Britain's Conservative prime minister, Boris Johnson, won the UK general election on Thursday and secured a large majority in Parliament, which will pave the way for Britain to leave the European Union in the next few months.
While exit polls published immediately after the polls closed Thursday show the Conservatives winning 368 seats, with a majority of 86 MPs – 50 more than the party won in the 2017 election, when Johnson's predecessor, Theresa May, was forced to establish a minority government that was unable to move ahead with Brexit – the party won an actual 320 seats, according to the official results published early Friday.
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Boris Johnson said, "Thank you to everyone across our great country who voted, who volunteered, who stood as candidates. We live in the greatest democracy in the world."
"I think this will turn out to be a historic election that gives us now, in this new government, the chance to respect the democratic will of the British people," Johnson said after winning his seat of Uxbridge.
He said the Conservatives appeared to have won "a powerful new mandate to get Brexit done."
Meanwhile, Britain's Jewish community appears to be breathing a sigh of relief. Labour, which under current leader Jeremy Corbyn has been awash in accusations that it has failed to investigate or combat the swell in anti-Semitism seen among its MPs and activists, won only 194 seats, 67 fewer than it had in the most recent Parliament and the lowest number of seats for Labour since 1935.
"This is obviously a very disappointing night for the Labour Party with the result that we've got," Corbyn said after being reelected in his own north London electoral seat. He said he would not lead the party in any future elections.
Weary Labour candidates taking in the scale of their defeat said his leadership had played a major role in the defeat.
A member of the Labour shadow government called the election results catastrophic for the party and for Britain as a whole.
It appears that the third-largest party in Parliament will be the Scottish National Party, which won 44 seats, followed by the Liberal Democrats, who won a mere 13. The Greens secured one seat, and independent candidates won 22.
According to the exit polls, some 5.4% of Labour voters cast ballots for the Conservative Party on Thursday, the largest-ever migration across that party line.
