UK Swings 'Wildly to the Left' on Big Election Night

Britain's Labour Party swept to power Friday after more than a decade in opposition, official results showed, as a jaded electorate appeared to hand the party a landslide victory but also a mammoth task of reinvigorating a stagnant economy and dispirited nation, the AP reports. Labour leader Keir Starmer will officially become prime minister later in the day, leading his party back to government less than five years after it suffered its worst defeat in almost a century. In the brutal choreography of British politics, he will take charge in 10 Downing St. hours after the votes are counted—as Conservative leader Rishi Sunak is hustled out after nearly two years as PM. Sunak conceded defeat, saying the voters had delivered a "sobering verdict."

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• While the result appears to buck recent rightward electoral shifts in Europe, including in France and Italy, many of those same populist undercurrents flow in Britain. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has roiled the race with his party's anti-immigrant "take our country back" sentiment and undercut support for the Conservatives, who already faced dismal prospects. NBC News looks at why the UK "swung wildly to the left" here.
• With a majority of results in, the broad picture of a Labour landslide was borne out, though estimates of the final tally varied. The BBC projected that Labour would end up with 410 seats and the Conservatives with 144. That leaves the Tories with the fewest seats in its nearly two-century history. In a sign of the volatile public mood and anger at the system, some smaller parties picked up millions of votes, including the centrist Liberal Democrats and Farage's Reform UK.
• CNN, which calls the election "a seismic night for British politics," reports a record number of women were elected to parliament.
• For more details on how the night went, Al Jazeera breaks down the numbers here. The BBC looks at some big names who lost their seats in parliament here. Among them: former PM Liz Truss.
• The AP notes Starmer has been "derided as dull" in the past. More on him here.

(More British elections stories.)