Polls have long widely expected a Labour Party landslide perhaps even greater than that in 1997 as, ERR reported from London, ordinary Brits yearn for change after nearly a decade-and-a-half of Conservative Party rule.

One recent poll asked Britons to describe their country in one word, with the most common response being "broken."

David Harley, advisor at think tank the Foreign Policy Center, said: "The schools have crumbling ceilings, the roads are full of pot-holes, the hospitals you have to wait six months for an appointment – so there are many things that are really not working."

The last general election in the U.K. took place in December 2019, and much water has gone under the bridge since then.

In addition to Conservative performance itself, this election is the first to be held in Britain post-Covid, along with the energy crisis in part triggered by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the soaring cost of living, particularly in London, and the generally poor state of the economy in the U.K. and the wider world.

Some members of the public told AK they don't find arguments that we've simply been living in hard times to be overly convincing.

One young voter, Will, told AK: "The Conservative government have to get out. It's been too long of them just thinking for themselves, thinking of the rich people, and not having a general view of the country and helping people out, so I personally will be voting Labour."

The Conservative Party, in the current run initially in office in coalition with the Liberal Democrats 2010 to 2015, going it alone after that, has seen five different prime ministers over the same period – Sunak was preceded by David Cameron, followed by Theresa May, Boris Johnson, and Liz Truss.

Scandal has plagued the party, eroding its credibility with voters, AK reported. It is also the party of Brexit in that Conservative prime ministers presided over that development – it was Cameron who called the 2016 EU referendum.

Another voter and London resident, Doug, told AK: "That is because of Brexit, which has been an absolute disaster; that is because of 'party-gate,' when they were having parties and downing street when everybody else was locked down; then they put in Liz Truss, who completely tanked the economy, and had to quit after 49 days."

Sunak and other leading Conservatives claim that they have a clear plan to revive the British economy, one which is already showing initial results, contrasting this with Labour's less clear promises and potential to hike taxes.

While this is part of political campaign rhetoric, the truth, AK reported, is that a simple change of government will not be enough to improve the lives of most Britons overnight.

"We have to restore a higher rate of economic growth to pay for the reforms that have to be brought in to satisfy people's very legitimate demands," David Harley at the Foresight Center said.

Although nothing can be confirmed until the last vote is counted early on Friday morning, all evidence points to Labour leader Keir Starmer becoming the next British Prime Minister.

Starmer, 61, a former Director of Public Prosecutions, would be the seventh Labour prime minister in that country, exactly a century after the first, Ramsay MacDonald, was first in office at the helm of a minority government.

A general election had been due for May 2 this year at a time when the U.K. had fixed term elections enshrined in the law (2011 to 2022) and even after this law was revoked, an election was widely expected at some point this year.

The short campaigning season has also seen a challenger to the Conservatives, and to a lesser extent to Labour as well, in the form of Reform UK, a populist pro-Breixt party which has no connection to Estonia's Reform Party and is led by former MEP Nigel Farage, who rose to prominence in the period leading up to the U.K.'s exit from the EU.

The final YouGov poll before election day, today, July 4, predicted a Labour landslide with a majority of 212 seats at the 659-seat House of Commons, giving them 431 seats to the Conservatives' 102 (a fall of 263).

Though this is a considerably larger majority than that won by Tony Blair's Labour back in 1997, this time result is not likely to be met with anything like the level of enthusiasm for Blair.

The Liberal Democrats are on course to make gains, to over 70 seats, and the Scottish National Party is predicted to lose seats, ending up with around 18. Reform are predicted in the same poll to pick up their first three seats, and the Greens are forecast to double their tally, to two.

The Foreign Policy Center has its roots in the New Labour movement of the 1990s.

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