‘A new chapter’: Labour forecast for record-breaking win as polls open in UK election

London: Voting booths have opened in Britain’s general election in which an opinion poll forecasts Sir Keir Starmer’s opposition Labour Party will win the biggest majority in almost 200 years, and after Rupert Murdoch’s The Sun newspaper endorsed Labour rather than Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives.

“Today, Britain can begin a new chapter,” Starmer said in his last message before polling stations opened at 7am (4pm AEST) Thursday. He pledged “a new age of hope and opportunity after 14 years of chaos and decline” in remarks provided by his office, which it said were meant to encourage people to turn out and not assume that Labour had won.

Britain’s Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer.Credit: AP

“Change will only happen if you vote for it.”

Sunak made one more appeal to typically Conservative-minded voters who’ve become disaffected during his administration, urging them to vote Tory to stop Labour having “unchecked power.” His strategy has pivoted in the final weeks of the campaign to an effective concession that his party is going to lose.

Anything other than a Labour landslide victory would be a major shock.

Murdoch’s British tabloid newspaper, The Sun, on Wednesday endorsed Labour for the first time in almost two decades. With a soccer-themed front page declaring that it is “time for a new manager”, the tabloid said there were “still plenty of concerns about Labour”, including its immigration plans, but Starmer had “fought hard to change his party for the better”.

“By dragging his party back to the centre ground of British politics for the first time since Tony Blair was in No 10, Sir Keir has won the right to take charge,” the newspaper said.

“The insurmountable problem faced by the Tories is that – over the course of 14 often chaotic years – they have become a divided rabble, more interested in fighting themselves than running the country.”

The endorsement was welcomed by the Labour leader, who spent the day campaigning across several Conservative strongholds.

“I am delighted to have the support of The Sun. It shows just how much this is a changed party, back in the service of working people, and that is the change on offer tomorrow in this election,” he said.

According to the final YouGov poll released one day before the general election, Labour is set to win 431 seats - with 39 per cent of the vote, more than double the 202 seats achieved by Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour in 2019 – and passing the previous peak of 419 reached by Tony Blair in 1997.

The Tories are on course for 102 seats with 22 per cent of the vote, losing more than two-thirds of the 365 elected under Boris Johnson in 2019. If replicated, it would be the biggest majority for any single party since 1832.

The Liberal Democrats (12 per cent) are projected to get 72 seats, higher than its previous peak of 62 in 2005.

Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is set for three seats (15 per cent), while the Greens are on two seats. The SNP are set to drop from 48 seats in 2019 to 18 seats, according to YouGov.

The Sun has only ever backed the party that has won at every election, going as far back as Margaret Thatcher’s first victory in 1979. In 1992, when John Major’s Conservatives beat Neil Kinnock’s Labour, The Sun famously proclaimed: “It’s The Sun Wot Won It”.

But its influence has been diminished as newspaper circulations have fallen. In 1997, when the paper backed Blair, it sold four million copies a day. Now, its daily print readership is believed to be around 600,000, although it no longer makes these figures public.

It claims to reach 8.7 million people daily in print and online. It also backed Labour in 1997, 2001, and 2005.

In 2009, it turned away from the Labour Party after more than a decade of support and said it would support David Cameron’s Conservatives under the headline: “Labour’s Lost It”.

Many other traditionally Conservative media groups, including The Economist and the Murdoch-owned The Sunday Times, have also supported Labour ahead of the election on Thursday. Among other newspapers, the Daily Mirror and The Guardian also endorsed Labour, while the Daily Mail and the London Telegraph have backed the Conservatives.

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