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Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives have suffered a series of heavy defeats in elections across England and Wales, leaving the prime minister struggling to avert a general election rout but safe in office for now.
The results confirmed Tory MPs’ fears and the UK prime minister described the loss of Conservative councillors as “disappointing”, as Labour gained seats in key electoral battlegrounds across the country.
In the last big test of public opinion ahead of the general election expected this year, and with most of the council results declared, the Tories had lost around half of the seats they were defending.
They were also trounced in the Blackpool South parliamentary by-election, with a 26 per cent swing from Conservatives to Labour — the third-biggest since the second world war.
By mid-afternoon the Tories had suffered a net loss of 218 council seats while retaining 264, according to PA data. Labour had made 146 gains, securing 679 seats overall.
Sir Keir Starmer, Labour leader, said it had been “a very good day” for his party, as he paid a celebratory visit to Rishi Sunak’s Richmond constituency, part of the new York and North Yorkshire mayoralty won by Labour.
The results suggested that Starmer was on course for a general election victory, but not a landslide. “This is clearly a bad result for the Conservatives,” said James Johnson, pollster and co-founder of JL Partners. But he added that Labour would have to do even better at the general election to achieve a sizeable majority.
The BBC’s projection of an equivalent national vote share put Labour on 34 per cent, Conservatives on 25, Liberal Democrats on 17 and Others on 24, but pollsters note that people often vote differently in general elections. Most national opinion polls give Labour a 20-point lead.
Johnson said the BBC projection mirrored the nine-point lead Labour enjoyed in last year’s local elections, which was widely seen as sufficient for a bare majority, and well below the 17-point projected national vote lead enjoyed by Tony Blair in 1996, ahead of Labour’s landslide in 1997.
Sunak appeared to gain some breathing space after the threat of a Conservative mutiny against his leadership receded. A victory by Lord Ben Houchen, the high-profile Tory mayor of Tees Valley, calmed nerves among Conservative MPs.
Houchen, a popular local figure who had distanced himself from Sunak and the Conservatives in the campaign, obtained a reduced majority of 18,789. He did not wear a blue rosette at his count.
The Conservatives also hope that Andy Street, the West Midlands mayor, who preferred an endorsement from former prime minister Boris Johnson to one from Sunak, will win a third term when votes are counted on Saturday.
Labour insiders said Starmer’s position on the Gaza war may have cost the party Muslim votes in the region.
On Saturday there will be an intense focus on the London mayoral contest, with rumours swirling that Tory candidate Susan Hall may have defied opinion polls and run Labour incumbent Sadiq Khan close.
Rightwing Conservative critics of Sunak on Friday pulled back from trying to topple him but urged him to tack to the right. One rebel source said that some Tory MPs were looking for an “off ramp” and that the Tees Valley result provided them with an excuse not to challenge the prime minister.
Dame Andrea Jenkyns, a Boris Johnson supporter who submitted a no-confidence letter in Sunak last November, told the BBC: “It’s looking unlikely that the MPs are going to put the letters in. So we’ve got to pull together.”
Projections that the Conservatives could lose half the council seats they held were based on results in 71 of the 107 councils being contested. Some voters in England and Wales were also electing mayors as well as police and crime commissioners.
Sir John Curtice, the veteran elections expert, said the results were “not far short” of catastrophic for the Conservatives and “one of the worst, if not the worst” result for the party in local elections for 40 years.
Starmer’s focus on Friday was on Labour’s Blackpool South by-election victory, where the new MP, Chris Webb, beat the Conservatives’ David Jones with a 26 per cent swing. Reform UK came a narrow third, just 117 votes behind the Conservatives.
Labour overturned a Tory majority of 3,690 votes to take the parliamentary seat with a 7,607 majority. The seat was formerly held by Scott Benton, who was forced to quit in a lobbying scandal.
Reform UK, formerly the Brexit party and founded by Nigel Farage, secured 17 per cent of the vote in Blackpool South, one of the races it focused on, after standing candidates for only 12 per cent of contested council seats.
Reform UK is splitting the vote on the right, a threat that could intensify at the general election when it will field candidates across the country.
It was not all good news for Labour. The party lost control of Oldham council in Greater Manchester, after ceding several seats to independents who stood on a pro-Palestine platform. It also lost seats in Newcastle.
Pat McFadden, Labour’s elections co-ordinator, admitted that the Gaza war was costing the party votes. “There’s no denying this is a factor in some parts of the country,” he said.
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