The center-left Labour Party has won Britain's general election by a landslide, ending a 14-year era of Conservative rule in decisive fashion.
Labour leader Keir Starmer is the new prime minister, replacing Rishi Sunak. Starmer, 61, has promised to be the agent of change that Britain needs. He has pledged to grow the country's economy by reforming planning laws and investing in a new industrial strategy. He has said he will set up a national wealth fund with £7.3 billion ($9.2 billion) of public money that will help pay for the transition to net zero emissions.
Critics on the right say that Starmer will need to raise taxes to fund his plans, while skeptics on the left say his manifesto is not bold or ambitious enough to change Britain for the better.
Once a leading human-rights lawyer, Starmer became director of public prosecutions in 2008, running the Crown Prosecution Service of England and Wales — a high-profile job for which he was knighted, making him the first-ever Labour leader to enter the job with the prefix Sir to their name.