By Emeka Chiakwelu
Britain has elected a new Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Labour party. His election brought to an end of Tories occupation of 10 Downing Street for fourteen years. The current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his Conservative Party were handed a big lost recorded in most recent history, thus giving Labour party a landslide victory.
Labour party was projected to win over 408 seats out of 650, while the defeated conservatives were to win 136 seats. This was beyond the anticipation of political observers and experts that predicted a change but not such a landslide defeat that was handed to the Tories.
The British voters are still wary of conservatives and “had clearly not forgiven the Conservatives for a series of disasters, most recently a catastrophic mini-budget from Sunak’s predecessor Liz Truss in September 2022, where unfunded tax cuts led to sharp rise in mortgage costs for ordinary Britons as interest rates soared because of concern about the health of the UK’s public finances.”
Rishi Sunak, the first non-white person to occupy position of prime minister in Britain was of Indian descent. He came to power after the fall of the government of Prime Minister Liz Truss. She was knock off her high chair and resigned when her policies depressed the economy and British pounds experiencing a free fall.
“Five years ago, at the last election, there was talk of a realignment in British politics as the Conservatives, then led by Boris Johnson, took traditional working-class areas from Labour, largely because voters in those areas were willing to support him to complete Brexit.
Labour needed a record postwar swing simply to achieve a majority of one seat, but as the results came in it was clear the party was on track to do considerably better than that, as voters had moved on to focus on the Conservatives’ economic record in office.
Starmer’s victory suggests there was no long-term realignment, but rather that old tribal loyalties in British politics, where people vote habitually, are not as strong as they once were. British voters are quite prepared to judge politicians harshly if they are deemed to fail. A landslide victory in one election does not render defeat in the next impossible.”
The election of Labour party candidate does not literally means that British voters are ready for far left policies but instead a logical policy that is grounded on the center left. That will translate into moderate taxation, checkmate of massive immigration and provision of basic social amenities in a more efficient ways.
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