An exit poll carried out by polling company Ipsos, and paid for by the BBC, ITV and Sky says Starmer’s Labour Party will win the general election with 410 seats. The final outcome of the election should be clear by early on Friday.

Labour set to win a general election landslide with majority of 170, according to exit poll for the BBC, ITV and Sky

If the forecast is accurate, it means Keir Starmer will become UK prime minister with 410 Labour MPs – 326 seats are needed for a majority#BBCElection live ⬇️

— BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking) July 4, 2024

Labour is set to win a general election landslide with a majority of 170, according to an exit poll for the BBC, ITV and Sky.

To everyone who has campaigned for Labour in this election, to everyone who voted for us and put their trust in our changed Labour Party – thank you. https://t.co/q6yDNPnAbo

— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) July 4, 2024

If the forecast is accurate, Sir Keir Starmer will become prime minister with 410 Labour MPs – just short of Tony Blair’s 1997 total.

The Conservatives are predicted to slump to 131 MPs, their lowest number ever.

The Liberal Democrats are projected to come third with 61 MPs.

The Scottish National Party will see its number of MPs fall to 10, while Reform UK is forecast to get 13 MPs, according to the exit poll.

The Green Party of England and Wales is predicted to double its number of MPs to two and Plaid Cymru is set to get four MPs. Others are forecast to get 19 seats.

The exit poll, overseen by Sir John Curtice and a team of statisticians, is based on data from voters at about 130 polling stations in England, Scotland and Wales. The poll does not cover Northern Ireland.

At the past five general elections, the exit poll has been accurate to within a range of 1.5 and 7.5 seats.

If the exit poll is correct it will be a remarkable turnaround for the Labour Party, which had its worst post-war election result in 2019.

The Conservatives may avoid the wipe-out predicted by some opinion polls but their predicted result will be a devastating blow for the party after 14 years in government.

The Tory losses are likely to have been inflicted by the resurgent Liberal Democrats and Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, which looks set to win more seats than many polls predicted.

We will have to wait until the early hours, when the bulk of results start rolling in, to see if the exit poll is accurate.

Scotland’s former first minister Nicola Sturgeon said it was “not a good night” for the SNP, which is predicted to lose 38 seats, adding that she believed the prediction would be “broadly right”.

Labour’s predicted landslide would be just short of the 179 majority won by Tony Blair in 1997 and the party may achieve it on a smaller share of the vote than former leader Jeremy Corbyn won in 2017, according to Sir John Curtice.

But it will be seen as a vindication of Sir Keir Starmer’s efforts to change his party and move it back to the centre ground of British politics.

Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner told the BBC Sir Keir had done a “tremendous job” of transforming the the party but added “the exit poll is a poll so we haven’t had any results yet”.

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said: “It looks like this will be our best result for a generation.”

The Conservatives are on course for their worst election since 1906, when they got 156 seats.

Rishi Sunak had insisted he could still win right to the end despite failing to make a dent in Labour’s commanding opinion poll lead over the six-week campaign.

Conservative Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride told BBC Radio 4: “This is a very difficult moment for the Conservative Party.”

He says he is “very sorry” that the exit poll is projecting that a number of his colleagues will lose their seats. On keeping his own seat, he says “we will have to wait and see”.

On Wednesday – the day before the election – Mr Stride made headlines when he admitted he thought it was likely there would be a massive Labour majority, effectively conceding defeat.

Not an ‘existential catastrophe’ for the Conservatives

Tim Bale, a politics professor at Queen Mary University, says that while Labour’s predicted win was “very impressive,” the ruling Conservative party also did better than earlier opinion polls suggested.

“The Conservatives haven’t done quite as badly, it has to be said, as some of the polls during the campaign suggested. Some even suggested that it would go under 100 seats, it looks as if they’re going to pick up about 131…[but] it is a disaster for the Conservative Party but not an existential catastrophe,” Bale told Al Jazeera.

