Goodbye to Tory Britain
The last time Britain traded a Conservative government for a Labour one, back in 1997, the mood was so buoyant that the new prime minister, Tony Blair, declared: “A new dawn has broken, has it not?” His successor Keir Starmer is far less of a showman, and even many of his supporters feel pessimistic about Britain’s future prospects. Yet the scale of Starmer’s victory today appears comparable to Blair’s landslide. Since Brexit, politics in Britain has been a clown show, and today, its voters decided it was time for the circus to move on.
The exit poll, a generally reliable guide to British elections that is conducted on polling day itself, predicts that Labour will win an overwhelming 410 out of 650 seats. The Conservatives are reduced to an estimated 131, avoiding the oblivion that some predicted but still deeply humbled. The immediate consequences are obvious: a Labour government with a commanding majority but a demoralizing inbox, and an opposition that will spend the next few days asking what the hell went wrong, the next few months wondering what
