2024-05-03 08:25:50
In the last elections scheduled before the general elections, the Conservative Party lost hundreds of local positions in England this Thursday and suffered one of its worst defeats in a Parliament seat that was also up for grabs.
The Gaza war reopens wounds in the British Labor Party
The projections on the first results indicate that the tories They can lose up to 500 places among mayors, councilors and police commissioners. The overwhelming majority of the vote has been in England, and includes London, Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham, although a few police commissioner positions are also voted on in Wales.
“It is one of the worst, if not the worst, Conservative results in local elections in the last 40 years,” he said this Friday on BBC4 radio its polling analyst, Professor John Curtice. With the results available, he believes that the conservatives will lose up to 500 seats, that is, half of those they had and were in dispute in this partial vote.
Furthermore, thinking about the national elections, the most alarming defeat for the Conservatives against the Labor Party has come from Blackpool South, in the north of England, where the support of the tories It has sunk more than 30 points. Curtice points out that it is the third largest swing from the Conservative vote to the Labor vote since the Second World War. This is the fifth special election – those held to replace a deputy between electoral cycles – in which Labor wins after rising more than 20 points, something that agrees with the advantage now reflected in national polls. The conservative candidate came second, but just over a hundred votes away from the third, his rival from Reform UK, the far-right group that is the heir to Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party and which has risen 10 points compared to 2019.
Thermometer
Local elections are not a prediction of what may happen in the general elections as participation is much lower – around a third of the electorate usually votes – and there are more parties that have representation, such as the liberal democrats, the greens and independent groups. . But they give some clues to the mood of the country at this time.
“We have to remember that local elections generally do not tell us much about what to expect from the general elections,” explains Sophie Stowers, academic researcher at the think tank, to elDiario.es. UK in a Changing Europe. “But we can use them as a general thermometer of the popularity of the parties in an area.”
Beyond criticism of the management of the national government, local councils suffer from the deterioration of public services after 14 years of cuts in public spending, which in England and Wales depends largely on the London government. One in five councils in England is on the verge of defaulting on payments and 65% have less public aid than a decade ago. Birmingham, with more than a million inhabitants, in 2023 became the largest city in Europe to declare bankruptcy.
Labor and Gaza
Despite Labor’s victories across England, there are also some signs that support for the party has slipped in majority-Muslim neighborhoods after Keir Starmer dithered over calling for a ceasefire in Gaza (this is now the official position of the Labor Party). party) and Labor councilors will leave the party in protest in Oxford and other cities.
In some cities, the beneficiaries, according to preliminary results, have been partly the greens. “Not only have they gained seats, but their percentage of the vote has increased compared to last year. They may end up ahead of their best results in 2019,” Curtice says. For him, in any case, the news of the day is clear: “The main message from the polls is that the Conservative Party continues to be in deep electoral trouble.”
The electoral call for the general elections now depends on the Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, who has until December 17 to make the announcement. The conservative, who celebrates two years in office this fall, has only said that the elections will be held in the second half of this year.
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