It was no less incredible for being heavily predicted. In a devastating rejection of the Conservative party, Sir Keir Starmer appeared to be on track for a majority of the scale that swept Tony Blair to power in 1997.
Labour looked set to achieve a larger landslide than both the 145-seat majority for Clement Atlee in 1945, and the 144 seats that secured a second term in office for Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatives in 1983.
The Labour party’s officer class had been put on strict orders to stifle their understandable delight as the electorate’s verdict on Conservative rule flashed up on television screens across the country.
Angela Rayner, seemingly destined to be deputy prime minister, barely offered a smile when she was asked to respond to the exit poll forecast of a Labour majority of 170.
“We understand the weight on our shoulders … and I would say to the people of this country, ‘I will always put you first, and I will fight really hard every day to turn things around’,” she said.
Bridget Phillipson, the shadow education secretary, was the first to win her seat in Houghton and Sunderland South.
“Tonight the British people have spoken, and if the exit poll this evening is again a guide to results across our country – as it so often is – then after 14 years, the British people have chosen change,” she said. “They have chosen Labour and they have chosen the leadership of Keir Starmer. Today our country with its proud history has chosen a brighter future.”
Lord Mandelson, a key architect of Blair’s historic victory nearly three decades ago, was less reserved. “An electoral meteor has now struck planet earth,” he said.
The exit poll, which has not been significantly wrong since 1992, when it falsely pointed to a hung parliament rather than a majority for John Major, suggested that Labour had won an estimated 410 seats in the 650-seat parliament, securing a majority just nine short of the 179 won in 1997.
Watching the television from his constituency home in Richmond, north Yorkshire, Rishi Sunak learned that the Conservatives looked set to win just 131 seats, making it the party’s worst electoral performance since 1832.
Sunak tweeted: “To the hundreds of Conservative candidates, thousands of volunteers and millions of voters: Thank you for your hard work, thank you for your support, and thank you for your vote.”
Looking crushed in the BBC’s studio, the Conservative MP Steve Baker, an avid Brexiter, was told he had a 1% chance of keeping his seat in Wycombe. “I will be swept away in a few hours and many of your viewers will be cheering,” he conceded.
A host of other leading lights, including the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, and the leader of the house, Penny Mordaunt, were also said to be in peril from a historic electoral drubbing.
It was all the more painful, perhaps, as Nigel Farage’s Reform UK appeared to have made an extraordinary breakthrough, potentially gaining what his deputy leader, Ben Habib described as a “bridgehead” in parliament, winning as many as 13 seats.
Farage looked set to win his seat, in Clacton, at the eighth time of asking, as did Richard Tice, Reform’s chair, in Boston and Skegness. “This is politically seismic,” Habib said.
Prof Sir John Curtice, the psephologist who led the team that produced the exit poll, suggested that his team was least confident about the seat figures for Reform UK and for the SNP, which was said to be on track for a disappointing 10 seats.
But there were signs within the first results that Reform had picked up votes from Labour and the Conservatives, coming second place in Blyth and Ashington with 10,857 votes, as Labour secured 20,030 votes and the Tories came third with 6,121.
The rise of Reform UK and a seemingly low turnout will be cause for concern in years to come for those in the centre ground of British politics.
The Liberal Democrat leader, Ed Davey, was unable to contain his glee, however, at the prospect of leading a party with 61 seats rather than the 11 won in 2019.
He said: “The Liberal Democrats are on course for our best results in a century, thanks to our positive campaign with health and care at its heart. I am humbled by the millions of people who backed us to both kick the Conservatives out of power and deliver the change our country needs.”
For the Conservatives, former leader William Hague, a close friend of Sunak who inherited his constituency seat, struggled to find anything to cheer. The party would “just about” be able to mount an effective opposition, he said.
“The answer will be to build again for the future,” he said. “The Conservative party at its greatest – as it has been over 200 years – is usually the governing party of the country because it could command the centre ground of politics, people of all walks of life, people of all age groups, and it will have to be able to do that. It will take a long time to be able to do that, but it will have to be able to do that.”
Across the country, the Conservative vote appeared to have collapsed. Down 24% in the north of England, where Boris Johnson made hay in 2019, down 29% in the Midlands, down 23% in the south, down 16% in London.
Along with Hunt, who could be the first chancellor to ever lose his seat, the exit poll suggested those in danger included Grant Shapps, the defence minister, and Johnny Mercer, the veterans minister. Transport secretary Mark Harper, work and pensions secretary Mel Stride and environment secretary Steve Barclay were all “too close to call”.
“There is no dressing it up; this is a massacre,” said former Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson.
Plaid Cymru in Wales was set to win 4 seats, while the Greens were on course to win 2, up from their single seat in 2019.
The electoral commission’s chief executive, Vijay Rangarajan, said that polling day had run “smoothly”, but conceded that there had been problems with the late arrival of some postal votes and made reference to the abuse faced by some candidates from people protesting about the war in Gaza.
“Millions of people were able to have their say, but we know there is room to improve the experience for some,” he said. “A record number of postal votes were successfully returned, but some couldn’t vote both in the UK and abroad because of the late arrival of postal votes.
“There was a robust and vibrant campaign, but unacceptable abuse and intimidation of candidates. We will collect evidence from people who participated in these elections as voters, candidates, campaigners and administrators, to better understand their experiences. We will recommend improvements to the systems where necessary.”