This election, the first at the national level for the Prime Minister who took office in October, served as a real test ahead of the next general election, which is scheduled for late 2024.
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Published on 05/05/2023 22:49
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British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in London (UK), May 5, 2023. (DANIEL LEAL / AFP)
On the eve of the coronation of Charles III. On Saturday 6th May Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s British Conservatives suffered heavy losses in local elections in England. It was the first test at the ballot box for the Prime Minister arriving at Downing Street in October and the results, still partial, are not good. The Tories, who have been in power for 13 years, suffered significant defeats in traditional bastions of the British right after the vote held on Thursday to renew 8,000 seats in 230 local councils.
“It’s always disappointing for these hard-working conservative advisers,” Rishi Sunak reacted to Sky News as soon as the early morning results were announced, reiterating his promises nationally on the economy, health or the fight against illegal immigration .
More than 1,000 elected officials lost to the Conservatives
After counting ballots in 219 of the 230 local councils at stake this year, the Conservatives have lost more than 1,000 elected officials, according to the BBC. Labor wins 513 but is far from the only one benefiting from majority distrust. The Liberal Democrats (centrists) recorded a net gain of 409 seats, while the Green Party’s ecologists won 238.
For example, the Labor Party, which is hoping to bring its leader Keir Starmer to Downing Street after the next general election at the end of next year, won the council of Stoke-on-Trent (north), the ‘capital’. Brexit, which voted 69% to leave the European Union in 2016, and that of Dover, port of the English Channel, traditionally on the right. “We have fantastic results across the country,” Keir Starmer told supporters in Medway (south-east), where Labor took over the local council from the Tories.
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