Inside Keir Starmer’s election night whirlwind 

LONDON — The sun was out in north London on July 4, 2024 — election day — as Keir Starmer and his wife Victoria turned up at their local polling station in a community hall to vote. 

The Labour leader wore a stiff smile as his burly security detail made a hole in the crowd for him to pass through. There were plenty of police and press shouting questions. The scene told a story: power had already begun to shift Starmer’s way.

Labour HQ in south London was deserted. Almost everyone was out pounding the pavements to encourage Labour supporters to exercise their democratic rights and eject Rishi Sunak’s Tories from office. Campaign bosses had sent a memo out a few days earlier saying they didn’t want anyone in the office on polling day. “It was like a ghost town,” one source recalls.

After voting, Starmer arrived in the office and locked himself away with his chief of staff Sue Gray to plan who would be in Labour’s first Cabinet for 14 years, assuming the results went his way.

Starmer went through the speeches that had been prepared for him with Matthew Doyle, his communications director. There were drafts for the remarks he would make on election night and for the first statement he would give to the country as prime minister before entering No. 10. Everyone hoped these would be the speeches he would get to deliver.

Morgan McSweeney, Labour’s election campaign director, was so busy monitoring the data and deciding where to send activists that he hadn’t had time to think about the practicalities of what winning might mean. 

With voting under way, he realized that in less than 24 hours, he was likely to be going to work in No. 10 Downing Street, arriving on his first day in government in front of the world’s media. And he didn’t own a suit. 

The campaign chief, who had orchestrated Starmer’s rise from the rubble of Labour’s 2019 defeat, navigated bitter internal battles with his party and was on the point of taking Labour into power, went out shopping for clothes. 

10pm: The exit poll 

Starmer was not at his Kentish Town home on election night. Along with his wife and family, he was at a plush London pad owned by Labour peer and donor Waheed Alli.

The media entrepreneur, who was given a peerage by Tony Blair aged just 34, had played a big backroom role as a fixer for Labour, leading election fundraising activities. Alli’s fans in the party say he was critical in filling up Labour’s election coffers, as well as in making his own funds and properties available for Starmer and his team.

In the years before the campaign, Alli let Labour officials use his offices in central London for election planning away days. During the short campaign, he provided the Starmer family with a bolthole, a gift estimated to be worth £20,000 in accommodation costs, a gesture which would later prove highly controversial.”

That night, Starmer wanted to eat dinner privately with his family and delay the moment their lives would change forever. He took a call around 7 p.m. from McSweeney, who gave him his estimate of the likely result. Based on the party’s internal numbers, gathered from teams around the country, McSweeney predicted a majority of close to 200. 

Starmer’s aides arrived at Alli’s apartment late in the evening, at around 9.40 p.m, just 20 minutes or so before the exit poll was due to be announced. The TV was tuned to the BBC. Under Professor Sir John Curtice’s guidance, the exit poll has been astonishingly accurate in recent years. 

The survey, on behalf of ITV, the BBC and Sky, questioned 20,000 people who had just voted at a carefully selected sample of polling stations across the country, calibrated to enable Curtice’s team to extrapolate the findings into a national estimate of the final result. 

Starmer, Victoria and their teenage son and daughter huddled together on the sofa to watch. They were about to discover if the past four years of Starmer’s efforts to detoxify his party and come up with a convincing offer to voters had paid off. 

Scarred by past defeats

At 9.59 p.m, Keir and Victoria wrapped their arms around each other’s shoulders, holding hands tightly. Labour staffers had been scarred by past defeats and exit poll shocks that had crushed their hopes before. Nervousness and doubt weighed heavily on them in those final seconds before 10 p.m. The BBC reminded viewers that it was the first July election since 1945 — how would the timing of the vote affect the outcome?

“And as Big Ben strikes 10, the exit poll is predicting a Labour landslide,” presenter Laura Kuenssberg announced. “Sir Keir Starmer will become prime minister with a majority of around 170 seats,” her colleague Clive Myrie added. 

Numbers flashed on screen. Starmer’s face appeared above the predicted seat tally of 410 for Labour. The Tories were far distant, with just 131.

A cheer filled the room in Alli’s apartment, then silence fell as everyone stared at the TV, stunned. Starmer kissed his wife and hugged his daughter, before the emotion of the occasion overwhelmed them. 

The first to break the silence was Doyle, the communications man: “Well, we won,” he said.

But there was no big “punch the air” moment from the Labour leader. “It was very emotional but also calm,” one person present recalls. He was happy, clearly, and full of smiles, generously thanking and congratulating everyone. But it was a businesslike display, in the style of a football manager shaking the hands of his coaching staff after a tidy performance in the league. Alcohol was available, but nobody touched it. 

