WITH VOTING now over in Britain, widespread predictions of an electoral earthquake appear to have been right. According to an exit poll conducted for the country’s main broadcasters, published at 10pm BST, the Labour Party is on track to win a historic landslide victory, taking back swathes of seats in the Midlands, the north of England and Scotland. The poll suggests that the party will win 410 out of 650 seats in the House of Commons. That would give Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, a thumping majority of 170, just shy of the landslide won by Sir Tony Blair in 1997.

Unless the exit poll is badly wrong, a low-key campaign will have produced an extraordinary result. Just five years ago voters handed Labour its worst defeat in almost a century; as things stand it is on course for one of its greatest victories. That change does not reflect any great groundswell of optimism. Instead voters have ruthlessly punished the Conservatives for governing chaotically; they are projected to win just 131 seats, their worst result in the modern democratic era.