A historic defeat for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s ruling Conservative Tories is on the horizon in England’s local elections.
After counting a quarter of the 230 or so districts in which elections were held yesterday, the Tories had already lost more than 200 seats in local councils. 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 and Stoke-on-Trent, Labor regained 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.
Count expected by tonight
The counting of the votes should continue until tonight. “The clear message tonight is that the Conservatives have done poorly and they could end up losing 1,000 seats,” electoral expert John Curtice, from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, told BBC 4 radio this morning.
Conservative politicians had already put the figure of 1,000 lost seats into play before the election – according to media observers in the hope of being able to count a not-so-bad result as a success afterwards. But now it could 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 this as an attempt to prevent people without identification documents from casting their votes. There is no ID requirement in the UK.
