Britain’s opposition Labour Party won a parliamentary seat in northern England on Friday and control of several councils, inflicting heavy losses on the governing Conservatives to pile more pressure on Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
The thumping victory set the tone for what will be a closely watched two days of local results before a national election this year, which polling shows could put Labour leader Keir Starmer in power and end 14 years of Conservative government.
Despite the expected loss, Conservative Ben Houchen won re-election as mayor of the northern Tees Valley region, giving Sunak some consolation. He also hopes his party’s West Midlands mayoral candidate will stay in power and silence calls for his resignation. On Thursday, 4,444 voters cast their ballots for more than 2,000 local authority seats across England and several high-profile mayoral races, including in the capital London.
Blackpool South is the only seat in dispute after a Conservative MP resigned over a lobbying scandal, and Mr Starmer was quick to say it was up to the vote.
“A direct message has been sent to the Prime Minister here in Blackpool,” Mr Starmer told supporters in the seaside town. “This is aimed directly at Rishi Sunak and says we are tired of your decline, disruption and division and we want change. We want to continue working with Labor.
Labor candidate Chris Webb won with 10,825 votes to Conservative candidate’s 3,218 votes. Labour’s 26% increase on its 2019 result was the third-largest in post-war electoral history, according to pollster John Curtis.
The right-wing Reform Party narrowly missed out on victory over the Conservative Party, finishing in third place.
Conservative Party leader Richard Holden said: “It was a tough night.”
Bad result for the Conservatives
Most polls leading up to the national election, which Mr Sunak says he plans to hold in the second half of this year, show his Conservative Party trailing Labor by around 20 points. It is being
Britain’s leader had hoped that announcing increases in defense spending and passing a divisive plan to send illegal asylum seekers to Rwanda would win support from voters, but the defeat forced him to resign. There is a possibility that there will be new demands.
Mr Curtis said that based on results to date, the Conservative Party had its worst local election result in 40 years and was on track to lose the national election.
The first of more than 2,600 local council results echoed the views of Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt, who had predicted significant losses for the ruling party before the vote, with Labor gaining at the expense of the Conservatives. It was shown that it was increasing.
But the Conservatives took advantage of Mr Starmer’s failure to seize control of the south-east parliaments he had targeted, praising the victory of Mr Houchen, who had distanced himself from the Conservative brand during the campaign.
The Conservative Party also wants to retain the West Midlands mayoralty. The results of that election and that of London, where current Labor mayor Sadiq Khan is expected to be re-elected, are due to be announced on Saturday.
“We’ve still got lots of results to come as well … there are also things that I would point to, Harlow for example where Keir Starmer held a rally just on Wednesday saying that was a place that he had to win to be on track to win a general election – that hasn’t happened,” Sunak told reporters.
Labour said anger over its stance on Gaza, where Palestinian health authorities say more than 34,500 people have been killed in Israel’s military offensive, had tempered some council results but the wins showed people were backing Labour.
“This is on the eve of a general election … The mood is that it’s time for a change,” Labour’s national campaign coordinator, Pat McFadden, said.
