2023-05-05 07:59:31
A historic defeat for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s ruling Conservatives is looming in the local elections in England. After counting a quarter of the approximately 230 districts in which elections were held on Thursday, the Tories had already lost more than 200 seats in local parliaments. The opposition Labor Party, on the other hand, gained more than 100 seats. About 50 went to the Liberal Democrats.
In several communities such as Medway or Stoke-on-Trent, Labor was able to regain a majority – in some cases for the first time in decades. The outcome of the election has therefore already been compared to the 1996 local elections, which preceded the overwhelming Labor victory under ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair in the general election a year later.
The counting of the votes is likely to continue until Friday evening. “The clear message tonight is that the Conservatives have done poorly and they might end up losing 1,000 seats,” polling expert John Curtice, from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, told BBC 4 radio station Friday morning. Conservative politicians had already brought the figure of 1,000 lost seats into play before the election – according to media observers in the hope of being able to evaluate a not-so-bad result followingwards as a success. But now it might actually get that bad. Whether the results point to a majority for Labor in the next general election remains to be seen, said Curtice.
This was preceded by a dispute over the need for identification at the polling station, which was introduced for the first time by the conservative government. Critics saw it as an attempt to prevent people without identification documents from casting their votes. There is no ID requirement in the UK.
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