The Conservatives are reeling from a catastrophic night in which a record number of cabinet ministers have lost their seats with the party on course for its worst election result since it was founded. Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, and Penny Mordaunt, the Commons leader, were among the most high-profile cabinet ministers unseated by opposition candidates. Alex Chalk, the justice secretary, Lucy Frazer, the culture secretary, and Michelle Donelan, the science secretary, were also ousted. Eight cabinet ministers have lost their seats so far, beating the previous record of seven in 1997. The Tories were forecast to lose 241 seats in total while Labour was predicted to achieve a massive 170-seat majority, according to the exit poll for the BBC, ITV and Sky. Labour was confirmed to have won a majority at 5am. Rishi Sunak conceded defeat nationally in a speech in his constituency, saying the British public had delivered “a sobering verdict”. “The Labour party has won this general election and I have called Sir Keir Starmer to congratulate him on his victory,” the prime minister said. “The British people have delivered a sobering verdict tonight. There is much to learn and reflect on and I take responsibility for the loss.” Several senior Tories were re-elected with severely depleted majorities. Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, clung on to his Godalming and Ash seat by just 891 votes in the face of a major challenge from the Liberal Democrats. Hunt said the results nationally were a “bitter pill to swallow”.
Richard Holden, the Tory chair, won Basildon and Billericay by just 20 votes over Labour following a recount. He had faced heavy criticism from his own side after he was selected in the hitherto safe Tory seat at the last minute, 300 miles away from his former constituency. Kemi Badenoch, the business secretary and potential Tory leadership candidate, won Essex North West by 2,610 votes, down from a majority of 27,594 in her former seat of Saffron Walden. Other senior Tory figures who were ousted included the former business secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg; Johnny Mercer, the veterans minister; the former deputy prime minister Thérèse Coffey, the former business secretary Simon Clarke and the former justice secretary Robert Buckland. Tory grandees and candidates said the results amounted to a repudiation of their party that called for major change. The former party leader William Hague said it was a “catastrophic” night. The losses have narrowed the field of potential Tory leaders vying to replace Sunak. Mordaunt and Shapps were both said to be preparing bids. Some grandees called for the Conservative party to swing to the right and even suggested it could work with Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party, which won at least four seats and came second in a host of constituencies.
Shapps hit out at Conservative divisions during his concession speech, blaming his colleagues for losing the support of voters across the country. “We’ve 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. He issued a warning to his party, saying: “There is a danger that we now go off on some tangent condemning ourselves and the public to years of lacklustre opposition that fails to hold a government to account effectively,” he said. “We must not let this happen.” Shapps was not the only defeated candidate to warn against the party shifting to the right in a potentially divisive attempt to win back Reform voters. In her speech after losing in Portsmouth North, Mordaunt said: “Our renewal as a party of a country will not be achieved by us by talking to an ever-smaller slice of ourselves, but by being guided by the people of this country.” Buckland said in his concession speech that such a move “would be a disastrous mistake and it would send us into the abyss, and gift Labour government for many years”.
He launched an attack on prospective Tory leadership contenders, telling the BBC: “I’ve watched colleagues in the Conservative party strike poses, write inflammatory op-eds, and say stupid things they know they have no evidence for, instead of concentrating on doing the job. I’m fed up of personal agendas and jockeying for position.” He added: “The Conservatives are facing electoral Armageddon. And it’s going to be like a group of bald men fighting over a comb.” Other senior figures argued that the Conservatives had to reclaim the centre ground. The former chancellor George Osborne said working with Reform would be a “disastrous route to go down”. Jo Johnson, the Tory peer and universities minister, told the BBC it was a mistake for the Conservatives to try to be “Reform lite”. However, others suggested the party should work more closely with Reform. Rees-Mogg, who was defeated by Labour in his seat, said the Conservative party “took its core vote for granted” and that it had been wrong for Tory MPs to oust Boris Johnson when he had been elected by the country. “Failing to deliver on Conservative core principles did us a lot of harm,” he told the BBC. Asked whether he thought the Tories should have sought to join forces with Farage, Rees-Mogg said: “We are where we are and the disaster doesn’t seem to have been averted. You’ll have to ask Nigel what his plans are. I think he looks for and seeks a realignment of the right in British politics, and it will be interesting to see whether he can achieve that.”