“I think they will be able to build back from this, how it will take for them to do this, however, is the big question”.

Bale added that the party has been in “chaos” since the Brexit referendum in 2016.

“None of the benefits the Conservatives so promised that would come about through Brexit have really materialised. So, I really couldn’t catch a nation if you like of circumstances which has led to this very, very bad result,” he said.

World Opinions + Agencies

L’article UK general election 2024: Exit poll points to Labour victory est apparu en premier sur زوايا ميادين | Mayadin Columns.

British-Iranian dual national Alireza Akbari, who was sentenced to death in Iran, has been executed.

Mr Akbari’s family had been asked to go to his prison for a “final visit” on Wednesday and his wife said he had been moved to solitary confinement.

The ex-deputy Iranian defence minister was arrested in 2019 and convicted of spying for the UK, which he denied.

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the execution was a “callous and cowardly act, carried out by a barbaric regime”.

Iran’s rulers had “no respect for the human rights of their own people” Mr Sunak said, adding that his thoughts were “with Alireza’s friends and family”.

UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said the execution would “not stand unchallenged”.

The Iranian judiciary’s official news outlet Mizan reported on Saturday that Alireza Akbari had been hanged, without specifying the date when the execution took place.

The news came after Iran posted a video of Mr Akbari earlier this week showing what appeared to be forced confessions, and after the country’s intelligence ministry had described the British-Iranian as “one of the most important agents of the British intelligence service in Iran”.

However BBC Persian broadcast an audio message on Wednesday from Mr Akbari in which he said he had been tortured and forced to confess on camera to crimes he did not commit.

The United States had also joined calls for Iran not to execute Mr Akbari. US diplomat Vedant Patel said “his execution would be unconscionable” and condemned the charges against him as “politically motivated”.

Dr Sanam Vakil, Iran expert at the Chatham House think tank, said Mr Akbari’s death would be used by the Iranian regime to suggest a “heavy outside hand” was stoking the anti-government unrest – linking the protests with the accusation that Western nations were trying to “destabilise the Islamic republic”.

“Keeping the narrative of the West being involved is a way to maintain unity among the political establishment”, she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

The UK Foreign Office has been supporting Mr Akbari’s family and had repeatedly raised his case with Iranian authorities. It had requested urgent consular access, but Iran’s government does not recognise dual nationality for Iranians.

‘Tortured for 3,500 hours’

In Mr Akbari’s audio message he said that he was living abroad a few years ago when he was invited to visit Iran at the request of a top Iranian diplomat who was involved in nuclear talks with world powers.

Once there, he adds, he was accused of obtaining top secret intelligence from the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Ali Shamkhani, “in exchange for a bottle of perfume and a shirt”.

Mr Akbari alleged that he was “interrogated and tortured” by intelligence agents “for more than 3,500 hours”.

“By using physiological and psychological methods, they broke my will, drove me to madness and forced me to do whatever they wanted,” he said. “By the force of gun and death threats they made me confess to false and corrupt claims.”

He also accused Iran of seeking “to take revenge on the UK by executing me”.

Hours after the audio message was broadcast, the Mizan news agency confirmed for the first time that Mr Akbari had been found guilty of espionage, and that the Supreme Court had rejected his appeal.

Ties between the UK and Iran have deteriorated in recent months since the UK imposed sanctions on Iran’s morality police and other top security figures, in response to the country’s violent crackdown on anti-government protesters.

Iran has arrested dozens of Iranians with dual nationality or foreign permanent residency in recent years, mostly on spying and national security charges.

British-Iranian citizens Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori were released and allowed to leave Iran last year after the UK settled a longstanding debt owed to Iran.

However, at least two other British-Iranians remain in detention, including Morad Tahbaz, who also holds US citizenship.

By Emily McGarvey and Aoife Walsh – BBC News

L’article Alireza Akbari: Iran executes British-Iranian dual national est apparu en premier sur زوايا ميادين | Mayadin Columns.