Finally, Labour’s Test To Deliver

There has been a change of guards with a record mandate at London’s 10 Downing Street after last Thursday’s general election for the 650-member House of Commons. In Keir Starmer, 61, will the voters in the United Kingdom get the strong leader they had hoped for on election eve? Having bounced back after 14 years and with a massive majority in parliament, Britons expect the Labour government to deliver a performance that doesn’t disappoint them. As he led the 190-year-old Conservative Party to its worst defeat in more than a century, Rishi Sunak, Starmer’s immediate predecessor, managed to retain his parliamentary seat. But as many as eight cabinet ministers and a former prime minister lost their seats. The July 4 election was called by the UK’s first non-Christian Prime Minister, Sunak, 44, who headed the government for 21 months. Pre-poll surveys had indicated a landslide for Labour amid Conservative collapse.