.
‘We need to listen to you, you have spoken to us very clearly.’
Party chair Ric Holden won a desperate struggle for Basildon & Billericay, emerging on top by just 20 votes after a series of recounts.
Mr Sunak is expected to announce he is quitting as leader but stay on until a replacement is chosen.
Ex-home secretary Suella Braverman, at her count, said she was ‘sorry’ for the behaviour of her party and how it had abandoned core supporters’ values.
Sir Keir’s ally Lord Mandelson gloated that he was ‘gobsmacked’ and an ‘electoral meteor’ had ‘struck planet Earth’. He said it would have required a ‘superman’ to save the Tories and Rishi Sunak ‘is not superman’.
Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting was in tears as he was told the figures on live TV.
A dire campaign for Mr Sunak came stuttering to a halt last night, with the PM making a series more defensive visits in the South East.
He now faces being out of Downing Street this morning.
Former Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson told Sky News that it looked like a ‘massacre’.
The Tories have quickly plunged into a dangerous new phase of crisis, with questions over whether it can even survive amid the challenge from Reform.
A former Cabinet minister – who regarded their own significant majority as under threat – said Mr Sunak had ‘knifed’ Boris Johnson and would be remembered as the ‘worst PM ever’.
But Sir Robert gave a stark warning against the Tories lurching to the right, saying the party risked being like ‘bald men fighting over a comb’ if it treated politics as ‘performance art’ and tried to outflank Reform.
Sir John Curtice told the BBC: ‘It looks as though Reform may win more seats than many polls suggested.
‘This is largely because, not only has the Conservative vote fallen far in seats they previously held, but also because Reform has advanced most in areas people voted Leave in the 2016 EU referendum.
‘However, how many seats Reform will win is highly uncertain – our model suggests there are many places where they have some – but a relatively low – chance of winning.’
Mr Farage hailed signs of a breakthrough after Reform pushed the Tories into third place in two early constituency results.
On a video posted to X he said: ‘It’s midnight, there are two results in from the north-east of England that put Reform on 30 per cent of the vote, that is way more than any possible prediction or projection. It is almost unbelievable.
‘And what does it mean? It means we’re going to win seats, many many seats I think right now across the country.
‘But to watch the TV coverage it’s almost comical. There’s not a single representative on there from Reform UK, mainstream media are in denial just as much as our political parties.
‘This is going to be six million votes-plus. This, folks, is huge.’
A Conservative spokesman said they had to wait for the full outcome, but added: ‘If these results are correct it is clear that Starmer and Angela Rayner will be in Downing Street tomorrow.’
Conservatives with big majorities had become increasingly nervous during the day, despite CCHQ claiming that higher-than-expected turnout could help them.
One former Cabinet minister told : ‘There appears to be a bigger turnout than normal in some of my areas. Not all though.
‘That would seem to indicate a determination on the part of the electorate to make their views heard, almost certainly likely to be against the Tories.’
Former Labour leader Lord Neil Kinnock said the exit poll’s landslide prediction was ‘the greatest comeback since Lazarus’.
The former Labour leader told ITV News: ‘A gain of 208, according to the exit poll, which is attributable directly to Keir Starmer and what he’s achieved in four years, two of which of course were during the lockdown, or the virtual lockdown when the one thing that opposition leaders depend on – contact with the public – was absent.
‘It’s the biggest comeback since Lazarus.’
He went on: ‘I must say I’m just ecstatic about the fact that an entirely dependable, fully grown-up guy, Keir Starmer, and his wife, are going to go through that door tomorrow. I have unalloyed and unreserved delight.’
Less than an hour before the exit poll dropped, Downing Street released a dissolution honours list – sending seven Tories and eight Labour politicians to the Lords. They include Theresa May, Rishi Sunak’s chief aide Liam Booth-Smith, Chris Grayling and former 1922 committee chair Graham Brady.
Harriet Harman and Margaret Beckett are among those on the Labour list – despite Sir Keir having committed to abolishing the Upper House.
