The Evening Wrap: Keir Starmer becomes new U.K. Prime Minister after Labour landslide

The U.K.’s Labour Party, led by Keir Starmer, won the July 4 general election by a landslide, securing 412 (+211) seats with outgoing Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party down to 121 (-250) seats in the 650-seat House of Commons. Nevertheless, the vote shares told a story of a more modest victory for Labour, while confirming the Conservative defeat, with Labour getting 35% and the Conservatives 24%. Labour had consistently polled 20 points head of the Conservatives in opinion polls. “In many ways, this looks more like an election the Conservatives have lost than one Labour has won,” political scientist and psephologist John Curtice wrote on the BBC’s website. Following Labour’s victory, King Charles III, the country’s monarch, appointed Starmer as the new Prime Minister of the U.K. Addressing the nation outside Downing Street after he officially became the Prime Minister, Starmer said, “Our work is urgent and we begin it today. But have no doubt, we will rebuild Britain,” he added. Starmer paid tribute to Sunak, who was appointed Tory leader and prime minister in October 2022 after Liz Truss’s disastrous tenure. “His achievement as the first British-Asian prime minister of our country, the extra effort that that will have required, should not be underestimated by anyone,” he said. “We pay tribute to that today. We also recognise the dedication and hard work he brought to his leadership,” he added. Starmer said the country voted “decisively for change, and a return of politics to public service.” “You have given us a clear mandate and we will use it to deliver change… and unite our country,” he said. Starmer said that “changing a country is not like flicking a switch” as he acknowledges the world “is more volatile”. “It will take a while,” he said. Standing outside London’s iconic Tate Modern in the early hours of Friday morning, the 61-year-old Starmer spoke of change — Labour’s central theme, reflecting “a changed Labour Party” and a change to 14 years of Tory government. “And now we can look forward, walk into the morning, the sunlight of hope, pale at first, but getting stronger through the day, shining once again on a country with the opportunity — after 14 years — to get its future back,” he said. In Yorkshire, the outgoing Prime Minister Sunak, who managed to retain his own Richmond seat, conceded and took responsibility for the results. Sunak’s political future has been in doubt as some polls projected that he would lose his own seat. “The Labour Party has won this general election and I’ve caught Sir Kier Starmer to congratulate him on his victory,” Sunak said, adding, that power would change hands “in a peaceful and orderly manner”. Later, as he left No. 10 Downing Street for the last time, Sunak apologised to his supporters and said he would step down from the post of party Leader. Sunak, a 44-year-old father of two girls, asked the public to support Starmer and his family as they transition into No. 10. He also made a reference to his being the country’s first non-White British Prime Minister. “One of the most remarkable things about Britain is just how unremarkable it is,” he said. “That two generations after my grandparents came here with little, I could become Prime Minister, and that I could watch my two young daughters light Diwali [Deepavali] candles on the steps in Downing Street,” he said. Sunak and his wife, Akshata Murthy, were then driven to Buckingham Palace, to cheers and boos from onlookers. Sunak then offered his resignation to King Charles III. With Sunak’s departure, the question of party leadership remains open. Former Leader of the House of Commons and a possible candidate for the leadership of the party, Penny Mordaunt, lost her Portsmouth North seat to Labour by a wafer-thin margin of 780 votes, ruling out her leadership run. Another possible contender, Jacob Reese-Mogg, also lost his seat as did several other high-profile Conservatives, including former Defence Secretary Grant Shapps, who lost his Hertfordshire seat. The education secretary, culture secretary, and justice secretary also lost their seats. Across the Irish Sea, in Northern Ireland (NI), the Republican (i.e., seeking a united Ireland), Sinn Fein became the largest NI party in Westminster, retaining seven seats, while the Democratic and Unionist Party (DUP), won just five seats, a loss of three seats since 2019. Sinn Fein has had a majority in the NI Assembly since 2019 and is in favour of a Irish unification referendum by 2030. In Scotland, the Scottish National Party woke up to bad news on Friday, winning just nine seats, a loss of 38. The pro-independence party, which has been governing Scotland for 17 years, lost the Westminster seats in the two major cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow. Former Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, won his seat of Islington North as an independent candidate. He said his victory was a warning to the incoming government that “dissent cannot be crushed without consequences”. Starmer suspended Corbyn from the party in 2020 for his response to an inquiry into antisemitism within the party. The Labour party lost four seats on Thursday to pro-Gaza independents. After Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7 and Israel’s counter-attack on Gaza, Starmer’s positions on the manner of Israel’s retaliation were criticised for being too soft on Israel. Supreme Court to consider pleas seeking review of verdict declining legal recognition to same-sex marriage The Supreme Court is scheduled to consider on July 10 a batch of pleas seeking review of its last year’s judgement which