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Senior Conservative leaders said Rishi Sunak’s failure to get the Channel migrant crisis under control and his failure to take on Nigel Farage were behind “disastrous” election exit polls which suggested the party had lost power to Labour and was heading for its worst performance ever.
Labour Party officials were “very pleased” but some campaign officials warned about “overly generous projections”.
Exit polls predicted Labour would win 410 seats and the Conservatives would fall to 131, meaning Sir Keir Starmer would be sworn in as Prime Minister with a majority of 170 seats – the party’s worst performance in history, surpassing its lowest point in 1906.
With the Reform Party expected to win 13 seats and Mr Farage set to become an MP for the first time, several senior Conservative Party figures said: I Mr Sunak is being punished for not doing enough to fight his party and for failing to deliver on his promise to “stop” ships crossing the Channel.
As one Conservative minister said: I The result was a “disaster.” A candidate seeking reelection as an MP echoed the sentiment, saying: “We should have blocked the reforms, but we didn’t.”
The candidate said Mr Sunak was wrong to promise to stop the ship despite what seemed a difficult task, pointing out that “Mr Farage never said he would stop the ship”, adding that in his constituency he had seen “a lot of young people voting for Reform”.
“The reformers benefited because we didn’t stop the ship. Maybe we should have waited for the plane to Rwanda,” said a former Conservative minister and ally of Mr Sunak.
But they argued that “Boris and Liz Truss would have been much worse” and that Mr Sunak “probably avoided a complete collapse”.
Meanwhile, a second candidate, a former minister, said the predicted outcome was “disastrous” and that the Opposition needed to “move right and do the right thing” to take on Mr Farage.
Former Conservative Party chairman Sir Brandon Lewis said Mr Sunak’s general election result would go down in history as the worst in a century.
He told GB News: “I think Rishi is someone who feels very strongly about this. After all, he was the leader of the party and he was also the chancellor.”
“He waited until the last minute to call an election when it was necessary.
“He chose when to call the election and will be aware that he made that decision.
“It’s not anybody else’s problem, the Prime Minister makes that decision.”
“I think it’s a huge burden on him right now.
“The fact that we have a sitting Prime Minister sitting in one of the safest seats in the country and yet people are concerned that he may be in danger is a shocking situation.
“He will go down in history as the prime minister and leader of the Conservative party that delivered its worst election result in a century.”
“That’s not what he set out to do when he became leader.”
Meanwhile, Labour insiders are “buzzing” that Reform and Shadow Culture Secretary Thangam Devonaire could lose their Bristol Central constituency to the Greens, despite the “clear problem” that it could be lost.
But one campaign official warned that while the exit polls were “very good”, they may have been “too generous”.
“The SNP is unlikely to fall to just 10 seats,” the source said.
Meanwhile, another senior Labour leader said the party needed a three-pronged attack to counter the threat of reformists in the north, where Farage’s party had come second in two north-east constituencies in early polling results and was expected to win directly from Labour in others.
“Labour must do three things urgently: expose beyond doubt the rotten legacy it has inherited on everything from health to defence to education to energy; clarify its message to an extremely hostile media; and, most importantly and hard, get the things that matter, quickly,” a senior party official said.
Early results of the reforms
Early results also showed the Reform Party had jumped into second place in Labour-held seats in the north-east, highlighting its influence over the two main parties.
The result will bolster Farage’s mission to use this election to establish a bridgehead for his party in Parliament before aiming for bigger success, such as replacing the Conservatives as Britain’s main centre-right party in 2029.
The Reform Party pushed the Conservatives into third place in Houghton and Sunderland South, where Conservative candidate Chris Barnicle received 5,514 votes and Conservative candidate John McClellan received 11,668 votes.
Labour’s shadow education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, won the constituency with 18,837 votes, just over 47% of the vote and a majority of 7,169 votes.
The Reform Party enjoyed similar success in the second constituency of the night, coming second in Blyth and Ashington with 10,857 votes. Labour received 20,030 votes and the Conservatives came third with 6,121 votes.
Labour leader Lord Mandelson said he was “stunned” by the exit poll results and the size of his party’s projected win – just slightly less than the 418 seats Sir Tony Blair won in the 1997 general election in which the peer played a major role.
He told the BBC: “I think the electoral meteorite has just hit the Earth.”
“In some ways it’s not surprising given what the country has been through over the last decade. I think you would have needed a Superman as leader to lead the Conservative party to any kind of victory and Sunak is no Superman, but I have to say this is an extraordinary achievement for Keir Starmer and his team.”
Labour’s national campaigns coordinator, Pat McFadden, said: “Keir Starmer’s transformation of the Labour Party has been remarkable. He has put country over party and transformed Labour from a party that is solely about the UK to one that serves the British people. We have campaigned as a changed Labour party, ready to change Britain.”
“If this result is correct it is clear that Mr Starmer and Angela Rayner will visit Downing Street tomorrow,” the Conservative campaign headquarters said.
“That means higher taxes and a less safe country.”
This story has been updated.