As the results of Friday’s local elections come in, reports are emerging that Britain’s ruling Conservative Party is losing little by little, putting serious pressure on Prime Minister Rishi Sunak ahead of a UK general election in which the main opposition Labour Party looks increasingly likely to return to power after a long hiatus, ABC News reports.
Labour gained control of councils in England, which it had not held for decades, and was successful in a special parliamentary by-election. The only negative was in some areas with large Muslim populations, such as Oldham in the north-west of England, where the party’s candidates appear to have suffered as a result of leader Keir Starmer taking a sharply pro-Israeli stance on the Gaza conflict.
Most significantly, Labour won Blackpool South, a long-standing Labour constituency in northwest England that went to the Conservatives in the last general election in 2019, when then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson won a large number of votes. In an election triggered by the resignation of a Conservative lawmaker following a lobbying scandal, Labour’s Chris Webb received 10,825 votes, 7,607 more than his second-placed Conservative rival. Starmer said:
“This seismic win in Blackpool South is the most important result today. This is the one contest where voters had the chance to send a message to Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives directly, and that message is an overwhelming vote for change.”
Thursday’s elections were important in their own way: voters were deciding who would manage many aspects of their daily lives, such as fixing roads, fighting crime and cleaning up rubbish in the coming years. But with a general election looming, they will be viewed through a national prism.
The election result so far is further evidence that Labour is likely to form the next government – and by a large margin – and that Starmer will come to power.
As of early Friday, when only a quarter of the 2,661 seats on the ballot had been counted, the Conservatives had lost 115 seats and Labour had lost 60. Labour won in areas that voted heavily for Britain’s exit from the European Union and where Johnson defeated them, such as Hartlepool in northeast England and Thurrock in southeast England. He also seized control of Rushmoor, a leafy area surrounded by and dotted with military councils in the south of England where he had never been in power.
John Curtice, a professor of politics at the University of Strathclyde, says the election results show the Conservatives are losing about half the seats they are trying to defend. He told BBC radio:
“We are probably looking at certainly one of the worst, if not the worst, Conservative performances in local government elections for the last 40 years.”
Results will be totalled until Saturday. Sunak hopes to be able to point to successes, particularly in several key mayoral races, to quell talk that the Conservative Party will change leader again before the UK’s main election, which could come as early as next month.
Sunak became prime minister in October 2022 after the short-lived tenure of her predecessor Liz Truss, who left office 49 days after passing a budget with unfunded tax cuts that rattled financial markets and led to a sharp rise in borrowing costs for homeowners.
Her chaotic leadership compounded the Conservatives’ difficulties after the circus surrounding her predecessor Johnson, who was forced to quit after he was caught lying to Parliament over a lockdown breach at his Downing Street office.
Nothing Sunak has tried seems to have been able to affect the political calculus: Labour is consistently 20 percentage points ahead of her in opinion polls, which in the event of a general election would result in a landslide victory similar to the one Tony Blair won in 1997.
