Friday Briefing: Labour Projected to Win U.K. Election

Labour expected to win British election in a landslide

Britain’s Labour Party was projected to win a landslide election victory yesterday, sweeping the Conservative Party out of power after 14 years.

An exit poll conducted for the BBC and two other broadcasters predicted that Labour won 410 seats to the Tories’ 131 in the 650-member House of Commons. Here’s the latest.

The results were a blow for the Tories and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Britain’s electorate showed its weariness with a turbulent era that spanned austerity, Brexit, the Covid pandemic, the serial scandals of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the ill-fated tax-cutting proposals of his successor, Liz Truss.

“It is a classic anti-incumbent vote,” said Mark Landler, our London bureau chief. “British voters are desperate for a change.”

“They’re not persuaded that the Labour Party can deliver radically different results than the Conservatives,” Landler added, “but at this point, they’re willing to take the chance.”

Keir Starmer, the Labour leader who is set to become the next prime minister, will be faced with problems that many British voters worry are intractable. They include immigration, fixing the National Health Service — which is deeply underfunded and faces chronic staffing shortages — and righting the economy, which is struggling with high inflation that is contributing to a cost of living crisis.

Big picture: Britain’s election was a move toward the left, a potential counterweight to the growing strength of the far right in European countries like France and Germany. The result, Landler said, is that Starmer could “appear almost like a bulwark for liberal democracy.”

Iranians head to the polls

A reformist and an ultraconservative will compete in a runoff election today to decide Iran’s next president. Here’s what you need to know.

The reformist candidate, Dr. Masoud Pezeshkian, has said he would engage with the West in nuclear talks to lift the sanctions plaguing Iran’s economy. Saeed Jalili, the ultra hard-liner, has promised to defeat sanctions and strengthen economic ties with other countries.

Major nuclear and state policies are still decided by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He has already approved indirect engagement with the U.S. to lift the sanctions. Those efforts are likely to continue regardless of who wins.

On the ground: We spent six days in Tehran speaking with residents. Almost without exception, they had one major demand for their next president: Fix the economy.

Some workweeks in Greece can now last six days

A law that went into effect on Monday will allow some companies in Greece to enforce a six-day workweek. The measure comes at a time when many countries are considering moving to four days of work per week.

The law applies mainly to workers in certain industrial or manufacturing sectors, or to those who work in a business that operates continuous shifts 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The Greek government has sought to downplay the measure, but many in labor unions and on the left are livid. Syriza, the leftist opposition party, called the legislation “a return to working conditions of the 19th century.” Greece already has the longest-average workweek in the E.U.

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Off Canada’s coast, a big shift in power

The Haida people have lived for thousands of years on Haida Gwaii, a remote archipelago off Canada’s western coast. Known as the country’s Galápagos for its rich wildlife, it has also been coveted by loggers for its forests.

In May — after a decades-long legal battle that raised questions about Canada’s brutal colonial history — British Columbia’s government passed a law recognizing the Haida’s title to the land. It was the first time a provincial or federal government in Canada had ever willingly recognized an Indigenous people’s land claim.