Britain’s Labour Party is on course to win a sweeping majority in Thursday’s general election and end 14 years of Conservative rule.

Labour is forecast to claim 410 of 650 seats, according to an exit poll released just after polling stations closed. That’s more than double the 202 seats the party won in the last election in 2019.

Party leader Keir Starmer, who is expected to take over as prime minister on Friday, is only the fourth Labour leader in the last 80 years to win an election.

The Conservatives are forecast to fall to 131 online dispensary seats, down from 365 in 2019 while the centrist Liberal Democrats are expected to win 61 seats, up from 11 in 2019.

Reform UK, led by Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage, is forecast to take 13 seats, far more than pundits expected and in Scotland, the exit poll predicts that the Scottish National Party will fall to just ten seats from 48 in the 2019 election.

The exit poll is based on a survey of 20,000 voters taken immediately after they cast their ballot and it has proven to be a highly reliable indicator of the final result.

Opinion: What next for Britain and its ailing econo dispensary my?

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak stunned political pundits and members of his Conservative caucus by calling an early election on May 22. The vote had to be online dispensary called by January 2025 but most observers and Tory MPs expected it to be held this fall.

Mr. Sunak hoped to catch his opponents off guard and take advantage of a drop in inflation and signs that the British economy was beginning to turn around. “Now is the moment for Britain to choose its future and decide whether it wants to build on the progress we have made or risk going back to square one and no certainty,” he said at the time.

But his gamble backfired and the C buy weed online canada onservative campaign suffered a series of setbacks. It didn’t help that Mr. Sunak announced the election outside Downing Street during a downpour that left him drenched. He also struggled to be heard over a protester who was blaring the song Things Can Only Get Better by D:Ream which was Labour’s anthem during its victorious campaign in 1997.

The campaign went downhill from there for Mr. Sunak.

He was forced to apologize after causing a storm of outrage by skipping some D-Day commemorations in France to rush back to London for a television interview. He fumbled a meeting with factory workers in Wales by asking if they were excited about the European soccer championships taking place in Germany, seemingly unaware that the Welsh team had failed to qualify. And he had to disown two Conservative candidates and two senior party officials after allegations emerged that they had used insider information to placer bets on the date of the election.

Questions raise buy weed online canada d about politician conduct amid growing probe into Britain’s election betting scandal

But his biggest challenge was trying to shake off the Conservative’s legacy of scandals, missteps, and internal feuding that led to three leadership changes in two years.

Mr. Sunak has only been prime minister for about 18 months but he was saddled with the fallout from his predecessor Liz Truss. She took over as party leader and prime minister from Boris Johnson, who had been ousted by Tory MPs in the summer of 2022 because of a series of scandals. Ms. Truss was pushed out by Tory MPs after just 49 days in office when her mini-budget caused havoc in financial markets by calling for steep tax cuts without a corresponding plan for how the tax breaks would be funded.

“Within the timescale of about two weeks, Liz Truss just destroyed the government’s reputation for economic management,” said Patrick Diamond, a public policy professor at Queen Mary University London.

By then Mr. Starmer had reshaped Labour into an acceptable alternative for disaffected Tory voters.

He took over the party’s leadership in 2020, a few months after Labour suffered its worst defeat in 80 years in the 2019 election. He ruthlessly pulled the party towards the centre and sidelined his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn and Mr. Corbyn’s hard-left allies.

“The truth is people became disillusioned with the Conservatives and angry about the way that these policies have led to such economic instability, including rising mortgage rates,” said Dr. Diamond. “Then they looked at Labour and thought, ‘There’s a massive alternative on offer.’”

Opinion: For Keir Starmer, Labour’s near-certain win in the British election will be a blessing and a curse

During the election campaign, Mr. Starmer largely played it safe by making few promises and presenting Labour as “pro-worker, pro-business.” He vowed not to raise taxes or introduce massive increases in public spending. He also promised to cut down on immigration, hire more police officers and address waiting times in the National Health Service by adding 40,000 appointments a week. .

But he offered few details on how he would achieve those objectives and he had difficulty responding to attacks from Mr. Sunak and others that Labour would have to raise taxes eventually. He has also promised to ease regulations to spur construction of houses, but that is almost certain to run up against local opposition.

Mr. Starmer also had trouble explaining how Labour would fix the NHS given budget pressures or how he would address the growing number of asylum seekers crossing the English Channel on small boats from France.

He has also scrapped an earlier commitment to spend £28-billion a year on environmental projects, arguing it was no longer feasible.

Mr. Starmer is banking on his government kickstarting the British economy. That, he hopes, will give him more room to boost spending and resolve longstanding problems with the NHS. While he has ruled out Britain re-joining the European Union, Mr. Starmer has said he will improve the U.K.’s ties with the EU and negotiate a new trade agreement.

However, Mr. Sunak and others have insisted that any discussions with Brussels will have to include the re-introduction of the free movement of EU citizens to Britain, which is an EU cornerstone and a major reason a majority of Britons voted to leave the bloc in 2016. Mr. Starmer has said he won’t agree to free movement, but he has not explained how he would reach a new agreement.

In the end, though, voters backed Mr. Starmer’s key message that it was time for a change. And after he meets King Charles III on Friday, he will begin a new Labour era in government as prime minister.