After the Labour Party wins the election by a landslide, Britain wakes up to a new administration.

It is now certain that party leader Keir Starmer will take over as prime minister, unseating Rishi Sunak of the Conservative Party.

LONDON — A political earthquake rocked Britain on Friday morning. After 14 years in the political wilderness, the opposition Labour Party has cruelly defeated the ruling Conservatives.

It is now inevitable that party leader Keir Starmer will take over as prime minister in the next few hours, taking over from Rishi Sunak of the Conservative Party, who has overseen one of the greatest electoral defeats in British political history.

Starmer declared to a jubilant audience in a central London early morning speech, “We did it.” It has arrived after you cast your vote for it. The time for change is now.

Thanking the voters, he said that they had transformed Britain.

He declared, “Now that a weight has been lifted and a burden has finally been taken off the shoulders of this great nation, we can look forward again.”

The narrow hours of election night brought the magnitude of Labour’s victory into vivid relief. As per a dependable exit poll released late on Thursday, Labour is expected to secure 410 MPs, which is only eight seats short of its highest-ever total. It was predicted that the Conservatives would win just 131 seats, the lowest number in their nearly 200-year existence.

As Labour won the 326 seats required for a legislative majority, the result was officially declared at approximately 5 a.m. local time (12 a.m. ET). Voter tallying across the nation is still ongoing, making it difficult to determine the exact magnitude of its win.

According to the polls, the Conservatives would win the fewest number of seats in their history—131—in a disastrous election.

In contrast to the US, Britain does not have a lengthy transition.

A formality in Britain’s constitutional monarchy, Starmer will visit Buckingham Palace on Friday morning to be named prime minister by King Charles III.

His automobile will be followed by news helicopters as it winds through the historic streets of London, with police outriders on either side. Charles will be holding his first private meeting as prime minister after the election, which usually lasts no more than half an hour.

Throughout her 70-year reign, his late mother, Queen Elizabeth II, witnessed 15 different leaders come and depart.

In the meanwhile, the prime minister’s residence and workplace, No. 10 Downing St., will be abandoned by Sunak and his family. Usually, the departing leader gives his successor a handwritten note wishing him luck.

The Starmers will move in soon after, with Starmer giving his first speech to the nation as prime minister at a lectern outside the residence’s famous black door.

He will probably admit that Labour will not have an easy time of it.

The party takes over an economy in a state of stagnation, decaying public services, rising rates of child poverty and homelessness, and a popular but inefficient National Health Service that is subsidized by taxpayers.

Meanwhile, some city and regional governments are on the verge of bankruptcy or have already declared bankruptcy, and prisons are on the verge of overflowing. Numerous universities likewise appear destined to fail.

There may be issues with the party itself. According to interviews and opinion polls, a large number of voters were driven by a desire to exact revenge on the Conservatives for their 14 years of scandals and poor policy decisions, rather than by a love for Labour. It creates the possibility that, despite its broad backing, Labour’s support may be brittle and superficial, breaking apart as quickly as it solidified.

Labour victories are rare in British politics, where the Conservative Party has dominated since World War II, especially landslides. Labour has only held power for just more than 30 of its 120 years. Only three of its leaders have defeated the Conservatives since the war, the last one being Tony Blair in 2005.

Labour is conventionally regarded as a centrist party. However, Starmer has moved to the center, just as Blair.

He has vowed to restrain budgetary expenditure, refrain from raising taxes, and take a stern stance on immigration and social security, all of which are characteristics of some Conservative principles. In addition, he has not shied away from using symbols such as the Union Flag and other symbols that appeal to older, more socially conservative people—even though many younger, left-leaning voters find them corny and patriotic.

Some commentators have criticized Starmer for being too cautious and even timid given the scale of challenges Britain faces on both the domestic and international fronts.

The biggest worry is that, as a self-described socialist, he could have to collaborate with former President Donald Trump, which is not exactly a bedfellow.

He has stated that he will collaborate with the winner of the presidential election in November, despite the remarks made by his head of foreign policy in 2018 are sure to complicate matters.

A regular legislator at the time, David Lammy referred to Trump as a “profound threat to the international order” and a “woman-hating, neo-Nazi-sympathizing sociopath.”

Recognizing the potential for this transatlantic partnership, Starmer dissociated himself from Lammy’s remarks from the previous week. “I am aware that the head of state of our nation has an obligation to interact with the elected leaders of other nations,” he said to the BBC. “You don’t always get to pick other people’s leaders.”

The United Kingdom has long bragged about its “special relationship” with Washington, and President Joe Biden, who undoubtedly leans more toward Labour’s policies and manner of running the government, has referred to London as his closest partner.

In terms of defense, Starmer has adopted the Conservatives’ pledge to increase military spending to 2.5% of the GDP of the nation, which is a modest increase from last year and over NATO’s suggested 2% threshold. However, military insiders claim that the British armed forces are still dangerously thin-skinned, raising concerns that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine may eventually expand to other regions of Europe.

Rob Johnson, who was previously in charge of assessing Britain’s military might, stated this week in an interview with The Financial Times that the country was not equipped to handle a “conflict of any scale” and was only carrying out the “bare minimum” necessary for humanitarian relief and peacekeeping.

The fact that Europe has depended too long on American military power to defend itself against Russia is one of Trump’s main complaints about the continent.

Regarding the environment, Labour promises to implement green energy across the country and states that it would not issue any new licenses for oil and gas. But according to the nonprofit organization Greenpeace, “their investment in the green transition doesn’t go far enough.”

Regarding China, the party is probably going to stick to the strategic ambiguity that all of Europe’s major countries follow. Their economy would implode if trade with China ceased, notwithstanding their constant criticism of Beijing’s human rights record.