Morgan McSweeney had been growing nervous all day. He had a personal investment in the results, more than most: his wife, Imogen Walker, was standing as a Labour candidate in Scotland. They’d spoken a few times during the day, and McSweeney was using his data feed at his desk in Southwark to keep track of the voting in her seat.

A long night

Labour’s offices had been largely empty but started to fill up as the evening drew closer to 10 p.m. A big party was under way at Tate Modern, but most staffers wanted to be in the war room for the exit poll. Pizzas arrived in anticipation of a long night, but there was no beer.

As the countdown to the 10 p.m. exit poll began, McSweeney’s team huddled in front of the TV. He almost couldn’t watch. What if, despite months of meticulous work, Labour’s data was wrong? 

“It felt like the longest two minutes of my life,” one member of the team at HQ that night says. “Time just stops for a minute, and then the numbers come up and the room just erupts, it goes mental.” Elated and relieved, McSweeney hugged his colleagues. As jubilant officials wept and celebrated their long-dreamed-of triumph, McSweeney slipped away to talk to his boss. 

He stepped out of Labour’s Southwark headquarters into the night air and called Starmer from the pavement on Rushworth Street. The exit poll looked “about right,” he said. 

The first constituency to declare its result always comes from the north-east of England. It is something of a tradition that there is a race between Sunderland constituencies and Newcastle to see who can count the votes the fastest.

In a sports hall in Sunderland, Bridget Phillipson waited for what felt like the longest five minutes of her life for the exit poll. As the incumbent Labour MP, her own result was not in doubt, and at 11.14 p.m. she was declared the winner in the first result of the night. Reform UK’s candidate, Sam Woods-Brass, came second with almost 12,000 votes, knocking the Tories into third place. 

Wearing a broad smile, Phillipson took the microphone: “Tonight, the British people have spoken. And if the exit poll this evening is again a guide to results across our country, as it so often is, then after 14 years the British people have chosen change. They have chosen Labour and they have chosen the leadership of Keir Starmer.”

She would be named education secretary the following day. 

Not all his way

As the man in charge of the election triumph, McSweeney had been keeping track of the data as results came in but he was soon required to show his face elsewhere: Like other senior colleagues, he had an appointment to meet Labour donors at an election party hosted by Waheed Alli on the other side of town. McSweeney jumped in a cab. 

Not everything was going Starmer’s way. Standing as an independent candidate in Islington North, Jeremy Corbyn thrashed his Labour rival, winning a seat from the party he once led. In his victory speech, with a white rosette pinned to his jacket, Corbyn thanked his local backers. And he warned that the crisis in Gaza was something the incoming prime minister must prioritize.

To applause and cheering, Corbyn declared his constituents were “looking for a government that on the world stage will search for peace, not war, and not allow the terrible conditions to go on that are happening in Gaza at the present time.” 

Two of Starmer’s key frontbench colleagues, Jonathan Ashworth and Thangam Debbonaire, also lost their seats. 

The Labour leader was in the car on his way to Labour’s main victory party, which was under way in the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern art gallery on the South Bank of the Thames.

The phone rang. It was Downing Street — Rishi Sunak was on the line and he was calling to concede the election.

“Congratulations,” Sunak said. “It’s a big job.”

A big job

The outgoing prime minister offered Starmer any assistance he needed, especially on national security matters. He went beyond that too. “I’m available if there’s anything I can help with or even if you just want someone to talk to,” he said. Sunak disclosed that he had benefited himself from talking to former PMs in the past.

“That’s great,” the Labour leader replied.

It was a short conversation, just three or four minutes long. But staffers listening in believed it had been a healthy one. The two leaders spoke to each other with respect and courtesy — the defeated prime minister, and the candidate who was about to replace him. 

When Starmer’s car pulled up at the Tate Modern, McSweeney was there to meet him. Hardly believing what they had achieved, the two men shared a huge hug before heading into the victory party.

“What do you think?” Starmer asked his aide.

“Like, I am happy,” McSweeney replied. “It’s a great result. But it’s just a bit irritating it’s not as big as ’97.” 

McSweeney told his boss he expected the size of the landslide to increase from the projected 410 seats but to fall just short of Tony Blair’s record haul. “We don’t think it will hit 419. It’s so irritating,” he said.

Starmer agreed and the two men continued grumbling about not quite beating Tony Blair’s winning tally in the gallery lift on their way to the event. In the end, Starmer’s wife Victoria had to tell them to stop their “ridiculous” complaints. 

Starmer walked out into the crowds of party workers and friends who packed the Turbine Hall, bathed in red lighting for the night. At 5 a.m, Starmer stepped up to the microphone with hundreds of supporters waving flags and Labour posters behind him. The TV tally confirmed Labour had passed the milestone of 326 seats, formally winning a Commons majority. 

