Live updates: Labour Party wins UK election as Sunak concedes defeat

Liz Truss loses her seat, an epic collapse for the short-lived former prime minister Britain's former Prime Minister Liz Truss has suffered another unprecedented humiliation, losing her seat and being dumped from parliament less than two years after she led the country.

Truss was prime minister for just six weeks, by some distance the shortest stint in British history. Her premiership collapsed after a shambolic financial plan spooked markets and investors and caused the value of the pound to plummet.

Truss lost by 630 votes. She picked up 11,217 votes, to Labour's 11,847.

Rishi Sunak had sought to distance the Conservatives from Truss's tenure, but she nonetheless represented the party in the seat she has held since 2010.

She now becomes the face of the Conservatives' collapse, on an unprecedented night that saw the ruling party thoroughly rejected by the electorate.

Record number of women elected to parliament Seats are still being declared on what has been a gripping election night, but it's already official: There will be a record number of female lawmakers in the new House of Commons when it returns.

It follows a trend from the past few elections in which the number of women in parliament has increased.

So far, some 242 female MPs have been elected to parliament. The previous record set in 2019 was 220. Before that in 2017, it was 207 and 196 in 2015.

In Scotland, SNP loses scores of seats, including several in capital city The Scottish National Party has lost scores of seats across the country, including a number in Scotland's capital city Edinburgh.

The party has lost at least 38 seats in total, including Edinburgh North and Leith, Edinburgh East and Musselburgh, and Edinburgh South West — all of which were picked up by the Labour Party.

Most of the seats the SNP lost have been Labour gains, but two, Mid Dunbartonshire and North East Fife, were lost to the Liberal Democrats.

Labour has won a total of 37 seats so far across Scotland. The Conservative Party meanwhile, has only won in one constituency in Scotland so far — Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk.

The left-leaning SNP has led Scotland's devolved government since 2007, and it forced an independence vote in 2014 in which Scottish voters opted to remain part of the United Kingdom.

The SNP descended into disorder last year amid a widely publicized police investigation into the party's financial irregularities, which eroded its public support.

Two Cabinet ministers lose seconds apart Two Conservative Cabinet ministers have lost their seats just seconds apart, as the scale of the Tories' misery increases on a devastating election night.

Defence Secretary Grant Shapps lost his seat to Labour in Welwyn Hatfield, the most high-profile defeat of the night so far.

Shapps has held a number of Cabinet positions under different prime ministers, including energy security and net zero secretary, business, energy and industrial strategy secretary and home secretary. He was elected to parliament in 2005.

He lost his seat to Labour's Andrew Lewin, who won by 3,799 votes. It's quite the fall from grace after he secured his seat back in 2019 with a majority of almost 11,000 votes.

He had been one of a number of prominent Tory candidates expected to lose their seat after the exit poll released.

Almost at the same time, Justice Secretary Alex Chalk lost his seat to the Liberal Democrats.

The twin defeats painted the perfect picture of a miserable night for the Conservatives, who have been carved up by Labour and the Lib Dems across the country.

And it could get worse – more Cabinet ministers are at risk, including the Chancellor Jeremy Hunt – in what could be an unprecedented evening.

What the UK front pages are looking like We're starting to get a glimpse of the Friday morning front pages which are obviously being dominated by the results of the exit poll, which foreshadows a Labour landslide and an undeniably poor showing from the Conservatives.

The Sun has opted to emphasize Labour's win with the electoral map and a front page emblazoned with "Britain sees red."

Tabloid paper the Daily Mirror has a full page shot of the Labour leader and his wife as they cast their vote on Thursday, with the headline: "KEIR WE GO."

Meanwhile, the Daily Express has gone with "" with a photo of Conservative Party leader Rishi Sunak and his wife.

Keir Starmer says "it is time for us to deliver" after winning seat Ker Starmer, who seems likely to be Britain's next prime minister, said the country is "ready for change" after winning his seat in north London.

"Tonight, people here and around the country have spoken. They are ready for change," Starmer said at the count.

Starmer was beaming as he arrived at the count, posing for selfies and taking his time to work his way through supporters and activists.

On stage, he was joined by a number of novelty candidates – including one dressed as Elmo – a unique feature of British democracy.

"I promise this: Whether you voted for me or not, I will serve every person in this constituency," Starmer said.

Left-wing populist George Galloway loses his seat to Labour Labour has narrowly defeated the left-wing populist George Galloway in a key race in Rochdale, easing concerns within the party that its stance on Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza had damaged its reputation among Muslim voters.

Galloway won this seat months ago in a by-election, running on a heavily pro-Palestinian platform in the northwestern English town, which has a large Muslim population.

