British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak admitted to being “disappointed” with the preliminary results of Thursday’s local elections in England, which signaled defeat for the Conservative Party and progress for opposition parties.
“It’s always a disappointment to lose hard-working Conservative councillors”he said in statements in London broadcast by the Sky News station, emphasizing that “as far as the results are concerned, it is still early” because only part of the results were known.
After counting 62 of the 230 councils going to the polls, Labor won 653 of the approximately 8,000 seats contested, 120 more than in 2019, while the Tories lost 226, electing 452 councillors.
The Liberal Democrats, the fourth-largest opposition party, are also benefiting from the Conservatives’ slippage, winning 59 new seats out of 329 seats secured.
The Greens also have 33 of the 55 elected.
However, Sunak claimed that the ‘tories’ are “advancing on key electoral battlefields”.
“I see no mass movement towards the Labor Party or enthusiasm for their agenda”he argued, pledging to continue working to achieve government priorities such as curbing inflation, growing the economy, reducing healthcare waiting lists and curbing illegal immigration.
While bulletin counting has started overnight in some places, most of the results won’t be known until this Friday.
Analysts hope that the results of these elections, the last on a national scale before parliamentary elections expected in 2024, will provide an idea of voting trends for the choice of the next government.
The Conservative Party has been in power for 13 years, although for the first five it ruled in coalition with the Liberal Democrats.
The Labor Party is trying to recover from its worst electoral defeat since 1935 in the 2019 parliaments, as then-leader Jeremy Corbyn lost to Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party, which triumphed by an outright majority.
Source: DN
