Labour will be the largest party in England, Wales and Scotland for the first time in more than two decades, as Keir Starmer prepares to enter government within hours, taking seats from a string of cabinet ministers and high-profile Conservatives. But the party suffered several striking losses to independent candidates, including the defeat of the shadow cabinet minister Jonathan Ashworth, who lost his Leicester South seat to a pro-Palestine independent candidate, and the re-election of its former leader Jeremy Corbyn as an independent. Labour candidates defeated the cabinet ministers Grant Shapps, Penny Mordaunt and Johnny Mercer, as well as the former cabinet ministers Jacob Rees-Mogg, Robert Buckland, Simon Clarke and Alun Cairns. The party also regained key seats it had lost in the “red wall”, including Redcar, Whitehaven and Workington, and Darlington, as well as bellwethers including Nuneaton. In Scotland, the party is set to regain its former strength, beating the SNP in dozens of seats, including a return to parliament for the former foreign secretary Douglas Alexander. It also took a clutch of seats in the south of England, including seats it had never previously held such as Southend East and Rochford, and Bury St Edmunds. Starmer, who is expected to start appointing his cabinet by Friday afternoon, said people around the country were “ready for change, to end the politics of performance and return to politics as public service”. Rachel Reeves, who is set to become the UK’s first female chancellor, vowed the party “would not squander that trust”. The deputy leader, Angela Rayner, hailed the transformation of her party and said she also believed it was voters’ desire to punish the Tories that had delivered such a seismic result. “Keir has done a tremendous job in transforming the Labour party and putting forward a programme for government that the country can get behind after 14 years of the chaos and the scandals and the decline we have seen under the Tories,” she told Sky News. “I think they are getting punished for that – that’s pretty clear in the polls as well.” Reeves said in her victory speech: “If what we have seen so far holds out, it is clear that the British people have voted for change, that in the coming hours, after 14 years, people will wake up to the prospect of a new government. The first Labour victory in nearly two decades, a page turned, a new chapter started, a chance to look ahead to a brighter future that seemed so remote for so long.” Labour defied predictions of victory for Reform in both seats in Barnsley and also gained Hartlepool, which the exit poll had forecast would go to Reform. Labour’s Dan Jarvis held Barnsley North with an 8,000 majority, writing on X: “Reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated.” However, across the country as votes were being counted, a number of Labour candidates said they were spooked by a large Reform vote in their constituencies. “I am desperately worried about the votes Reform are getting,” said one. “We absolutely need to reverse this before next election.” There were also surprise upsets in some Labour target seats because of strong votes for the Green party and independent candidates on the left. Ashworth, the former shadow health secretary, had been a key backroom figure in Labour’s election campaign and was a shock loss for the party to the independent, Shockat Adam. Corbyn, who was expelled from the party, won his Islington North seat as an independent by more than 8,000 votes. The shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting, held his seat in Ilford North by just 528 votes, narrowly seeing off a challenge from another pro-Palestine independent candidate. Two other pro-Gaza independents also won seats, Adnan Hussain against Labour’s Kate Hollern by 140 votes in Blackburn, and in Dewsbury and Batley, Iqbal Hussain Mohamed defeated Labour’s Heather Iqbal, a former aide to Rachel Reeves. In the key target of Chingford and Woodford Green, the former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith was re-elected after a split vote between Labour and its ousted former candidate, Faiza Shaheen. The shadow culture secretary, Thangam Debbonaire, lost her seat to the Greens in Bristol Central. Labour celebrated its first gain of the night in Swindon South, deposing Buckland, the former justice secretary, with a huge swing of 16 points. He was defeated by Heidi Alexander, a former MP for Lewisham East, who had quit her London seat in 2018 to work for the London mayor, Sadiq Khan.
Labour is believed to be on course to double its number of seats in parliament without a significant increase in the number of votes cast for the party, because of the distribution across the country. In seats the Tories won in 2019, Labour was up five points, and the Tories down 28. Strategists will see this as a vindication of how the party has ruthlessly pursued votes in battleground seats, concentrating on breadth of support. Streeting told the BBC he could “never have imagined that Labour could do this in one term. I thought it was impossible, at best this was a two-term project.” He dismissed suggestions Labour had won only on the back of a Conservative and SNP collapse. “Yes, the implosion has put wind in Labour’s sails, but the only reason we have sails on the ship, and the ship is shipshape, is because Keir Starmer took the vessel from the shipwreck in 2019,” he said. Labour’s national campaign coordinator, Pat McFadden, credited Starmer’s “transformation of the Labour party” for taking it from its worst defeat since the 1935 to its best result since Tony Blair’s 1997 landslide. “We have campaigned as a changed Labour party, ready to change Britain,” he said. “It is remarkable that Labour was in a competitive position in this election given what happened in 2019. Whatever has been claimed throughout the campaign, the Labour party has assumed nothing about the result and has worked tirelessly to bring our message of change to people across the country.” More from the Guardian Analysis: Anatomy of an earthquake: how the 2024 election shocks unfolded Opinion: ‘This exit poll portends total rejection of these amoral Tories – and incredible vindication for Labour’ Analysis: Labour hardly dared to believe. But it seems the polls weren’t lying