Leicester, UK – The Labor Party won an astonishing victory at the polls Thursday after a mass wipeout of the Conservative Party that has held power for 14 years.
“Out with the old and in with the new,” said Mikhail Rashid, a 12th year student in the United Kingdom.
After one of the largest electoral wins in British history, new Labor Prime Minister Keir Starmer took office Friday.
His party, which had 200 seats before the election, now has 412.
Ana Boden, another 12th year student in the UK, expressed hope “this change brings new and prosperous times for Britain.”
But Boden’s not sure if will.
Boden said she’s “not a fan of Starmer” because “he’s rather boring.”
The defeat of the Conservatives was so thorough the party’s future looks to be in serious jeopardy. It fell from 372 seats to 121.
The Tories saw some of their key leaders lose their seats in Parliament, including ex-House of Commons Leader Penny Mordaunt; Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, a staple of conservative politics for more than a decade; former Defense Minister Grant Shapps; and former Justice Secretary Alex Chalk.
But it wasn’t just the Conservatives who suffered heavy losses.
The Scottish Nationalist Party was reduced to just nine members as Labor made gains in Scotland.
In Wales, Labor continued its century-long domination, with Plaid Cymru, the Welsh nationalist party, taking only four seats.
In Northern Ireland, the republican party Sinn Fein has now become the largest political party in the country after the Democratic Unionist Party dropped to five seats.
On the other hand, the Liberal Democrats, who had been reduced to just eight members of Parliament in 2015, surged to 71 seats.
The Green Party managed to quadruple their vote share to four MPs.
Aside from the stunning Labour victory, perhaps the most astonishing moments of the night came from anti-immigrant Reform UK. Its party leader, Nigel Farage, who has unsuccessfully stood to be an MP seven times, finally won a seat in Clacton last night.
Reform UK split the right wing vote considerably, a testament to the level of discontent the electorate feel towards the Conservative party. It captured 15% of the vote nationally and now has five MPs.
Whether voters will see the decisive change they clearly sought won’t be clear for months, but the shakeup in British politics was among the most decisive in the country’s long history.
Anoushka Patel is a Reporter for Youth Journalism International.
