Keir Starmer has won the leadership of the British Labour Party beating rivals Rebecca Long-Bailey and Lisa Nandy after the first round of voting.

Mr Stamer won 275,780 votes out of 490,731 returned votes - equivalent to 56.2%.

Ms Long-Bailey won more than 27% votes, while Ms Nandy who came third secured just over 16% of the ballots.

In 2015, Jeremy Corbyn took almost 60% of the vote.

Although the result marks a significant change of direction for the party, with a move away from the politics of Jeremy Corbyn, Mr Starmer paid tribute to outgoing leader and said he would work to stamp out anti-Semitism in the party.

He said: "I want to pay tribute to Jeremy Corbyn, who led our party through some really difficult times, who energised our movement and who's a friend as well as a colleague.

"Anti-Semitism has been a stain on our party. I have seen the grief that it's brought to so many Jewish communities. On behalf of the Labour Party, I am sorry.

"I will tear out this poison by its roots and judge success by the return of Jewish members and those who felt that they could no longer support us." 

Who is the new leader of the British Labour party?

Keir Starmer was named after a founder of the party he has now been elected to lead.

The human rights lawyer, who says he has spent his life fighting injustice, was raised in Southwark, south London, by toolmaker father Rodney and nurse mother Josephine.

His parents who were Labour party supporters named him after Keir Hardie, the party's first parliamentary leader.

But his decision to accept a knighthood in 2014 made it trickier for him to shake off perceptions of privilege - and allegations he is too middle class to speak to Labour's heartlands.

Keir Starmer with rivals rivals Rebecca Long-Bailey and Lisa Nandy

He studied at Reigate Grammar School and read law at Leeds and then Oxford before embarking on a legal career which saw him rise to be head of the Crown Prosecution Service.

His CV includes co-founding the renowned Doughty Street Chambers and advising the Policing Board to ensure the Police Service of Northern Ireland complied with human rights laws.

He entered Parliament as the MP for Holborn and St Pancras in 2015, speaking about the importance of equal rights for all in his maiden speech.

The 57-year-old was quickly elevated to the frontbench, serving as a shadow Home Office minister before being promoted to shadow Brexit secretary soon after the EU referendum in 2016.

Despite clear divisions within the upper echelons of the party over the UK's exit, he remained in post for three and a half tumultuous years, shadowing three different secretaries of state as the negotiations tore holes into the Tories.

Mr Starmer was instrumental in getting Labour to back a second referendum and said, at the party's conference in 2018, that "nobody is ruling out" an option for Remain being included on the ballot paper.

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He has since said that the issue is settled, but has refused to rule out campaigning for Britain to return to the EU in the long term.

During the leadership race he pledged to raise income tax for the top 5% of earners, to campaign for EU freedom of movement to continue and to push for "common ownership" of public services such as mail, rail and energy.

He has also vowed to introduce a Prevention of Military Intervention Act if he becomes PM, to ensure Britain could only go to war if the Commons agreed.

He is married to Victoria, a solicitor, and the couple have two children.