“Thank you so much for that reception,” the Labour leader said to his cheering supporters, grinning broadly. “We did it!” 

Friday July 5 

As soon as Sunak left Downing Street for the last time in his government car, his political staff was ushered out of the building via the adjoining Cabinet Office, handing in their security passes, phones and laptops as they went.

Inside No. 10, the cleaners went to work. A battalion of staff quickly and efficiently moved through the building from room to room, erasing all traces of Rishi Sunak’s presence. Photographs of the PM with his team, letters, cards and other mementos were cleared from desks and collected into boxes. 

Waiting to enter were members of Starmer’s new government, sipping coffee in a side room. McSweeney had put on his new suit. On his shirt sleeves he wore the cufflinks he’d had made two years previously, marking the moment in Brighton when Starmer stamped his authority on Labour by changing the party’s leadership rules.

It was a reminder, as they moved from the wilderness of opposition into the historic buildings at the heart of government, of just how far they had come. 

After being appointed Prime Minister by King Charles, Starmer’s convoy swept out of the gates of Buckingham Palace and cruised down the Mall. Police outriders held back the traffic to clear the road ahead. The cars turned through Trafalgar Square onto Whitehall as the sun came out. 

Crowds of supporters waited for him in Downing Street, lining the pavement outside No. 10. It resembled the scene of flag-waving fans that greeted Blair in 1997. Some felt it was the wrong move, worrying that the atmosphere in Britain in 2024 was more cynical and far less hopeful than when Blair took power. There was a debate among Starmer’s top team about whether it would be appropriate to fill the street with ecstatic fans in the same way this time. Starmer insisted that they should do it. His people needed their moment, he felt. 

The black iron gates of Downing Street swung open and Starmer’s government Audi turned in, coming to a stop at 12.38 p.m. He climbed out of the car and into his new life. Elated friends and colleagues greeted the Starmers with cheering and applause, waving union flags and saltires in the air. Sir Keir and Lady Victoria spent the next few minutes greeting their supporters with hugs, handshakes and kisses. Then he stepped up to the lectern to address the nation as its leader for the first time.

A leader speaks

“I have just returned from Buckingham Palace, where I accepted an invitation from His Majesty the King to form the next government of this great nation,” Starmer said. “I want to thank the outgoing Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak. His achievement as the first British Asian prime minister of our country — the extra effort that will have required — should not be underestimated by anyone. We pay tribute to that today. And we also recognize the dedication and hard work he brought to his leadership. But now our country has voted, decisively, for change, for national renewal and a return of politics to public service.”

Starmer promised to begin to rebuild trust in politics: “This lack of trust can only be healed by actions not words. I know that. But we can make a start today, with the simple acknowledgement that public service is a privilege and that your government should treat every single person in this country with respect.”

“Give us a wave,” yelled the press photographers to Starmer and his wife from the opposite side of the street. The couple obliged, taking in the scene before turning to walk through the famous doorway.

On the other side of the threshold, Simon Case, the Cabinet secretary, welcomed the new PM to No. 10 with a handshake. Applause from civil servants and party aides filled the cramped hallway with a din. 

Many civil servants were delighted to have one of their own — a former director of the Crown Prosecution Service – coming in to lead them, after a decade on the receiving end of attacks from Tories who wanted to tear down Whitehall orthodoxy. 

As he made his way inside, gripping Victoria’s hand, Britain’s new prime minister paused briefly just once, to acknowledge a backroom party worker whom most viewers watching on television would not have recognized: McSweeney beamed with pride, clapping hardest of all. 

Case showed Starmer and Victoria into the Cabinet Room. “Ah,” said the Labour leader. “I think this is the first time I’ve ever been in here.” Waiting for them inside were their teenage son and daughter.

Soon Starmer would begin appointing his Cabinet. But first the family spent a few moments together taking stock of where they were and how their world would not be the same now they had made it to Downing Street. 

The alteration in family life was a pre- occupation for Starmer, who worried about the impact his career would have on his children’s lives. He wanted them to have a normal life as teenagers, away from the scrutiny of publicity as far as possible. Their names have still not been made public. 

In the Cabinet Room, as he caught his breath, Starmer was introduced to the Downing Street “front-of-house” team. These are the No. 10 officials whose job it is to show guests where to go and to make sure the head of the government has whatever he needs, day and night.

This being Britain, their first duty was to bring the Prime Minister a cup of tea. 

This extract has been adapted from “Landslide: The Inside Story of the 2024 Election,” by Tim Ross and Rachel Wearmouth, published by Biteback.