The Labour leader, with wife Victoria, received a rapturous welcome after returning from the Palace where he had an audience with the King around noon, shortly after Rishi Sunak exited having tendered his resignation.

   Sir Keir said he wanted to ‘change the country’ but warned it will ‘take a while’, saying he wanted to restore the values of ‘service’ to politics. He admitted that many people did not believe he would improve the country. ‘My government will fight every day until you believe again,’ he said.

   At Buckingham Palace, the couple were welcomed by the King and Queen’s principal private secretary Sir Clive Alderton, along with Charles’s equerry Royal Navy Commander William Thornton. They left 20 minutes later to head back to Downing Street, after Sir Keir was appointed to the job.

   Buckingham Palace said in a statement: ‘The King received in Audience The Right Honourable Sir Keir Starmer MP today and requested him to form a new Administration.

   ‘Sir Keir accepted His Majesty’s offer and kissed hands upon his appointment as Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury.’

   The time-honoured choreography comes as Sir Keir’s majority ticks up to 174, just short of Tony Blair’s 179 in 1997. The Tories have 121 with just two left to declare, far worse than their previous nadir of 156 in 1906.

   The Lib Dems also inflicted massive pain on the Conservatives, racking up a record 71 seats as Reform leeched millions of votes and came second in around a hundred constituencies -but only scored four MPs of their own.

   However, Labour’s victory is being dubbed a ‘loveless landslide’ and a ‘super meh-jority’, having received barely one in three votes across the UK.

   Polling experts highlighted how Labour’s vote share of 33.8 per cent is likely to be less than any of Sir Tony’s general election victories in 1997, 2001 or 2005.

   It is even less than the 40 per cent vote share hard-left Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn secured in 2017 and lower than the 36.1 per cent David Cameron got for the Conservatives in 2010 when that year’s election ended in a hung parliament.

   Some newly-elected Labour MPs suggested the public will be thinking about overhauling Britain’s voting system in the wake of the party’s triumph, while Corbyn’s allies swiped that Sir Keir had won ‘by default’ due to the dramatic collapse in Conservative support.

   Less than an hour before Sir Keir arrived at the Palace, Mr Sunak bade goodbye to Downing Street after leading the Tories to their worst ever election result.

   Flanked by clearly emotional wife Akshata, the PM delivered his parting statement outside the famous black door saying he was ‘sorry’ and had ‘heard the anger’ of the country and the ‘clear message’ of the ballot.

   Sir Keir trumpeted his victory at a rally in central London in the early hours after the party formally crested the 325 seats needed to control the Commons, saying ‘we did it!’

   Sealing his triumph with a kiss from Victoria, he said the British people had ‘voted to turn the page’ on 14 years of Conservative rule -and delivered a riposte to his critics saying there was ‘nothing inevitable’ about the outcome.

   In a jaw-dropping moment, Liz Truss was among the casualties -giving up a monumental 24,000 majority as she was edged out by Labour in South West Norfolk. 

   Earlier, Penny Mordaunt and Grant Shapps fell victims to a brutal Tory cull as Labour swept towards election victory.

   A glum-looking Defence Secretary suffered a ‘Portillo Moment’ as he was defeated by Labour in Welwyn Hatfield by around 3,000 votes.

   In his parting shot, Mr Shapps said the Conservatives had ‘lost’ the election rather than Labour winning it -and ‘tried the patience’ of the public by being divided.