PM Modi congratulates Keir Starmer on historic win in UK polls

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi extended warm congratulations to Labour Party leader Keir Starmer on Friday for his party's sweeping triumph in the UK general elections. Modi expressed eagerness for collaborative efforts to bolster the India-UK comprehensive strategic partnership. 

Congratulating him, Modi said, "Heartiest congratulations and best wishes to Keir Starmer on the remarkable victory in the UK general elections. I look forward to our positive and constructive collaboration to further strengthen the India-UK Comprehensive Strategic Partnership in all areas, fostering mutual growth and prosperity." 

Modi also commended outgoing British Prime Minister and Conservative Party leader Rishi Sunak for his commendable leadership and significant contributions in enhancing bilateral relations between India and the UK during his tenure.

"Best wishes to you and your family for the future," he said.

Starmer is set to become Britain's next prime minister after his Labour Party hurled towards a landslide majority on Friday in the parliamentary elections and dealt a bruising defeat for incumbent premier Rishi Sunak's Conservative Party.

Starmer, who was knighted by the late Queen Elizabeth II for his services to law and criminal justice, spent much of his career in the legal profession before stepping into the world of politics, first elected as Labour's member of Parliament from London in 2015. Father of two teenage kids, who he and his National Health Service (NHS) employee wife Victoria have chosen to keep out of the political spotlight, declared in his victory speech that the change he has promised will begin imminently. 

Born in London to a toolmaker father and an NHS nurse mother, Starmer grew up in the town of Oxted in Surrey. He has spoken emotionally about his mother, Josephine, suffering from the debilitating condition of Still's disease which she succumbed to a few weeks before he first became an MP in 2015. PTI