Britons head to polls for parliamentary elections

By Susy Hodges

With opinion polls consistently predicting a sweeping victory for the centre-left Labour party, the election campaign debate was never about who will win but rather what will be the margin of victory.

The latest projection by the independent YouGov pollsters put Labour on track to win a majority of 212 seats, the largest of any party in modern British history. Surveys suggest that many voters here simply want change after a period of infighting, turmoil and scandals under the Conservative Party that led to five prime ministers in eight years.

In a statement before polling began, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak warned voters that a Labour government would hike taxes and hamper economic recovery. 

Starmer told voters on Thursday that today Britain can “build a new chapter”, but change will only happen if people vote for Labour.  

Starmer's campaign has been built around the promise of 'change', tapping into widespread discontent at the cost-of-living crisis and the state of the nation’s over-stretched public services. Other key issues during the campaign included immigration and taxation.

Labour’s commanding lead in the run-up to this election points to a very different outcome compared to Britain’s last general election in 2019 when Boris Johnson won a large victory for the Conservatives and Labour suffered its worst defeat in four decades.

At the start of the election campaign, the President of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, issued a message urging Catholics to be active rather than passive and to engage with politicians on the important issues. He said a key theme was how we can strive “to create a society in which families can flourish.”