The slowness with which the results of the municipal elections in England are emerging is a double torture for Rishi Sunak. Every announced defeat is a blow; The accumulated sum of all of them, a grid in which the prime minister is more and more charred in the eyes of his critics. And the agony, in the form of a recount, can last until this Saturday, May 4. The shadow of an advance of the general elections, given the internal discontent of the toriesit doesn’t stop growing.
Along with the thousands of councilors and dozens of mayors who revalidated their positions in these elections, a by-election (by-election, to replace an MP in the House of Commons) in the Blackpool South constituency. In April 2023, a group of journalists from the newspaper The Times, who posed as investors, recorded the Conservative MP Scott Benton when he tried to influence the decisions of members of the Government in exchange for a commission. His resignation left the seat vacant, which this Thursday passed, in a historic turnaround in the number of votes, to the Labor Party’s Chris Webb. With support from 58.9% of voters compared to 17.5% obtained by the Conservatives, the turnaround has been one of the most drastic in memory – the third in size – in post-war British politics.
Even more humiliating has been the fact that the tories They have barely managed to retain second position by a few tenths, with the populist Reform Party —xenophobic and pro-Brexit— hot on their heels with 16.9% support. “We go up and the conservatives go down. At some point we will cross paths,” predicted Lee Anderson, deputy of the emerging party. “I think that, with a general election in four or five months, we will surpass them.”
“This seismic victory in Blackpool South is the most important result of the day. Because it was the competition in which voters had the opportunity to send a direct message to Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives [al tratarse de una elección general, aunque parcial, para designar un diputado]and that message has been overwhelmingly in favor of change” said the leader of the Labor Party, Keir Starmer, upon learning of the voting figures.
First municipal results
In the early hours of this Friday, the results of at least a third of the 107 municipal councils that must be renewed were known. The conservatives have so far lost almost one hundred of the positions they retained until now, and at the rate at which the long day of counting is developing – which will last until Saturday in some constituencies – experts predict that the tories They could lose up to 500 of their 1,000 councillors. “They are heading towards what could be, if not the worst, one of the worst results for the Conservative Party in the last forty years,” John Curtice, one of the most prestigious and accurate electoral analysts in the United Kingdom, said on the BBC.
Join Morning Express to follow all the news and read without limits.
Subscribe
The first defensive reactions, faced with the idea that the results will ruin Rishi Sunak’s political future, have emerged immediately. “They are not great results, but we came from very high figures [en los pasados comicios municipales] in 2021″, the president of the Conservative Party said in Times Radio. “The prime minister will remain the leader of the party [y candidato] in the next general elections, there is no doubt about it,” he assured.
Although there is no scheduled date to elect a new Parliament and a new Government, Sunak has insisted in recent months that these elections will be held “in the second half of the year”, and all experts point to the month of November. However, the pressure from the hard wing of the party, which still demands more harshness than that exhibited with irregular immigration and predicts a humiliating defeat in the general elections, will be increased if the results of this Thursday’s elections are as catastrophic as they suggest. the first data. The idea of an early election is once again on the table, perhaps as soon as June, which would avoid Sunak the humiliation of having to submit to a hypothetical internal motion of censure.
To the accumulated quantitative advantage, Labor adds symbolic victories in four councils, two of them in conservative hands and two others without clear majorities: Rushmoor, Redditch, Hartlepool and Thurrock. The final results of the major mayoralties at stake will not be known until Saturday, but everything indicates that London, Manchester or Liverpool will continue to be controlled by the left.
Sunak clings his hopes of surviving this day to the results of two regions that must also change mayor: the West Midlands (Western Midlands) and Tees Valley, governed until now in the last two terms by the conservatives Andy Street and Ben Houchen. Both are very popular politicians in their respective territories, who have campaigned with their own brand and distanced themselves from the Conservative Party, at very low times of popularity. The polls in recent weeks reflected a possible comeback for both. The results will be known in Tees Valley mid-afternoon this Friday. To find out what happens in the West Midlands we will have to wait until Saturday.
In the event that the defeat is minimal, or if the Conservatives even manage to retain the two seats, Sunak will be able to breathe with some relief and make use of the textbook argument that local elections are always used by the electorate to give a touch of attention to the Government of the day. Although the total amount of the defeat, at the rate at which the count is going, points more to cruel punishment than to a slap on the wrist.
Follow all the international information on Facebook and xor in our weekly newsletter.
.
.
_
