Britain’s ruling Conservatives faced significant losses in local elections, marking their worst results in recent memory and serving as a crucial test ahead of the upcoming general election, slated to be held by January 2025.
“Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s party lost nearly 500 councillors and control of 12 councils as well as a parliamentary seat,” after voting across a wide swath of England on Thursday saw significant gains for the Labour opposition.
In a rare success, a Tory mayor won a third term in Tees Valley, northeast England, albeit with a vastly reduced majority, providing Sunak with some respite.
Labour, out of power since 2010 and defeated by Boris Johnson’s Conservatives in the 2019 general election, capitalized on its victory in the Blackpool South seat and other successes to demand a national vote.
“Let’s turn the page on decline,” Labour leader Keith Starmer told supporters in the East Midlands, where the party won the mayoral race.
Sunak is required to call a general election by January 28 next year at the latest, and has indicated he is planning for a poll in the second half of 2024.
Writing in Saturday’s Daily Telegraph, Sunak acknowledged that the returns showed “voters are frustrated,” but insisted that “Labour is not winning in places they admit they need for a majority”.
“Conservatives have everything to fight for,” Sunak concluded.
Labour has maintained double-digit poll leads throughout Sunak’s 18 months in charge, with previous scandals, a cost-of-living crisis, and various other issues denting the Tories’ standing.
On Thursday, the Conservatives were defending nearly 1,000 council seats, many of which were secured in 2021 when they led nationwide polls. However, this was before the implosion of Johnson’s premiership and his successor Liz Truss’s disastrous 49-day tenure.
With almost all results in by Saturday morning, the Conservatives had lost close to half of those seats.
If the results were replicated in a nationwide contest, initial tallies suggested Labour would win 34 percent of the vote, with the Tories trailing by nine points, according to the BBC.
Sky News’ projection for a general election using the results predicted that Labour would be the largest party but fall short of an overall majority.
Labour’s victory in Blackpool, with a mammoth 26-percent swing, was the Conservatives’ 11th such loss in this parliament, the most by any government since the late 1960s.
There has been speculation in Westminster that restive Tory lawmakers could use the dire local election results to try to replace Sunak, but that prospect seems to have failed to materialize.
However, it was not all good news for Labour.
The party lost control of one local authority and suffered some councillor losses to independents elsewhere, due to what analysts said was its stance on the Israel-Hamas war.
Polling expert John Curtice assessed that there were ominous signs for the opposition.
“These were more elections in which the impetus to defeat the Conservatives was greater than the level of enthusiasm for Labour,” he noted in the newspaper.
“Electorally, it is still far from clear that Sir Keir Starmer is the heir to (Tony) Blair.”
