Senior Conservatives said Rishi Sunak’s failure to get on top of the Channel migrants crisis and directly take on Nigel Farage are behind a “disaster” election exit poll suggesting the party is on course for its worst-ever performance while losing power to Labour.
Labour insiders were meanwhile “very happy”, although some campaign officials were sounding caution about “overly generous predictions”.
Sir Keir Starmer is on course to become prime minister with a majority of 170, according to an exit poll that predicted Labour would win 410 seats with the Tories reduced to a rump of 131 MPs – the party’s worst performance ever, outstripping 1906’s nadir.
With Reform predicted to win 13 seats and Mr Farage on course to become an MP for the first time, several senior Tories told i that Mr Sunak had failed to sufficiently take the fight to the party and was being punished for his failure to fulfil his pledge to “stop the boats” crossing the Channel.
Speaking after he held his Richmond and Northallerton seat, Mr Sunak said he took “full responsibility” for the loss and that “the British people have delivered a sobering verdict tonight”.
“To the many good, hard-working Conservative candidates who lost tonight… I am sorry,” he said.
One Tory minister told i the result was a “disaster”, language echoed by a candidate hoping to be returned as an MP who said: “We needed to thwart Reform and we haven’t.”
The candidate said Mr Sunak had made an error in promising to stop the boats when it appeared an uphill task, noting: “Farage didn’t say stop the boats”, while adding that they had seen “a lot of young people voting Reform” in their seat.
A Tory ex-minister and ally of Mr Sunak said: “We didn’t stop the boats so Reform made hay. Possibly we should have waited for Rwanda flights.”
But they insisted “Boris and Liz Truss would have been far worse” and that Mr Sunak “has probably headed off complete meltdown”.
A second candidate and ex-minister meanwhile said the predicted results were “dire” and that the party in opposition now needs to “move right and act right” to counter Mr Farage.
However, Sir Robert Buckland, who lost his South Swindon seat to Labour, blamed Tory infighting for the party’s defeat and warned against a lurch to the right in opposition, telling the BBC after his defeat such a move “would be a disastrous mistake and it would send us into the abyss, and gift Labour government for many years”.
Defence Secretary Grant Shapps, who lost his Welwyn and Hatfield seat to Labour, said his party was being punished for its divisions in recent years.
He said: “What is crystal clear to me tonight is not so much that Labour has won this election that the Conservatives lost it.
“On door after door, voter have been dismayed by our inability to iron out our differences in private and do that and then be united in public.
“Instead we have tried the patience of traditional Conservative voters with a propensity to create an endless political soap opera out of internal rivalries and divisions which have become increasingly indulgent and entrenched.
“Today voters have simply said: if you can’t agree with each other, then we can’t agree to vote with you.”
Multiple other Cabinet ministers have lost their seats including Commons Speaker Penny Mordaunt, Justice Secretary Alex Chalk, Education Secretary Gillian Keegan and veterans’ minister Johnny Mercer.
Chief Whip Simon Hart, Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer, Science Secretary Michelle Donelan, Transport Secretary Mark Harper, Wales Secretary David Davies and Attorney General Victoria Prentis also lost their seats.
Former Tory party chairman Sir Brandon Lewis has said Mr Sunak will go down in history for the worst general election result in over a century.
He told GB News: “I think Rishi is somebody who will feel this very strongly and ultimately he’s the leader of the party, he was the Prime Minister.
“He didn’t wait until the very last minute for an election and then call it when he had to call it.
“He chose when to call an election and he’ll know that he made that decision.
“That’s nobody else’s issue, the Prime Minister makes that decision.
“I suspect right now that’s weighing on him very, very strongly.
“The fact that we’re even in a position where the sitting Prime Minister is in one of the safest seats in the country and we’re wondering if he might be at risk, it’s a shocking place to be.
“He will go down as the Conservative Prime Minister and leader who had the worst election result in over a century.
“That’s not something he would have been looking to do when he became leader of the party.”
Labour insiders were meanwhile “buzzing” despite “obvious issues” with potentially losing seats to Reform and shadow Culture Secretary Thangam Debonnaire set to be beaten by the Greens in Bristol Central.
One campaign source however warned that while the exit poll was “very good”, it may be “overly generous”.
“We think the SNP will not fall to 10,” the source said.
Another senior Labour figure meanwhile said the party now needs a three-pronged attack to counter the threat of Reform in the north, where Mr Farage’s party finished a strong second in two north-east seats in early results, and was predicted to win other constituencies directly from Labour.
The senior party figure said: “Labour has to do three things in short order: establish beyond doubt the rotten inheritance it has received in every way: health, defence, education, energy, everything else; sharpen up messaging for what will be an incredibly hostile media; most importantly and difficult: deliver important things quickly.”
Reform’s early results
Early results also showed Reform storming into second place in Labour-held seats in the north-east in an illustration of the party’s impact on both main parties.
The results will bolster Mr Farage’s mission to use this general election to establish a “bridgehead” for the party in parliament before aiming for bigger success in 2029, including an aim to supplant the Tories as the major party of the centre-right in the UK.
Reform pushed the Tories into third in Houghton and Sunderland South, where its candidate received 11,668 votes to Conservative candidate Chris Burnicle’s 5,514.
Labour’s shadow Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson won the constituency with 18,837 votes, achieving just over 47 per cent of the vote share and a majority of 7,169.
Reform saw similar success on the second seat of the night, coming in second place in Blyth and Ashington with 10,857 votes, as Labour secured 20,030 votes and the Tories came third with 6,121 votes.
Labour grandee Lord Mandelson said he was “gobsmacked” by the exit poll and the scale of the forecasted victory for his party, which is only slightly smaller than Sir Tony Blair winning 418 seats in 1997 – an election in which the peer played a major part.
He told the BBC: “I think that an electoral meteor has now struck planet earth.
“In a sense it’s not surprising given everything the country’s gone through over the last 10 years. I think it would have required superman as leader of the Conservative Party to lead them back to some sort of victory and Mr Sunak is not superman, but I would have to say this: this is an extraordinary achievement for Keir Starmer and his team.”
Pat McFadden, Labour’s National Campaign Co-ordinator, said: “Keir Starmer’s transformation of the Labour Party has been remarkable. He has put country before party and has transformed Labour from a party focused on itself to one back in the service of the British public. We have campaigned as a changed Labour Party, ready to change Britain.”
Tory campaign headquarters said “if these results are correct it is clear that Starmer and Angela Rayner will be in Downing Street tomorrow.
“That means your taxes will rise and our country will be less secure”.
This story has been updated.