UK election: Boris Johnson wins huge majority

LONDON: Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party won a majority of parliamentary seats and a mandate to deliver Brexit in Thursday’s general election.

Mr. Johnson’s Conservatives secured a majority in Britain’s 650-seat House of Commons, on course for its strongest performance at an election since 1987.

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Its projected 364 seats would give it 68 more lawmakers than all the other parties combined.

The scale of the victory makes it all but certain that Britain will leave the EU at the end of next month.

Completing a divorce that was backed by voters in a 2016 referendum but that has been bogged down in the country’s Parliament for more than three years.

It also signals a once-in-a-generation realignment of Britain’s electoral map, with scores of long-held working-class seats in England and Wales switching to the Conservatives.

Speaking after being re-elected in his electoral district in west London, Mr. Johnson hailed the results as “historic” and suggested his government “has been given a powerful new mandate to get Brexit done.”

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The main opposition Labour Party was on track to score worst election performance since 1935, with a projected tally of 201 seats.

The outcome appeared to sink the leadership of Labour’s leader Jeremy Corbyn, who campaigned on the party’s most left-wing manifesto in decades with large increases in government spending and large-scale nationalization of key industries.

Early on Friday he said he wouldn’t run in the next election but would remain at the helm of his party during a period of “reflection and discussion” as it transitions to a new leader.

For Mr. Johnson the result vindicates a bold transformation of his Conservative Party into a political machine that could appeal to voters spanning from the landed gentry to the working class.

He promised extra government spending to reverse some of the effects of a decade of public belt-tightening since the financial crash.

But his triumph came largely on the back of a simple message that a vote for the Conservatives would “Get Brexit Done.”

That Brexit appeal flipped districts long considered Labour bastions. For its first gain of the evening.

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Mr. Johnson’s party took Blyth Valley, a former coal-mining district in England’s northeast, a seat that had been held by Labour since 1950.

Later, his party won Leigh, a Labour district that was ravage by spending cuts under previous Conservative governments.

Meanwhile, the Conservatives managed to hold on to seats in areas of the country, such as Kensington in London, that backed staying in the EU.

“Brexit has dominated, we thought other issues could cut through,” said John McDonnell, a leading Labour lawmaker.

“But they haven’t.” He said the results, if correct, were “extremely disappointing.”

The picture was different in Scotland, where the pro-independence Scottish National Party were projected to win all but four of the country’s 59 seats, a gain of 20 districts.

That outcome likely puts Scottish independence back on the political agenda.

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The leader of the pro-EU Liberal Democratic Party, Jo Swinson, lost her seat in Scotland to the Scottish Nationalists.

The British pound rose sharply late Thursday as the first exit poll was released, surging 2.5% against the dollar and reaching its highest level since May 2018.

The vote marks a remarkable turnaround for Mr. Johnson, who in the space of five months renegotiated a Brexit divorce deal with the EU and rallied his divided party and Britain’s exasperated voters behind it.