Mr Sunak took a huge political gamble and shocked Westminster by triggering the election on May 22, rather than waiting until the Autumn as had been widely expected.
It initially looked to be paying off, with early policies from the Tory campaign – such as national citizen service – seeming to cut through.
In a big moment, Mr Farage responded by ruling out standing as a Reform candidate, admitting he did not have time to put together a campaign.
But even then the Tories did not see a real bounce in the polls. The Tories lost key legislation including Mr Sunak’s flagship smoking ban during the ‘wash-up’ as Parliament was dissolved for the campaign.
And then a grim week in early June saw things go spectacularly downhill, with Mr Farage dropping the bombshell that had changed his mind and was taking over the leadership of Reform as well as standing to be MP for Clacton.
Although Mr Sunak was seen as landing blows on Sir Keir over tax during their first TV debate on June 4, disaster struck when the PM opted to return early from D-Day anniversary commemorations in France to conduct an interview with ITV.
A subsequent grovelling apology did not prevent Mr Farage and opponents seizing on the blunder, which struck right at the heart of the Tory goal of shoring up the core vote among older generations.
With polls already showing Reform eating into Tory support with potent attacks on immigration, Mr Sunak was then engulfed in another scandal.
It emerged that his closest Parliamentary aide, Craig Williams had successfully placed bets on the date of the snap election – although he insisted he did not have any inside information.
Other candidates and top party officials were then dragged into the allegations, which proved particularly toxic with the public.
Mr Sunak was memorably challenged on the issue during TV appearances, admitting he was ‘incredibly angry’. But he was seen as taking far too long to withdraw support for candidates facing allegations.
With some polls even showing Reform ahead of the Tories, CCHQ shifted tactics to warn of the threat of a divided Right handing Labour a ‘supermajority’ with untrammeled power.
That together with controversial remarks from Mr Farage about the West ‘provoking’ Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and revelations about unsavoury comments by a series of Reform candidates looked to have stopped the bleeding.
But after a bruising six weeks Labour’s huge advantage was intact, and the only significant change was that the Tories had lost ground to Reform.
By yesterday, despite Mr Sunak’s claim he was ‘fighting hard for every vote’, his close ally Mel Stride was effectively acknowledging the Conservatives would lose – an unprecedented step.
The Work and Pensions Secretary said Labour would get an ‘extraordinary landslide on a scale that has probably never, ever been seen in this country before’.
As tension built through election day, the Tories claimed a higher-than-expected turnout had left them with a ‘MUCH better chance’ than cataclysmic polls had suggested.
An email to Conservative supporters, signed from the ‘CCHQ Data Team’, read: ‘We’re getting reports from our teams on the ground. And the more reports we get, the more it looks like turnout is higher than expected.
‘That means we could have a MUCH better chance than polls have suggested. So if you haven’t voted yet, now’s the time to get out.’
Queues of people were seen at polling stations today as the requirement for voters to bring correct photo identification – such as a passport or driving licence – was enforced at a UK general election for the first time.
There was a bungle at a Glasgow polling station this morning as voters were met with posters listing the wrong instructions, which erroneously advised the ranking of candidates in order of preference.
This is how ballots are cast in local elections in Scotland, which use the single transferable vote system. But general elections use the first-past-the-post system, which requires voters to put a single ‘X’ next to their chosen candidate.
Glasgow City Council explained the error was spotted ‘very soon’ after the polling station opened at 7am and the posters were replaced with the correct information. It said no-one had been disenfranchised as voters’ first preferences would be used from the affected ballots.
Cabinet minister Kemi Badenoch this afternoon blasted her own local council for having ‘potentially disenfranchised’ thousands of postal voters who did not receive their ballot papers.
The Business Secretary hit out at Uttlesford District Council for ‘forgetting’ to send postal votes to 2,600 people in her North West Essex seat.
Prior to polls opening this morning, Rishi Sunak made an 11th-hour plea for voters to prevent a ‘socialist supermajority’ wrecking Britain, as he repeated his warning against handing Sir Keir ‘unchecked’ power.