Rishi Sunak’s leadership has suffered two major blows ahead of a general election later this year
London:
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak suffered two major blows ahead of a general election later this year, with the opposition Labor Party winning a by-election today, overturning the Conservative majority.
Labour’s Dan Egan won the Commons seat of Kingswood in south-west England, while the party’s Gen Kitchen won the seat of Wellingborough in England’s East Midlands region.
The result reflects a double trouble for the British Indian leader, as the Conservatives won two seats decisively in the last general election under Boris Johnson in December 2019.
Another emerging trend has the far-right Reform UK Party – the restructured anti-immigration Brexit party – in third place, ahead of the Lib Dems and Greens, giving the Conservatives a boost on contentious issues such as immigration further pressure. The latest results from this week’s polls are the Conservative-led government’s ninth and tenth by-election defeat since the 2019 general election.
A by-election was held in Kingswood after Conservative leader Chris Skidmore resigned as an MP in protest at Sunak’s green policies. Labour’s Egan succeeded in overturning his majority of more than 11,000 seats in the seat.
In Wellingborough, the electorate follows Conservative MP Peter Bone who was recalled from the constituency over allegations of bullying and sexual misconduct, which he denies. Labour’s Kitchen overturned a majority of more than 18,000 votes to win the seat with 28.5 per cent, the second-highest rate in history.
Labor leader Sir Keir Starmer said: “The Kingswood and Wellingborough results show that people want change and are ready to believe that a transformed Labor Party can deliver it.”
“The Conservatives have failed and Rishi’s recession has proven that. Labor is back to working people,” he said.
The two defeats would be a major blow to the ruling Conservative Party as it prepares for a general election, which Sunak, 43, has said will be held in the second half of this year. The party, already trailing Labor in opinion polls, has sought to downplay the significance of the by-election result, casting it as a vote of dissatisfaction against the Conservatives.
Conservative MP Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, a former minister in Boris Johnson’s cabinet, told the BBC that the Kingswood result was “not as bad as I expected” because Conservative voters appeared to be staying at home. He said a general election, which he said “focused people’s attention in a different way than a by-election”, was likely to produce more results. He insisted support for Sunak’s leadership was “solid” and “the by-election will not change that”.
However, the double whammy of news earlier this week that the economy was slipping into recession and this poll will unsettle Sunak’s Conservatives as the scale of the anti-incumbency becomes increasingly clear.
“The party will not only be worried about losing these seats but also the scale and manner of the defeat. The party’s vote share in Wellingborough fell by a massive 37.6 percentage points – the biggest fall the party has suffered since the last century. “It are defending the election,” wrote Sir John Curtis, professor of politics at the University of Strathclyde.
“However, these are by-elections and voter dissatisfaction with the Conservatives does not appear to be matched by Labour’s enthusiasm,” he said.
The result also comes as a relief to Labor leader Keir Starmer, who has scaled back his party’s green investment plans following a challenging week. and became involved in the anti-Semitism crisis.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
