Keir Starmer will be Britain’s next prime minister with his Labour Party poised to take a landslide election victory, an exit poll indicates.

The poll, released on the BBC at 7am Friday (AEST), also forecasts historic losses for Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives.

It predicts Labour will win 410 seats in the 650-seat parliament, ending 14 years of Conservative-led government.

Sunak’s party was forecast to take only 131 seats, down from 346 when parliament was dissolved, as voters punish the Conservatives for a cost-of-living crisis and years of instability and in-fighting which has brought five prime ministers since 2016.

The centrist Liberal Democrats are predicted to capture 61 seats while Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage’s right-wing populist Reform UK is forecast to win 13.

The anti-immigration Reform’s seats are tipped to include Farage, in Clacton. It will be his first election win after seven attempts.

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— Peter Stefanovic (@PeterStefanovi2) July 4, 2024

In the past six national elections, only one exit poll has got the outcome wrong – in 2015 it predicted a hung parliament when, in fact, the Conservatives won a majority.

The first seat was officially called about 9am (AEST), with Bridget Phillipson returned in the safe Labour seat of Houghton and Sunderland South. She was shadow education secretary in the former Labour opposition, and is predicted to continue the role in the new Starmer government.

Reform leader Nigel Farage posted a video on social media claiming his party will win more seats than projected in the exit polls.

With six votes decided so far, Reform as attracted 23 per cent of the vote.

Back in Australia, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the exit polls were tipping a “very strong” result for British Labour.

“I worked constructively with Rishi Sunak and I wish him well … We have an important relationship, and I hosted David Cameron at the Lodge just a short time ago. We have a strong relationship between our two countries,” he said.

“But in Sir Keir Starmer and [deputy Labour leader] Angela Rayner and so many others who I am so familiar with in British Labour Party, I look forward very much to working with them.

“In my first six months of being the Prime Minister of Australia, I met three different British prime ministers. So. .. I had constructive engagement with all of them, but I do look forward [to Starmer].”

Sunak stunned Westminster and many in his own party by calling the election earlier than he needed to in May with the Conservatives trailing Labour by some 20 points in opinion polls.

He had hoped the gap would narrow, as had traditionally been the case in British elections. Instead the deficit has failed to budge in a fairly disastrous campaign.

It started badly with Sunak getting drenched by rain outside Downing Street as he announced the vote, before aides and Conservative candidates became caught up in a gambling scandal over suspicious bets placed on the date of the election.

Sunak’s early departure from D-Day commemorative events in France to do a TV interview angered veterans. Evven those within his own party said it raised questions about his political acumen.

DAILY MAIL: Labour set for historic landslide #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/0N6cG84TZC

— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) July 4, 2024

If the exit poll proves right, it represents an incredible turnaround for Starmer and Labour, which critics and supporters said was facing an existential crisis just three years ago when it lost a parliamentary seat on a 16 per cent swing to the Conservatives, an almost unique win for a governing party.

But a series of scandals – most notably revelations of parties in Downing Street during Covid lockdowns – undermined then prime minister Boris Johnson. By November 2021 the Conservative poll lead, which had been higher than at any time during Margaret Thatcher’s 11 years in government, was gone.

Liz Truss’ disastrous six-week premiership, which followed Johnson being forced out at the end of 2022, cemented the decline, and Sunak was unable to make any dent in Labour’s now commanding poll lead

While polls have suggested that there is no great enthusiasm for Labour leader Starmer, his simple message that it is time for change appears to have resonated with voters.

Unlike in France where Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party made historic gains in an election last Sunday, the disenchanted British public appears to have instead moved to the centre-left.

-with AAP