But Labour has returned to power in the constituency, beating Galloway by 33% to 29%.

Labour was initially strongly supportive of Israel's war against Hamas, but it has become increasingly critical of its conduct in Gaza and now supports a ceasefire, along with the return of hostages held by Hamas.

Its early response nonetheless hit its support among Muslim voters during May's local elections, a trend that has worried many in the party.

Populist Reform UK party wins its first seat of the night Reform UK's Lee Anderson has won election in Ashfield, giving the right-wing populist group its first victory of the night.

Anderson was formerly the deputy chair of the Conservative Party, but he defected to Reform in January, criticizing Rishi Sunak's record on controlling migration.

He called Ashfield the "capital of common sense," telling people at his count: "This wonderful place which I call my home is going to have a massive say in how this country is shaped in the future. I want my country back and Ashfield can play their part in that."

Winning this seat was a key target for the right-wing party, and it will hope to add a second soon, when results are announced in Clacton, where the party's leader Nigel Farage is standing.

Reform were projected to win 13 seats in the exit poll. But the party earlier failed to pick up two seats in which the exit poll had projected them winners, suggesting it may fall short of that eye-catching overall predicted figure.

"Reports of my demise had been greatly exaggerated," Labour's Dan Jarvis joked, after winning Barnsley North despite the exit poll projecting he would lose it to Reform.

"I've watched colleagues say stupid things:" Furious backlash underway among Conservatives An angry backlash among Conservatives has begun, with senior Tory figures hitting out at the direction of the party under Rishi Sunak.

Robert Buckland, the former justice minister who was ousted by Labour in Swindon earlier this evening, launched a blistering attack on his former colleagues after becoming the first Tory to lose their seat earlier tonight.

"I'm fed up with performance art politics," Buckland told the BBC. "I've watched colleagues in the Conservative Party strike poses, write inflammatory op-eds and say stupid things they have no evidence for instead of concentrating on doing the job that they were elected to do.

"I think we've seen in this election astonishing ill-discipline within the party," he added.

And the party was attacked from the right, too.

Andrea Leadsom, a former business secretary, told the BBC the party was no longer "Conservative enough," and said voters are "sick of all this woke stuff."

It epitomizes the problem Sunak has faced throughout his premiership: an inability to appease either the left or right flanks of his party.

Sunak has flirted with populist messaging — particularly on migration — and promoted right-wing colleagues to government posts. But those decisions often ended in rows, such as with Lee Anderson and Suella Braverman, both of whom quit their roles in protest at Sunak's failure to bring down illegal migration.

Sunak has meanwhile failed to build bridges with the moderate wing of his party, with many center-right lawmakers alienated by his approach and imploring the party to compete with Labour for votes in the center ground of British politics.

Starmer has "net unfavorability ratings" despite predicted landslide for Labour, expert tells CNN Despite a predicted landslide win for the UK's Labour Party, its leader Keir Starmer may have some work to do on his favorability raings, according to one think tank director.

"We see net unfavorability ratings for Keir Starmer, even though he's going to have this massive, massive majority," Anand Menon, director of think tank UK in a Changing Europe told CNN. "Beneath this sort of happy story for Labour, there are some warning signs about levels of dissatisfaction with prevailing political trends in this country."

Menon noted that Starmer intends to "reset relations with European states and the European Union" after a tumultuous few years between the UK and EU after Brexit.

People in the UK are "disillusioned," said Menon, who is a professor of European Politics and Foreign Affairs at King's College London. "If you look at the polling, there's a significant majority of people saying Brexit was the wrong decision, not the right decision."

"If you do a focus group with voters, they might say Brexit has been bad, Brexit has been a failure. But if you say to them, how about we do another referendum then and go through it all again? You will get a collective eyeroll and a groan and say actually, please, let's not go through that again," he told CNN.

The UK's exit poll is usually very accurate A reminder: the UK's election exit poll is usually a very accurate barometer of how many seats each party has won.

But, as politicians are reminding broadcasters, it is just a poll.

The exit poll was conducted Thursday at polling stations across the country, collecting a huge sample from across the UK of how people voted. It is then modelled by a panel of experts, and closely guarded from the public and the media.

In 2019, the exit poll predicted the Conservatives would win 368 seats, just three more than they did when the final results were in. Two years earlier, it missed the Tories' seat total by three, this time in the opposite direction.

The first results from the night are in Sunderland South has won the race to declare the first results of the night – and they show a solid Labour result and a huge uptick for the populist party Reform UK.

Labour held the seat, as it was virtually certain to do, and Reform overtook the Conservatives to take second place.

