London (AFP) - Keir Starmer takes office Friday as Britain’s new prime minister, after his centre-left opposition Labour party swept to a landslide general election victory, ending 14 years of right-wing Conservative rule.

A sombre Tory leader Rishi Sunak conceded to his Labour opposite number during a torrid night which claimed the scalps of 12 of his senior Cabinet colleagues – and his predecessor Liz Truss.

Before leaving Downing Street for the final time as prime minister, Sunak said “sorry” to the public and said he would step down as Tory leader once formal arrangements for a successor are in place.

At a triumphant party rally in central London earlier, Starmer, 61, told cheering activists that “change begins here” and promised a “decade of national renewal”, putting “country first, party second”.

But he cautioned that change would not come overnight.

Truss’s disastrous 49-day tenure effectively sealed the Tories’ fate with the public two years ago, when her unfunded tax cuts spooked markets and crashed the pound.

She had been facing a campaign to oust her by grassroots activists – dubbed “the Turnip Taliban” – in her rural constituency and lost by just 630 votes.

- World leaders respond -

Labour raced past the 326 seats needed to secure an overall majority in the 650-seat House of Commons at 0400 GMT, with the final result expected on Saturday.

As of 1000 GMT on Friday, the party had won 412 seats in the House of Commons with only two results left to declare, giving it a majority of more than 170 and heralding a return to power for the first time since 2010.

The Tories had won just 120 seats – a record low – with the right-wing vote apparently spliced by Nigel Farage’s anti-immigration Reform UK party.

In another boost for the centrists, the smaller opposition Liberal Democrats ousted the Scottish National Party as the third-biggest party.

The results buck a trend among Britain’s closest Western allies, with the far right in France eyeing power and Donald Trump looking set for a return in the United States.

European Council President Charles Michel congratulated Starmer on a “historic election victory” while French President Emmanuel Macron said his country would seek to cooperate on key areas including security, technology and climate.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Starmer will be a “very good, very successful” prime minister.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the two countries would “continue to be reliable allies through thick and thin”.

Outside London’s Waterloo station, Ramsey Sargent called it a “super exciting time”.

“It was absolutely a momentous election. It has been very rocky over the last few months and years. I’m really excited to see what happens next,” the 49-year-old engagement officer told AFP.

- ‘Catastrophic’ -

Sunak tendered his resignation to head of state King Charles III, who will now ask Starmer, as the leader of the largest party in parliament, to form a government.

The Tories’ worst previous election result was 156 seats in 1906. Former leader William Hague told Times Radio the result would be “a catastrophic result in historic terms”.

But Tim Bale, politics professor at Queen Mary, University of London, said it was “not as catastrophic as some were predicting” and the Tories would now need to decide how best to fight back.

Right-wing former interior minister Suella Braverman said the Tories failed because they had not listened to the British people.

But Brexit champion Farage, who finally succeeded in becoming an MP at the eighth attempt, has made no secret of his aim to take over the party.

“There is a massive gap on the centre-right of British politics and my job is to fill it,” he said after a comfortable win in Clacton, eastern England.

- To-do list -

Labour’s resurgence is a stunning turnaround from five years ago, when hard-left former leader Jeremy Corbyn took the party to its worst defeat since 1935 in an election dominated by Brexit.

Starmer took over in early 2020 and set about moving the party back to the centre, making it a more electable proposition and purging infighting and anti-Semitism that lost its support.

Opinion polls consistently put Labour 20 points ahead of the Tories since Truss’s resignation, giving an air of inevitability about a Labour win – the first since Tony Blair in 2005.

But as the count neared the end, the gap was around 11 percent, with Labour looking set to win fewer votes than it did in 2019, partly reflecting a lower turnout.

Starmer is facing a daunting to-do list, with economic growth anaemic, public services overstretched and underfunded due to swingeing cuts, and households squeezed financially.

He has also promised a return of political integrity, after a chaotic period of five Tory prime ministers in 14 years, scandal and sleaze.