The slowness with which the results of the municipal elections in England emerged throughout this Friday has meant double torture for Rishi Sunak. Each announced defeat was 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 tories, has been present throughout the campaign. Labor Party leader Keir Starmer has been quick to demand that advance. The prime minister has clung to the few positive results of the day, such as the Conservative victory in the Tees Valley region, to try to withstand internal criticism.
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 (being a general, albeit partial, election to appoint an MP), and that message has been overwhelmingly in favor of change ” said the leader of the Labor Party, Keir Starmer, upon learning the voting figures. “The time has come for a general election,” he claimed.
First municipal results
Throughout the morning of this Friday, the results of 54 of the 107 municipal councils that must be renewed were known. The conservatives have so far lost almost 200 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.
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The first defensive reactions, faced with the idea that the results will ruin Rishi Sunak’s political future, have emerged immediately. “These are not great results, but we came from very high numbers (in the last municipal elections) in 2021,” said the president of the Conservative Party in Times Radio. “The prime minister will continue to be the party leader (and candidate) in the next general election, there is no doubt about that,” he said.
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 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. By mid-morning the results from Tees Valley were known, and Downing Street was given a break. Mayor Houchen had obtained 53% of the votes, compared to 42% obtained by the Labor candidate, whose team admitted defeat before the count was completed.
In any case, Houchen achieved electoral support of 73% in May 2021. The fact that almost 20% of his support has transferred to the opposition – Labor, Liberal Democrats or independents – or has stayed at home reveals that Sunak is by no means out of the woods. The opposition remembers that a 12% advantage would be enough to take away from the conservatives the seven seats that that region contributes to Parliament.
The West Midlands results will not be known until Saturday. If the Conservatives manage to retain the two seats, Sunak will be able to breathe with some relief and use the textbook argument that local elections are always used by the electorate to give a wake-up call to the Government in power. 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.