2024-05-04 10:29:18
The ruling Conservative Party in Great Britain suffered one of the most high-profile defeats in recent decades at the regional elections held on May 2. This assessment was made by The Guardian newspaper based on the results of counting votes cast in 102 of 107 local authorities across England, Day.Az reports with reference to TASS.
The Tories have already lost over 448 seats in various government bodies – municipal, local and regional councils, that is, almost half compared to the 2021 elections. The ruling party was able to retain only 479 regional mandates. According to this indicator, it was surpassed not only by the opposition Labor Party (1,026 seats, plus 173 mandates), but also by the Liberal Democrats party (505 seats, plus 101 mandates). 224 seats came under the control of independent candidates (plus 92), 159 – under the control of representatives of the Green Party (plus 65 seats).
The final results of the expression of will should be summed up on Saturday. Among others, the winners of the elections for the posts of mayors of London, Greater Manchester, Liverpool and other cities will be named. In the case of the capital, there was no particular intrigue as expected. According to Sky News, both major parties have already accepted that the current mayor, Labor member Sadiq Khan, will win.
The Guardian quotes election expert John Curtis, a professor at the University of Strathclyde from Glasgow, as saying it was “one of the worst, if not the worst” Conservative results in four decades.
At the same time, Labour, despite reasonable optimism about the election results, admits that the pro-Israel position of the party under the leadership of Keir Starmer has negatively affected the preferences of voters in areas with a large proportion of the Muslim population. The results also showed that opinion polls were reasonably predicting a Labor victory in the parliamentary elections and a return to Downing Street after 14 years. The date of the elections has not yet been announced, but there is a high probability that they will take place in the fall of this year.
However, according to Sky News estimates, the party will not be able to gain full control of the House of Commons. Extrapolating current regional preferences to the entire country, the channel predicts that the Labor Party will gain 35% of the vote, and the Conservatives – 26%. That would give Keir Starmer’s party 294 seats in the 650-seat House of Commons, the lower house of parliament, 32 fewer than it needs to form a government alone, without compromise with other political forces. In this situation, the Conservatives would lose 130 seats, guaranteeing 242 seats in the House of Commons, and the Liberal Democrats would have 38 representatives instead of the current eight.
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