Spain’s newspapers reported the massive margin of victory for Labour but told readers Sir Keir has not enraptured Britons as a new charismatic leader of the people.
El País said on its front page that it had been a “historic triumph” for Labour. But Rafa de Miguel, the newspaper’s UK correspondent, described Sir Keir as “methodical and calculating”, considered by many to be “a robot, incapable of expressing even a minimal dose of charisma”.
Writing in El Mundo, the historian Joaquim Coll also noted that Sir Keir could not be compared to Tony Blair in terms of “brilliance or popularity”, but said the election result reflected the ultimate fallout from Brexit, which has left British society “poorer and deeply fractured”.
In a similar vein, La Vanguardia said that polarization in Britain had caused a “spectacular advance” for the far-Right, in reference to the gains by Nigel Farage’s Reform.
‘Least likely to be prime minister’
In Australia, author Kathy Lette wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald that when a young, crumpled-cardigan-wearing Mr Starmer worked for her then-husband in London in the 1990s, the “bland” junior lawyer would have won her vote for least likely to be a prime minister.
But now “Starmageddon” was underway and British people had cause for jubilation amid a “Tory-ectomy”.
“For the first time in 14 years, this population of pessimistic Eeyores is wondering if perhaps optimism is not an eye disease,” Lette wrote.
The paper’s news pages, meanwhile, bid “so long” to the Conservatives and said, “thanks for all the memes”.
A common theme emerged across the ABC and other Australian media: the UK had lurched to the centre-Left while much of Europe was moving to the Right, and Mr Starmer now faced a daunting task.
The Sydney Morning Herald’s London correspondent warned that celebrations would be short-lived as the next prime minister faces “perhaps the most monumental challenges” of any incoming UK leader since 1945.
The Australian newspaper, one of Rupert Murdoch’s favourite mastheads, declared: “Self-described socialist Starmer to drag country to the Left”.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) ran a live blog as the results rolled in, reporting that the Labour victory was “a widely expected outcome in an otherwise unstable world”.
It also offered a brutal critique of the “disillusionment” that lay behind the Conservative loss.
“Five Tory prime ministers over 14 years wore down Britons,” the ABC said, concluding the “public had revolted”.
Boris Johnson had been part of the problem, said the ABC. “Larger than life” Johnson and his “wild boy act” had gone too far, especially during the pandemic when Downing Street had held parties and “elderly Britons died alone”.
The “experiment with Liz Truss made things even worse,” it said, as “many homeowners across the UK are still paying the price for Truss’s economic irresponsibility”.
The second story of the night was the rise of Reform UK, reported ABC, describing it as a new party with anti-migration and anti-Europe positions that tapped into a fear of immigration.