A ‘Changed’ Labour Party, Having Purged Antisemitism, Triumphs in Britain, Ending Conservative Era

The end of 14 years of Conservative rule in England marks a new nadir for the party of Benjamin Disraeli, Arthur Balfour, Winston Churchill, and, of late, Rishi Sunak. It is a remarkable comeback for Labour, which in half a decade has risen from an electoral thrashing under Jeremy Corbyn to secure an epochal victory.Exit polls furnished by Ipsos show Labour, led by a former prosecutor, Sir Keir Starmer, garnering 410 seats out of 650 in Parliament, a gain of 209. The Conservatives finished with 131 representatives, losing 241. The Liberal Democrats secured 61. Five years after Prime Minister Johnson swept into power on a platform of “Get Brexit Done,” it is the Conservatives who are done. Mr. Sunak, in his concession speech, declared that the “British people have delivered a sobering verdict.”Sir Keir Starmer’s party has secured one of the biggest parliamentary majorities in modern English history. Polls indicated that the swing to Labour was less a full-throated endorsement of a left-wing vision than fatigue with a decade and a half of Tory rule, comprising five prime ministers. Labour’s margin of victory appears to be the largest since the Whigs thrashed the Tories in 1832. Mr. Starmer used Labour’s years in the electoral wilderness to root out the antisemitism that had flourished in the party under Mr. Corbyn. He nudged Labour to the center and ran a cautious campaign, betting that British voters would opt for change. Mr. Corbyn, though, retained his seat by running as an Independent. Mr. Sunak attracted criticism recently when he left a D-Day ceremony early for a television appearance. He will resign on Friday morning. The groundwork for Labour’s July 4 victory was laid by his commitment to expurgating antisemitism from the party. His first act after becoming the leader of Labour was to apologize to Britain’s Jews and to promise to reverse course on the hatred of Jews and the Jewish state. He expelled Mr. Corbyn, forcing the leftist to run as an Independent. Mr. Starmer defends Israel’s right to defend itself but also pays lip service to a Palestinian state. Mr. Starmer’s pivots paid off, as Labour scored victories across the country. It was the first British election in which a photographic identification was required to vote, and the first one held in July since 1945. That, too, was a victory for Labour, with Prime Minister Atlee displacing Churchill from 10 Downing Street.The man who led the Conservatives to their 2019 triumph, Prime Minister Johnson, lost his premiership amid fallout from a series of small-bore scandals, including ‘Partygate,’ which centered on a series of government gatherings in 2020 and 2021 that flouted public health restrictions. Mr. Johnson’s successor, Prime Minister Truss, lasted seven weeks, the shortest tenure in British history. Mr. Sunak, a former Goldman Sachs banker with an MBA from Stanford, took over for her in October of 2022. Last year, he appointed a former prime minister, David Cameron, as his foreign secretary. Mr. Sunak’s wife, Akshata Murty, is one of India’s wealthiest heiresses. The wave of discontent toward the Tories was fed by many streams — record levels of immigration, a cost-of-living-crisis, a stagnant economy, a faltering National Health Service, and a sense of national drift. The London-based pollster YouGov reports that 75 percent of the public believes that it is worse off than it was 14 years ago. The leader of Reform UK, Nigel Farage, gained 13 seats, a reminder that Brexit, nearing its 10th anniversary, remains a polarizing and potent watershed. Mr. Farage’s previous efforts to get into government had failed, suggesting that his star could yet be on the rise.As indications of a stunning victory for Mr. Starmer surfaced, he tweeted “To everyone who has campaigned for Labour in this election, to everyone who voted for us and put their trust in our changed Labour Party – thank you.”________This article has been updated from the bulldog.

A ‘Changed’ Labour Party, Having Purged Antisemitism, Triumphs in Britain, Ending Conservative Era

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