Bridget Phillipson, Labour's shadow Education Secretary, becomes the first MP to be elected into the new parliament.

What the results indicate: Labour won 47% of the vote in the seat, while Reform picked up 29%. The Conservatives slipped to just 14%.

This is a traditional Labour stronghold, though the party won it by a narrower margin at the 2019 election – picking up 41% of the vote to 33% for the Conservatives.

More clues as to the results of the night will come soon, as a handful of seats are expected to declare in the next half hour.

But Conservatives will be concerned by their drop in Sunderland, while Reform will be hopeful that it can establish itself as a second-placed party in many more seats, while gaining a handful across the country.

Exit poll projection of a Labour landslide has margins similar to Tony Blair's 1997 win Labour's predicted landslide win is a similar margin to the one that swept the party's then leader Tony Blair into Downing Street in 1997, according to Gideon Skinner, senior UK Director of Politics at market research company Ipsos.

Skinner told CNN the predicted Labour win could be due, in part, to tactical voting among typical Labour and Liberal Democrat voters.

In 1997, Blair's Labour party won 418 seats, the largest majority of seats since 1945. The Conservative Party won 165 seats.

According to this year's exit poll, Labour will win 410 seats. That will hand Keir Starmer a massive parliamentary majority of 170 seats, just shy of the party's greatest-ever result.

The Conservatives drop to just 131 seats, a stunning collapse by a governing party, according to the poll.

"A massacre:" Senior Tories react to exit poll results Senior Conservative politicians have responded with shock to the Labour Party's projected landslide win in Britain's general election.

Ruth Davidson, the former leader of the Scottish Conservative Party, told Sky News: "There is no dressing it up, this is a massacre."

Former Conservative Justice Secretary Robert Buckland, who is forecast to lose his seat, told Sky News that he is "used to what defeat looks like and I'm prepared for it." But he said he hoped his political life would continue. "I'll be leaving parliament to spend more time on politics," he quipped.

Steve Baker, who was Rishi Sunak's Minister of State for Northern Ireland, told the BBC that "it's a pretty devastating night for the Conservative Party." Baker is also projected to lose his seat.

Baker said that he's got a "great deal of respect for Rishi Sunak." He later added: "I think he will do what he believes is in the national interest."

Shortly before polls closed at 10 p.m., Sunak thanked voters on X. He said: "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."

How each party has fared in the exit poll is projected to win 410 seats, and a massive majority of 170 seats. This would fall just short of the party's best-ever result, in 1997, when Tony Blair's Labour won 418 seats, a majority of 179. The result is in line with what pollsters had projected for Labour, which has enjoyed a huge lead in public opinion for years and had held onto that advantage throughout the campaign.

For the , the result is calamitous. The party, which has earned a reputation over the decades as a ruthless election winner, is projected to win just suffer its worst result since its modern iteration was formed in the 1830s. It is an overwhelming rejection of a ruling party by the British electorate, which has dumped the party from government.

The centrist Liberal Democrats will be pleased with their result, which puts them on course to return as the UK's third-largest party. The group has suffered since it joined the Tories in a coalition government between 2010 and 2015, but voters have seemingly forgiven them for that stint.

Scottish National Party, a pro-independence group that has dominated politics in Scotland for a generation, will be devastated with the forecast. It signals that the Labour Party has regained its historic strength in Scotland and represents a setback for the Scottish independence movement.

Reform UK, the right-wing populist group led by Nigel Farage, has been forecast to win more seats that most pollsters expected. Farage has hammered the Conservatives on their failure to bring down legal and illegal migration, and had been expected to win the seat where he was standing in Clacton, east of London.

Keir Starmer thanks voters and campaigners, as exit poll puts him on the cusp of power Labour leader Keir Starmer has thanked campaigners and voters, but he hasn't commented yet on the results of the exit poll that forecast him a huge majority.

Angela Rayner, Labour's deputy leader, said the exit poll numbers were "encouraging."

"Keir Starmer has done a tremendous job of transforming the Labour Party and putting forward a program for government that I'm hopeful that people have got behind," she told BBC immediately after the poll numbers dropped.

Rayner said it would "be an absolute honor and a privilege to be reelected," but added, "I'm not counting my chickens until we've got those results coming in."

See the full exit poll results Here's the full seat breakdown from the exit poll just released.

It's a huge return for the Labour Party, a monumental collapse for the Conservatives just five years after they won a landslide election victory, and impressive showings for the centrist Liberal Democrats and the right-wing populist party Reform UK.

Labour: 410 seats Conservatives: 131 Liberal Democrats: 61 Reform UK: 13 Scottish National Party: 10 Others: 25