refused to accord legal recognition to same-sex marriage. According to the cause list of July 10 uploaded on the apex court website, a five-judge Bench headed by Chief Justice D. Y. Chandrachud would consider in chambers the pleas seeking review of the October 17 last year verdict. As per the practice, the review pleas are considered in chambers by judges. Besides the CJI, the other members of the Bench will be Justices Sanjiv Khanna, Hima Kohli, B. V. Nagarathna and P. S. Narasimha. In a setback to gay rights activists, the apex court had on October 17 last year refused to accord legal recognition to same-sex marriage, saying there was “no unqualified right” to marriage with the exception of those that are recognised by law. The apex court, however, had made a strong pitch for the rights of queer people so they don’t face discrimination in accessing goods and services that are available to others, safe houses known as ‘Garima Greh’ in all districts to provide shelter to members of the community facing harassment and violence and dedicated hotline numbers which they could use in case of trouble. Holding that transgender people in heterosexual relationships have the freedom and entitlement to marry under the existing statutory provisions, the top court had said an entitlement to legal recognition of the right to union, akin to marriage or civil union, or conferring legal status to the relationship can be only done through “enacted law”. A five-judge constitution Bench headed by CJI Chandrachud had delivered four separate verdicts on a batch of 21 petitions seeking legal sanction for same-sex marriages. All five judges were unanimous in refusing to accord legal recognition to same-sex marriage under the Special Marriage Act and had observed it was within Parliament’s ambit to change the law for validating such union. While the CJI had written a separate 247-page verdict, Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul (since retired) had penned a 17-page judgement in which he broadly agreed with Justice Chandrachud’s views. Justice S Ravindra Bhat (since retired), who authored an 89-page judgement for himself and Justice Hima Kohli, had disagreed with certain conclusions arrived at by the CJI including on applicability of adoption rules for queer couples. Justice P.S. Narasimha had said in his 13-page verdict that he was in complete agreement with the reasoning given and conclusions arrived at by Justice Bhat. The judges were unanimous in holding that queerness is a natural phenomenon and not “urban or elite” occurrence. In his judgement, the CJI had recorded the assurance by Solicitor General Tushar Mehta that the Centre will constitute a committee chaired by the Cabinet Secretary for the purpose of defining and elucidating the scope of entitlements of queer couples who are in union. The LGBTQIA++ rights activists, who had won a major legal battle in 2018 in the Supreme Court which decriminalised consensual gay sex, had moved the apex court seeking validation of same-sex marriage and consequential reliefs such as rights to adoption, enrolment as parents in schools, opening of bank accounts and availing succession and insurance benefits. Some of the petitioners had urged the apex court to use its plenary power, “prestige and moral authority” to push the society to acknowledge such a union which would ensure LGBTQIA++ lead a “dignified” life like heterosexuals. LGBTQIA++ stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, pansexual, two-spirit, asexual and allied persons. Irrational to scrap NEET-UG 2024 in its entirety, Centre tells Supreme Court The Centre in the Supreme Court on Friday said it is irrational to scrap the undergraduate National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET-UG) 2024 in its entirety. The government further indicated that cancelling a pan-India exam would not be advisable in the “absence of any proof of any large scale breach of confidentiality”. The government said a drastic move like a re-examination would jeopardise the future of lakhs of honest students who attended the NEET-UG 2024, which is under a cloud of controversy following allegations of widespread question paper leaks, impersonation, cheating and other irregularities. The National Testing Agency (NTA), which conducts NEET, in a separate affidavit, said the alleged irregularities were localised at Patna and Godhra in Bihar and Gujarat, respectively. The exam agency was also against cancelling the test for all. NEET is a uniform test held for medical admissions across the country under Section 14(1) of the National Medical Commission Act. The NTA, an “independent, autonomous and self-sustained premier organisation”, has been conducting NEET since May 2019. NEET-UG 2024 was held across 4,750 centres in 571 cities, including 14 abroad, on May 5. Around 24 lakh candidates had registered and more than 23 lakh appeared in the exam this year. In its affidavit before the top court, the Union government argued that honest candidates should not suffer for the crimes of others. It said the competing interests of honest and successful NEET-UG 2024 candidates should be taken into consideration while addressing petitions seeking re-examination. The focus should be to segregate the wrongdoers from the innocent ones rather than call for the cancellation of the exam. Over 4% newborn deaths linked to climate change in lower, middle income countries: Study Over 4% of newborn deaths are related to high and low temperatures, driven by climate change, according to a research looking at 29 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), mainly in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Of the 4%, on average, 1.5% of annual newborn deaths across these