Britain’s Conservatives suffered a sweeping setback on Friday in local elections seen as a barometer of the party’s performance in the upcoming general election and a key challenge for embattled Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. test.
With the majority of results due late on Friday, the Conservatives are expected to post their worst performance in a series of local elections since the 1990s. The party has lost more than 400 seats so far, including six in the northeast England town of Hartlepool, symbolizing the expanded political map it has claimed since Brexit. Now losing ground to a resurgent Labor Party.
The Conservatives did score a high-profile victory in the closely watched mayoral race in Tees Valley, also in northeast England, with Conservative incumbent Ben Houchen holding on. seats, barely gaining a reduced majority.
Almost everywhere else, however, prospects are bleak for the Conservatives, who have trailed the opposition Labor Party in national opinion polls for 18 months and face the prospect of a crushing general election defeat.
“This looks to be the worst local election for the Conservatives since the last years of the Margaret Thatcher and John Major era,” said pollster Robert Hayward, a Conservative member of the House of Lords. was the period before Tony Blair came to power.
In the seaside district of Blackpool South, Labor won a special election for a parliamentary seat, trailing significantly behind the Conservatives, who finished a narrow second, narrowly ahead of the right-wing small party Reform Britain. Former Conservative MP Scott Benton resigned in March after becoming embroiled in a lobbying scandal.
Labor leader Keir Starmer described the result in the constituency as a “major victory” and the most important result of the day. “This is a campaign where voters have the opportunity to send a message directly to Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party,” Mr Starmer said, “and that message is an overwhelming vote for change.”
Sunak admitted it was “disappointing” that the Conservatives had lost so many parliamentary seats, but praised the victory in Tees Valley. He said Labor had “given everything” in that election but still lost.
Still, the setback spilled into the Prime Minister’s own backyard: Labor won mayoral races in York and North Yorkshire, including the Richmond area Sunak represents in parliament.
Voters went to the polls in 107 towns and cities across England on Thursday to elect members of parliament and 11 mayors, with the results for London’s mayor due to be announced on Saturday.
The results are being closely watched as Sunak’s party is deeply divided and time is running out as he must hold an election by January next year. While analysts expect the Conservatives to lose a significant number of seats, Sunak’s allies fear a worse-than-expected result could spur his critics within the party to try to oust him and install another leader.
The Prime Minister’s allies hope that some high-profile wins – particularly in two regional mayoral races – will reassure Tory MPs, stabilize his shaky leadership and end questions about whether he will lead the party Speculation about a general election expected to be held in the autumn.
Mr Huhen’s victory in the Tees Valley has taken some of the pressure off Mr Sunak. But even this good news is a double-edged sword, because Hou Chen campaigned mainly on his own brand rather than that of his party, and his majority fell from nearly 73% in 2021 to about 53%.
The result of another key mayoral race in the West Midlands is not expected to be known until Saturday, and Conservative candidate Andy Street there also distanced himself from the party during the campaign.
Even if the Conservatives win both elections, they will lose more than 40% of the 985 parliamentary seats they defend. Many of these elections were held in towns that were traditionally dominated by Labour, but which shifted to the Conservatives in the years after the 2016 Brexit referendum.
To make matters more difficult, the last time such an election was held in 2021, Sunak’s Conservative Party enjoyed a period of popularity thanks to the vigorous rollout of coronavirus vaccines by one of his predecessors, Boris Johnson. That means the Conservatives may still have a long way to go.
As well as Hartlepool, Labor also won control of Redditch, Thurrock, Milton Keynes and Rushmore councils in Hampshire, although it suffered a setback in Oldham, although Labor still was the largest party there but lost full control of parliament after losing some seats.
Analysts said this reflected differences within the Labor Party over its stance on Israel’s war with Hamas, especially among Muslim voters, many of whom said the Labor leader should be more outspoken in criticizing Israel’s military action in Gaza.
For Starmer, the election is an opportunity to show that he is on track to become Britain’s next prime minister, as current polls suggest. Despite Starmer’s party’s high approval ratings, few voters appear to be enthusiastic about him, and he is seen as a capable but not particularly charismatic politician.
John Curtice, one of Britain’s leading pollsters, estimates that if local results were generalized nationally, Labor would win 34% of the vote, nine points ahead of the Conservatives (25%). Support for the Conservatives will have plummeted since the last election.
London voters will have to wait until Saturday to find out whether Mayor Sadiq Khan wins a third term, which would be the first for a London mayor since the position was created in 2000. , Susan Hall’s arrival will be a huge surprise as the British capital leans left-leaning politically. But assuming he wins, the margin of victory will be watched closely for signs of waning popularity.
The most important challenge, however, is the Conservatives. Losing seats could be demoralizing for the party’s loyal and panic-stricken Conservative MPs, who fear they will be kicked out of parliament at a general election.
For Sunak, the polls are now so bad that some see a new leader as the only possible way to avoid a general election defeat. In January, former cabinet minister Simon Clarke called for the Prime Minister to resign, but this failed to spark a larger rebellion.
The Conservatives have ousted two leaders, Johnson and Liz Truss, since their landslide election in 2019. Overturning a third would be risky because there is no obvious replacement guaranteed to be more successful than Mr Sunak and there were no fresh calls for the prime minister to resign from Conservative MPs by Friday afternoon.
On Thursday, Johnson showed up at a polling station without photo ID – a requirement his own government has introduced in 2022 – and was turned away (he later returned with the correct ID) , a reminder of his chaotic leadership style.
