Anatomy of an earthquake: how Labour rose and Tory dominoes fell | General election 2024

a Sir Robert Buckland, a mild-mannered man who was polite to the end to the Labour MP who had just won his seat in Swindon South, could no longer contain his anger towards the Remainers in his party.

He was so fed up with the endless “position jockeying” and colleagues saying things he “knows aren’t true” that just after midnight the former justice minister was spitting on the news after becoming the first Conservative MP to lose his seat in a Labour landslide victory.

Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman criticised Rishi Sunak on the eve of the election, saying he showed “astonishing unprincipledness”. If he were to become leader, the party would sink into the abyss. Didn’t the people now arguing over Sunak’s post realise that it was like “bald men arguing over a comb”?

It was the first cry of frustration from leading Conservative candidates as the party’s vote plummeted across the country.

Labour was on track to surpass the 145-seat majority won by Clement Attlee in 1945, or the 144 that gave Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatives a second term in power in 1983. It was devastating – an electoral “Armageddon”, as Buckland acknowledged – but Labour leaders were under strict instructions to contain their understandable joy for the time being.

Angela Rayner, who seems destined to become Deputy Prime Minister, barely cracked a smile when asked at 10pm to respond to exit polls predicting Labour would win a majority of 170 votes.

“We understand the weight that we carry on our shoulders … and I say to the people of this country, I will always put you first and I will fight hard every day to turn this around,” she said.

Peter Mandelson, the architect of Tony Blair’s historic victory in 1997, was more modest: “An electoral meteorite has now crashed to earth,” he said.

The exit poll, the first to have been so wrong since 1992 when it erroneously showed John Major had won a majority and the parliament was in limbo, suggested Labour would win an estimated 410 seats in the 650-seat parliament, just nine short of the 179 it won in 1997.

Mr Sunak, watching on television in his constituency of Richmond, North Yorkshire, said the Conservatives were set to win just 131 seats – a figure he later learned had been revised slightly upwards – but it was still expected to be their worst result since 1906.

The Prime Minister was not visible for the first few hours of the morning, but he tweeted: “Thank you to the hundreds of Conservative candidates, thousands of volunteers and millions of voters for your work, support and vote.”

Will it really turn out as bad as predicted? As time goes on, the broad strokes seem to hold water.

Steve Baker, the Conservative MP and staunch Brexit supporter, was told he had a 1% chance of retaining his Wycombe seat. “I think in a few hours I’ll be crushed and a lot of people watching will be cheering,” he admitted.

Hundreds of more blue dominoes were set to fall. Outgoing Defence Secretary Grant Shapps, who was ousted from Welwyn Hatfield, admitted his party had “tested the patience of voters” with its “endless soap opera”.

Former cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg lost his majority of 15,000 votes in North East Somerset and Hanham, while Conservative chairman Richard Haldane survived a recount in Basildon and Billericay, a constituency he was parachuted into after being seen as a sure winner just before the election. He won by just 20 votes.

In Cannock Chase, former Conservative chair Amanda Milling saw an unprecedented 40% drop in the vote, losing her majority of 19,879 votes and handing the seat to Labour.

Education Secretary Gillian Keegan, Justice Secretary Alex Chalk and Veterans Affairs Minister Johnny Mercer were also rejected by voters. Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt narrowly held on to his seat in Godalming and Ash but acknowledged it was a “huge defeat” for the Conservatives.

Possible leadership candidates MP Penny Mordaunt and former deputy prime minister Therese Coffey did not stand in the election.

And then there was Liz Truss, who served as First Minister for 49 days. Her performance proved so damaging to the party that rumors swirled that voters in South West Norfolk had rebelled ferociously. Shortly before 7am it was confirmed: Labour had overturned Truss’ 26,000-vote majority. This was quickly dubbed the “Portillo moment” of 2024, after Michael Portillo’s surprise defeat in 1997.

“You’ve voted, now it’s time for us to deliver,” Labour leader Keir Starmer, who will become Prime Minister, said as he returned to his constituency of Holborn and St Pancras.

While Labour benefited from the Conservative collapse, it was Nigel Farage’s Reform UK that appeared to do most of the damage, causing a huge loss of the Conservative vote. Reform UK enjoyed an extraordinary night, gaining what deputy leader Ben Habib described as a “bridgehead” in parliament and with exit polls predicting it would win 13 seats.

Mr Farage won a landslide victory in Clacton with a majority of 8,405 votes, while Reform Party chairman Richard Tice won landslide victories in Boston and Skegness. “It’s been more than 30 years since I contested my first parliamentary by-election,” Mr Farage said. “Something very fundamental is happening.”

Professor John Curtice, the election scholar who led the team that produced the exit poll, suggested they were least confident in the number of seats Reform UK and the SNP in Scotland, which were said to be forecast to win just 10 seats, which would damage their claim of a “vote for independence”.

Dan Jarvis, the Labour MP for Barnsley North since 2011 and shadow minister for security, retained his seat despite exit polls showing he was 99% certain to lose it. Reform UK’s projected number of seats will likely be revised downwards to four as the results come in. However, there was ample evidence throughout the night that Reform UK had attracted large amounts of votes from both Labour and the Conservatives, finishing in second place in a number of seats.

“This is a big thing, folks,” Farage said, pointing to two election results in the northeast of England in which the Reform Party won 30 percent of the vote. “It’s almost unbelievable,” he said.

Just after 2 a.m., Lee Anderson had won a majority of 5,509 votes, beating the Conservatives by 34 points and becoming the first Reform candidate to win a seat that night. “I want my country back,” Anderson said.

The rise of Reform UK and a voter turnout believed to be the lowest since 2005 will be a concern for the centre of British politics for years to come, but Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey was delighted after exit polls showed he would lead a group of MPs four to five times larger than the 11 MPs elected in 2019.

“The Liberal Democrats are on track for their best result this century thanks to a proactive campaign with health and care at its heart,” he said.

Wales’ Plaid Cymru also enjoyed the night, winning Ynys Môn (Anglesey) and Caerferdyn (Carmarthen) from the Conservatives, while the Greens won their highest ever number of seats, four, after winning just one in 2019.

Labour leader George Galloway lost his Rochdale seat to Labour candidate and former political journalist Paul Waugh. “He’s a jerk,” Galloway’s Neil Kinnock said with relief as the news broke. But not all went Labour’s way. Independent candidate Jeremy Corbyn handily defeated his party candidate in Islington North, and the shadow Treasurer Jonathan Ashworth lost his Leicester South seat to an independent.

Within the Conservative Party, Mr Sunak’s close friend and successor to his constituency seat, William Hague, struggled to find anything to be happy about, saying the party would “somehow” be able to mount an effective opposition.

Sunak broke his silence with a short statement after taking his seat at 4:40 a.m. “Labour has won this election,” he said. He added that he had already conceded defeat in a call with outgoing Prime Minister Starmer. Speaking at a rally shortly afterwards, Starmer said Britons would wake up on July 5 with a “weight lifted, a burden lifted”.

“There is no room for cover-up on this,” said Ruth Davidson, a former leader of the Scottish Conservative Party. “This is genocide.”