countries were linked to extreme heat, while nearly three percent were linked to extreme cold, said researchers who studied the data between 2001-2019. Further, 32% of all heat-related deaths in newborn babies over the period 2001-2019, amounting to more than 1.75 lakh deaths, were attributed to climate change, estimated an international team of researchers, including those from Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Germany. Climate change was also found to be responsible to lowering the risk of newborn death related to cold temperatures by over 30%, amounting to 4.57 lakh fewer newborn deaths. The findings are published in the journal Nature Communications. Across the 29 countries studied, the yearly temperatures on average had increased by 0.9 degrees Celsius during 2001-2019, which the authors attributed to climate change. Sub-Saharan African countries experienced the most pronounced effects of global warming on deaths in newborn babies linked to extreme temperatures, the authors said. Four countries were estimated to have the highest overall newborn death rates: Pakistan, Mali, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria. These countries also recorded the highest temperature-related newborn death rates of over 160 per one lakh live births, the researchers found. Data of more than 40,000 newborn deaths were taken from nationally-representative Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS). Newborn babies are known to have immature temperature regulation abilities, further complicated by their high metabolism and low sweating rates, thereby, not dissipating heat sufficiently. Previous studies have estimated that in 2019, there were 24 lakh newborn deaths, accounting for nearly half (47%) of all deaths in children under five years of age. Over 90% of all newborn deaths were found to occur in LMICs, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.. In Brief: The National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences has announced that the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test-Post Graduate (NEET-PG) 2024 will be conducted on August 11. The exam will be conducted in two shifts. The notice added that the cut-off date for the purpose of eligibility to appear in the NEET-PG 2024 would continue to be August 15, 2024. Further details regarding the conduct of examination in two shifts will be published on the NBEMS website. With questions being raised about the “integrity of certain competitive examinations”, the Health Ministry had earlier announced the postponement of the NEET-PG entrance examination “as a precautionary measure”, just hours before it was due to be held on June 23 morning. Evening Wrap will return tomorrow. [logo] The Evening Wrap 05 July 2024 [The Hindu logo] Welcome to the Evening Wrap newsletter, your guide to the day’s biggest stories with concise analysis from The Hindu. [View in browser]( [More newsletters]( Keir Starmer becomes new U.K. Prime Minister after Labour’s landslide election victory The U.K.’s Labour Party, led by Keir Starmer, [won the July 4 general election by a landslide]( securing 412 (+211) seats with outgoing Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party down to 121 (-250) seats in the 650-seat House of Commons. Nevertheless, the vote shares told a story of a more modest victory for Labour, while confirming the Conservative defeat, with Labour getting 35% and the Conservatives 24%. Labour had consistently polled 20 points head of the Conservatives in opinion polls. “In many ways, this looks more like an election the Conservatives have lost than one Labour has won,” political scientist and psephologist John Curtice wrote on the BBC’s website. Following Labour’s victory, King Charles III, the country’s monarch, appointed Starmer as the new Prime Minister of the U.K. Addressing the nation outside Downing Street after he officially became the Prime Minister, Starmer said, “Our work is urgent and we begin it today. But have no doubt, we will rebuild Britain,” he added. Starmer paid tribute to Sunak, who was appointed Tory leader and prime minister in October 2022 after Liz Truss’s disastrous tenure. “His achievement as the first British-Asian prime minister of our country, the extra effort that that will have required, should not be underestimated by anyone,” he said. “We pay tribute to that today. We also recognise the dedication and hard work he brought to his leadership,” he added. Starmer said the country voted “decisively for change, and a return of politics to public service.” “You have given us a clear mandate and we will use it to deliver change… and unite our country,” he said. Starmer said that “changing a country is not like flicking a switch” as he acknowledges the world “is more volatile”. “It will take a while,” he said. Standing outside London’s iconic Tate Modern in the early hours of Friday morning, the 61-year-old Starmer spoke of change — Labour’s central theme, reflecting “a changed Labour Party” and a change to 14 years of Tory government. “And now we can look forward, walk into the morning, the sunlight of hope, pale at first, but getting stronger through the day, shining once again on a country with the opportunity — after 14 years — to get its future back,” he said. In Yorkshire, the outgoing Prime Minister Sunak, who managed to retain his own Richmond seat, conceded and took responsibility for the results. Sunak’s political future has been in doubt as some polls projected that he would lose his own seat. “The Labour Party has won this general election and I’ve caught Sir Kier Starmer to congratulate him on his victory,” Sunak said, adding, that power would change hands “in a peaceful and orderly manner”. Later, as