Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party is heading for a historic defeat in local elections in England. As of Friday night, the Conservatives had already lost more than 1,000 local council seats. This made it clear that the opposition Labor Party is the strongest force at the local level in the country for the first time since 2002. It won around 500 seats. The British rejected Sunak, a Labor spokesman said.
Some drew comparisons to the 1996 local elections, which preceded former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s landslide Labor victory in the general election a year later. The vote was seen as Sunak’s first test of humor – and this time there will also be a parliamentary election in just over a year. Sky News correspondent Beth Rigby spoke of a “nightmare scenario”.
The votes are still being counted.
In several communities, such as Medway or Stoke-on-Trent, Labor managed to regain a majority – in some cases for the first time in decades. The counting of votes is expected to continue into the night. “The clear message tonight is that the Conservatives have done badly and could end up losing 1,000 seats,” pollster John Curtice of the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow told BBC 4 radio station on Friday morning.
Conservative politicians had already staked the figure of 1,000 seats lost before the election – according to media observers, in the hope of being able to evaluate a not-so-bad result later as a success. But now it could really get that bad. It remains to be seen whether the results point to a majority for the Labor Party in the next general election, Curtice said.
tension among conservatives
Prime Minister Sunak, in an early reaction to the result, said it was “always disappointing to lose hard working Conservative councillors”, but it was too early to take stock. At the same time, Sunak spoke of good results in some districts. But observers saw it differently: “Today’s local elections are a disaster for conservatives,” emphasized the Byline Times portal.
A scene featuring cabinet member Johnny Mercer reflected the mood almost symbolically: as the MP for Plymouth was speaking live on the BBC about a “terrible night” for his party, it was announced in the background that the Labor Party would be in charge of the southern harbor from England. in the future. Loud applause caused Mercer to faint into silence.
The hard defeat puts pressure on Sunak, who managed to stabilize the party again in his almost 200 days in office. After the scandals of his predecessors Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, Sunak was able to pick up the conversation not just about young men – and their mistakes. The election result can now ruin the good mood.
accusations
Critics within the party accuse the 42-year-old of lacking the campaign muscle of his predecessor Johnson. Sunak looks deliberately relaxed and intelligent. In conversations with citizens, however, the wealthy former investment banker doesn’t come across as natural as the down-to-earth populist Johnson.
This was preceded by a dispute over the need for identification at the polling station, which was first introduced by the Conservative government. Critics saw this as an attempt to prevent people without identification papers from voting. There is no UK ID requirement.