|
2024-05-08 Britain
|
|
Sunak led the British Conservatives to disaster. But it's not over yet
|
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Vasily Egorov
[REGNUM] The main result of voting in the last municipal elections in England was the final confidence in the fate of the ruling Conservative Party. They should be perceived as the last electoral test before the parliamentary elections, which will take place in the fall. Here, English voters decided on candidates for municipal deputies, regional mayors and police commissioners. So the Conservatives managed to re-elect only 515 of their municipalities, and another 474 Conservatives lost their positions. It turns out that almost every second candidate from the party lost his constituency.
| They made promises they never intended to keep, then proceeded to visibly break them. Voters resent that kind of thing. |
Moreover, in terms of the number of deputies promoted to municipal representative bodies, they were inferior not only to Labor, but even to the Liberal Democrats, thus taking only the overall third place in the virtual overall standings. To understand the scale, the Liberal Democrats in the House of Commons have only 15 deputies, versus 345 Conservatives.
Labor has quite successfully regained influence in the once industrial north of England. That very north of England, which in 2019, for the first time in history, decided to vote for the Conservatives and Boris Johnson personally. The Liberal Democrats are confidently entering the south of England, where the Conservatives ruled for many years.
In short, Rishi Sunak's party is being pressed from all sides by competitors. As for the elections of regional mayors, the picture is even more clear.
Ten of the eleven winning mayors are Labor and only one is Conservative. Sunak's party lost its second incumbent mayor in this election.
By far, the most media-rich mayoral race was the re-election of London Mayor Sadiq Khan to a third term.
And here, too, conservatives have only themselves to blame.
Yes, London is indeed very different from the rest of England. Yes, there is a completely different ethnic composition of the population, and the city itself is much to the left on the political spectrum. However, Sadiq Khan is by no means universally loved by its residents. Add to this the sharp increase in crime and attempts to introduce draconian taxes on cars as part of the fight against emissions.
To succeed in the fight for the post of London mayor, all that was needed was a successful candidate. But for some reason the Conservatives promoted the unknown Susan Hall and lost by a margin of 10%. So Labor opened more than one case of champagne during the counting days. But there are a couple of points that may later come back to haunt their leader Keir Starmer.
First of all, it is worth noting the good results of the Green Party. This force has managed to win over left-wing students who are not happy with Starmer's efforts to steer the party towards the political centre. Overly ambitious left-wing projects (such as, for example, the “green transition”) were thrown into the trash by Labor, and the inner circle of Jeremy Corbyn (former Labor leader, popular with left-wing activists and youth) was pushed to the party fringes. It is these dissatisfied people who view the greens as a new refuge.
The Greens themselves are becoming even stronger in traditionally left-wing university districts such as Bristol and Norwich. So far, this result is not fatal for the Laborites, but everything will change after they come to power and the inevitable first mistakes.
Even more noteworthy is the exodus of the Muslim electorate from the Labor camp.
For the past six months, Keir Starmer has had to justify his half-hearted position on Gaza and Israel. Inconsistency on this sensitive issue has led to politically active Muslims looking for a new party and leaving Labor in droves.
Some of them have probably interpreted the term "green transition" too literally and have already left Labor under the green banner of environmental activists (such candidates won in Bradford and Manchester). Others are looking for smaller batches. For example, the labor party of George Galloway, who at one time left the ranks of Labor because of the war in Iraq.
The Reform Party still remains on the political field. The same brainchild of one of the main heroes of Brexit, Nigel Farage.
The party fielded its candidates in only 12% of municipalities and managed to win only a couple of them. Another thing is that in those districts where the party was present on the ballot, the candidate received more than 10%. This is a death sentence for conservatives. The Reform Party will not win parliamentary seats, but will become an ideal spoiler for Rishi Sunak's Conservatives, drawing votes from part of the right-wing electorate.
The surprising result of this election was that the dissatisfied within the Conservative Party finally resigned themselves to the inevitable. There are years ahead in opposition, and perhaps even the complete disappearance of the party, which in other circumstances would already be thinking about preparing for the bicentenary.
A week before the elections, conservative oppositionists anonymously declared that the party's crushing defeat would be a trigger for internal rebellion. A couple of days passed and there was silence around Rishi.
This silence is easy to explain.
It’s just that the dissatisfied never had a single candidate on whom everyone could rely. Which means Rishi Sunak needn't worry. He will not be evicted from Downing Street now, but in a couple of months. A Labor victory in the autumn parliamentary elections is now inevitable.
|
Posted by badanov 2024-05-08 00:00||
||
Front Page|| [64 views ]
Top
|
|
10:14 Super Hose
10:12 Frank G
10:11 Super Hose
10:10 Frank G
10:08 ed in texas
10:06 ed in texas
10:01 Skidmark
09:59 Frank G
09:49 Glenmore
09:48 Frank G
09:46 Tom
09:41 alanc
09:41 SteveS
09:38 EMS Artifact
09:37 Besoeker
09:35 Glenmore
09:31 Whiskey Mike
09:31 M. Murcek
09:29 Skidmark
09:24 SteveS
09:23 Skidmark
09:21 NN2N1
09:20 Skidmark
09:08 Deacon+Blues
|