he left No. 10 Downing Street for the last time, Sunak apologised to his supporters and said he would step down from the post of party Leader. Sunak, a 44-year-old father of two girls, asked the public to support Starmer and his family as they transition into No. 10. He also made a reference to his being the country’s first non-White British Prime Minister. “One of the most remarkable things about Britain is just how unremarkable it is,” he said. “That two generations after my grandparents came here with little, I could become Prime Minister, and that I could watch my two young daughters light Diwali [Deepavali] candles on the steps in Downing Street,” he said. Sunak and his wife, Akshata Murthy, were then driven to Buckingham Palace, to cheers and boos from onlookers. Sunak then offered his resignation to King Charles III. With Sunak’s departure, the question of party leadership remains open. Former Leader of the House of Commons and a possible candidate for the leadership of the party, Penny Mordaunt, lost her Portsmouth North seat to Labour by a wafer-thin margin of 780 votes, ruling out her leadership run. Another possible contender, Jacob Reese-Mogg, also lost his seat as did several other high-profile Conservatives, including former Defence Secretary Grant Shapps, who lost his Hertfordshire seat. The education secretary, culture secretary, and justice secretary also lost their seats. Across the Irish Sea, in Northern Ireland (NI), the Republican (i.e., seeking a united Ireland), Sinn Fein became the largest NI party in Westminster, retaining seven seats, while the Democratic and Unionist Party (DUP), won just five seats, a loss of three seats since 2019. Sinn Fein has had a majority in the NI Assembly since 2019 and is in favour of a Irish unification referendum by 2030.    In Scotland, the Scottish National Party woke up to bad news on Friday, winning just nine seats, a loss of 38. The pro-independence party, which has been governing Scotland for 17 years, lost the Westminster seats in the two major cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow. Former Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, won his seat of Islington North as an independent candidate. He said his victory was a warning to the incoming government that “dissent cannot be crushed without consequences”. Starmer suspended Corbyn from the party in 2020 for his response to an inquiry into antisemitism within the party. The Labour party lost four seats on Thursday to pro-Gaza independents. After Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7 and Israel’s counter-attack on Gaza, Starmer’s positions on the manner of Israel’s retaliation were criticised for being too soft on Israel. Supreme Court to consider pleas seeking review of verdict declining legal recognition to same-sex marriage The Supreme Court is [scheduled to consider on July 10 a batch of pleas]( seeking review of its last year’s judgement which [refused to accord legal recognition to same-sex marriage](. According to the cause list of July 10 uploaded on the apex court website, a five-judge Bench headed by Chief Justice D. Y. Chandrachud would consider in chambers the pleas seeking review of the October 17 last year verdict. As per the practice, the review pleas are considered in chambers by judges. Besides the CJI, the other members of the Bench will be Justices Sanjiv Khanna, Hima Kohli, B. V. Nagarathna and P. S. Narasimha. In a setback to gay rights activists, the apex court had on October 17 last year refused to accord legal recognition to same-sex marriage, saying there was “no unqualified right” to marriage with the exception of those that are recognised by law. The apex court, however, had made a strong pitch for the rights of queer people so they don’t face discrimination in accessing goods and services that are available to others, safe houses known as ‘Garima Greh’ in all districts to provide shelter to members of the community facing harassment and violence and dedicated hotline numbers which they could use in case of trouble. Holding that transgender people in heterosexual relationships have the freedom and entitlement to marry under the existing statutory provisions, the top court had said an entitlement to legal recognition of the right to union, akin to marriage or civil union, or conferring legal status to the relationship can be only done through “enacted law”. A five-judge constitution Bench headed by CJI Chandrachud had delivered four separate verdicts on a batch of 21 petitions seeking legal sanction for same-sex marriages. All five judges were unanimous in refusing to accord legal recognition to same-sex marriage under the Special Marriage Act and had observed it was within Parliament’s ambit to change the law for validating such union. While the CJI had written a separate 247-page verdict, Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul (since retired) had penned a 17-page judgement in which he broadly agreed with Justice Chandrachud’s views. Justice S Ravindra Bhat (since retired), who authored an 89-page judgement for himself and Justice Hima Kohli, had disagreed with certain conclusions arrived at by the CJI including on applicability of adoption rules for queer couples. Justice P.S. Narasimha had said in his 13-page verdict that he was in complete agreement with the reasoning given and conclusions arrived at by Justice Bhat. The judges were unanimous in holding that queerness is a natural phenomenon and not “urban or elite” occurrence. In his judgement, the CJI had recorded the assurance by Solicitor General Tushar Mehta that the Centre will constitute a committee chaired by the Cabinet Secretary for the purpose of defining and elucidating the scope of entitlements