2024 United Kingdom general election

2024 United Kingdom general election

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All 650 seats in the House of Commons 326[n 1] seats needed for a majority
Opinion polls
Turnout	60% ( 7.4 pp)[2]
Reporting	99.85% as of 17:20 BST[2]
First party Second party Third party   Leader Keir Starmer Rishi Sunak Ed Davey Party Labour Conservative Liberal Democrats Leader since 4 April 2020 24 October 2022 27 August 2020 Leader's seat Holborn and St Pancras Richmond and Northallerton Kingston and Surbiton Last election 202 seats, 32.1% 365 seats, 43.6% 11 seats, 11.6% Seats won 411[a][b] 121 71 Seat change 209 244 60 Popular vote 9,712,011 6,814,469 3,499,969 Percentage 33.8% 23.7% 12.2% Swing 1.7% 19.9% 0.6%
A map presenting the results of the election, by party of the MP elected from each constituency
Composition of the House of Commons after the election
Prime Minister before election Rishi Sunak Conservative Prime Minister after election Keir Starmer Labour

The 2024 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 4 July 2024 to elect 650 Members of Parliament (MPs) to the House of Commons. The election resulted in a landslide victory for the Labour Party led by Keir Starmer, similar to that achieved by Tony Blair at the 1997 general election, the last time a Labour opposition ousted a Conservative government. The governing Conservative Party led by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak lost over 250 seats and experienced its largest defeat in its history, ending its 14-year tenure as the primary governing party. The combined vote share for Labour and the Conservatives reached a record low; Labour's vote share became the smallest of any majority government in British electoral history. Smaller parties did significantly well; the Liberal Democrats made significant gains to reach their highest ever number of seats. Reform UK did well in vote share and had MPs elected to the Commons for the first time. The Green Party of England and Wales also won a record number of seats.^[4] The Scottish National Party (SNP) lost around three quarters of its seats to Scottish Labour and the Scottish Liberal Democrats.^[5] Labour returned to being the largest party in Scotland and remained so in Wales. The Conservatives won no seats in Wales for the first time since 2001, none in Cornwall, and only one seat in North East England.^[4]

Discussion around the campaign focused on public opinion of a change in government, as Labour had maintained significant leads in opinion polling over the Conservatives, but usually by around 20 percentage points, twice the lead they would eventually win.^[6][7] Significant constituency boundary changes were in effect, the first since those implemented at the 2010 general election. It was the first general election in which photographic identification was required to vote in person in Great Britain.^[c] The general election was the first since Brexit, the UK's departure from the European Union (EU) on 31 January 2020, which was a major issue in the 2019 general election; it was also the first to take place since the COVID-19 pandemic and under the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022.^[8] This was the first national victory for Labour since the 2005 general election.

A record number of Conservative MPs lost their seats at the election. Eleven were cabinet ministers, the highest number in history, including Penny Mordaunt, Grant Shapps, Alex Chalk, Liam Fox, Johnny Mercer, Gillian Keegan, and Mark Harper.^[9] Other MPs who lost their seats included the former prime minister Liz Truss, Michael Fabricant, Jonathan Gullis, Jacob Rees-Mogg, George Galloway, and Douglas Ross.^[10] Newly elected MPs include Nigel Farage and Richard Tice, the leader and chairman of Reform UK, and the Green Party co-leaders Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay. MPs who stood down at the election include the former prime minister Theresa May, the former cabinet ministers Sajid Javid, Dominic Raab, Matt Hancock, Ben Wallace, Nadhim Zahawi, Kwasi Kwarteng, and Michael Gove, the long-serving Labour MPs Harriet Harman and Margaret Beckett, and the former Green Party leader and co-leader Caroline Lucas, who was the first–and until this election the only–Green Party MP.^[11]

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