Rishi Sunak will have to leave Number 10 Downing Street once his General Election defeat is confirmed – here, the Mirror explains just how soon he will move out of Britain’s most famous address
Rishi Sunak is set to dumped as Prime Minister after exit polls showed a historic General Election defeat for his party – ending 14 long years of Tory rule.
But when will he move out of Number 10? Unlike in the US, where losing presidents stay in the role for several months before power is transferred, in Britain the defeated Prime Minister traditionally quits the day after the election is held. It means we can expect to see Mr Sunak wave goodbye and make way for Labour’s Keir Starmer in just a few hours’ time.
According to modern convention, the handover process begins once the Prime Minister calls the Leader of the Opposition to concede defeat – and this can happen quite early in the night if the election result is obvious. This begins several hours of intense discussions between the outgoing government, the incoming party and Buckingham Palace as to the timings of the handover.
What happens when a Prime Minister loses an election and when do they move out?
If the opposition party has won enough seats to form a clear majority, the current Prime Minister is expected to make way as soon as possible – usually on the day after polling day. The last time this happened was when Labour’s Tony Blair defeated Tory PM John Major in a landslide victory in 1997.
On the morning of his defeat, Mr Major came back from his Huntingdon seat to Downing Street at 7am, delivered a speech to his staff at 10.30am, and left office a short time later after giving a speech outside Number 10. Mr Blair went to Buckingham Palace to accept Queen Elizabeth II’s invitation to form a government, and entered Number 10 in the same day.
In the past, removal vans parked outside Downing Street have become iconic images of a Prime Minister’s defeat. This was certainly true of Ted Heath in 1974, a music-loving PM whose baby grand piano was loaded into the back of a lorry in front of the entire nation when he lost to Harold Wilson. Perhaps a fitting symbol for Rishi Sunak this time would be a Sky TV, which he memorably said he spent his childhood without during the General Election campaign…
In 1990, a famous photograph by the Daily Mirror showed Margaret Thatcher with tears in her eyes as she left Downing Street for the very last time. She’s not the only one to become emotional when power slipsaway, as Theresa May also cried during her resignation speech when Brexit brought down her government in 2019.
What if it’s a hung parliament?
If the election results in a hung parliament, the Prime Minister will stay in post until parties can secure a majority in the House of Commons. This means they will be in Number 10 until the next government is formed. This happened in 2010, when Gordon Brown remained in Downing Street for five days after the election while David Cameron and Nick Clegg sewed up a Tory-Lib Dem coalition.
Where will Rishi Sunak live now?
Rishi Sunak and his family are very wealthy and have plenty of places to go once they leave Number 10. The couple own four different properties, with two in London, one in Yorkshire, and another in California. Given the short distance, they will likely go straight to their five-bedroom mews home in Kensington, west London, which is estimated by estate agents to be worth more than £7 million.
