Exit polls predicted a huge win for the Labour Party in the just-concluded UK polls.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Tories would only get 131 in the 650-seat House of Commons — a record low — with the right-wing vote apparently spliced by Nigel Farage’s anti-immigration Reform UK Party, according to one exit poll.
If the Labour Party wins, it will return to power for the first time since 2010 with 410 seats and a 170-seat majority. Their win would mark the end of the party’s 18 years in opposition.
The last time Labour won a majority was in 1997, with 179 seats.
Farage’s Reform UK Party is projected to bag 13 seats.
Reports suggested Sunak was facing a challenge from Tom Wilson, a 29-year-old Labour candidate, aiming to make history by defeating a sitting Prime Minister in a general election.
The Prime Minister arrived at the counting centre for the Richmond and Northallerton constituency.
Counting of ballots from some 40,000 polling stations across the country stretches into the night, with official results expected into Friday morning.
Under Britain’s first-past-the-post electoral system, a party needs 326 seats to win an overall majority in parliament.
The leader of the winning party is expected to meet the head of state King Charles III on Friday morning, who will ask the leader of the largest party to form a government.
The Tories’ worst previous election result was 156 seats in 1906. Former leader William Hague told Times Radio the projections would be “a catastrophic result in historic terms”.
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