of queer couples who are in union. The LGBTQIA++ rights activists, who had won a major legal battle in 2018 in the Supreme Court which decriminalised consensual gay sex, had moved the apex court seeking validation of same-sex marriage and consequential reliefs such as rights to adoption, enrolment as parents in schools, opening of bank accounts and availing succession and insurance benefits. Some of the petitioners had urged the apex court to use its plenary power, “prestige and moral authority” to push the society to acknowledge such a union which would ensure LGBTQIA++ lead a “dignified” life like heterosexuals. LGBTQIA++ stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, pansexual, two-spirit, asexual and allied persons. Irrational to scrap NEET-UG 2024 in its entirety, Centre tells Supreme Court The [Centre in the Supreme Court on Friday said]( it is irrational to scrap the undergraduate National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET-UG) 2024 in its entirety. The government further indicated that cancelling a pan-India exam would not be advisable in the “absence of any proof of any large scale breach of confidentiality”. The government said a drastic move like a re-examination would jeopardise the future of lakhs of honest students who attended the NEET-UG 2024, which is under a cloud of controversy following allegations of widespread question paper leaks, impersonation, cheating and other irregularities. The National Testing Agency (NTA), which conducts NEET, in a separate affidavit, said the alleged irregularities were localised at Patna and Godhra in Bihar and Gujarat, respectively. The exam agency was also against cancelling the test for all. NEET is a uniform test held for medical admissions across the country under Section 14(1) of the National Medical Commission Act. The NTA, an “independent, autonomous and self-sustained premier organisation”, has been conducting NEET since May 2019. NEET-UG 2024 was held across 4,750 centres in 571 cities, including 14 abroad, on May 5. Around 24 lakh candidates had registered and more than 23 lakh appeared in the exam this year. In its affidavit before the top court, the Union government argued that honest candidates should not suffer for the crimes of others. It said the competing interests of honest and successful NEET-UG 2024 candidates should be taken into consideration while addressing petitions seeking re-examination. The focus should be to segregate the wrongdoers from the innocent ones rather than call for the cancellation of the exam. Over 4% newborn deaths linked to climate change in lower, middle income countries: Study Over [4% of newborn deaths are related to high and low temperatures, driven by climate change]( according to a research looking at 29 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), mainly in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Of the 4%, on average, 1.5% of annual newborn deaths across these countries were linked to extreme heat, while nearly three percent were linked to extreme cold, said researchers who studied the data between 2001-2019. Further, 32% of all heat-related deaths in newborn babies over the period 2001-2019, amounting to more than 1.75 lakh deaths, were attributed to climate change, estimated an international team of researchers, including those from Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Germany. Climate change was also found to be responsible to lowering the risk of newborn death related to cold temperatures by over 30%, amounting to 4.57 lakh fewer newborn deaths. The findings are published in the journal Nature Communications. Across the 29 countries studied, the yearly temperatures on average had increased by 0.9 degrees Celsius during 2001-2019, which the authors attributed to climate change. Sub-Saharan African countries experienced the most pronounced effects of global warming on deaths in newborn babies linked to extreme temperatures, the authors said. Four countries were estimated to have the highest overall newborn death rates: Pakistan, Mali, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria. These countries also recorded the highest temperature-related newborn death rates of over 160 per one lakh live births, the researchers found. Data of more than 40,000 newborn deaths were taken from nationally-representative Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS). Newborn babies are known to have immature temperature regulation abilities, further complicated by their high metabolism and low sweating rates, thereby, not dissipating heat sufficiently. Previous studies have estimated that in 2019, there were 24 lakh newborn deaths, accounting for nearly half (47%) of all deaths in children under five years of age. Over 90% of all newborn deaths were found to occur in LMICs, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.. In Brief: The National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences has [announced that the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test-Post Graduate (NEET-PG) 2024 will be conducted on August 11](. The exam will be conducted in two shifts. The notice added that the cut-off date for the purpose of eligibility to appear in the NEET-PG 2024 would continue to be August 15, 2024. Further details regarding the conduct of examination in two shifts will be published on the NBEMS website. With questions being raised about the “integrity of certain competitive examinations”, the Health Ministry had earlier announced the postponement of the NEET-PG entrance examination “as a precautionary measure”, just hours before it was due to be held on June 23 morning. Evening Wrap will return tomorrow. 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