Boris Johnson’s ruling Conservative Party is set to lose over 500 seats in Britain’s upcoming local elections, if polling is to be believed.
Cataclysm appears to be on the cards for Boris Johnson’s ruling Conservative Party, with a survey finding that the scandal-prone government looks set to hand over a seat advantage to its leftist rival Labour Party the likes of which has not been seen in decades.
A large section of the British and Irish population will head to the polls on Thursday to decide the immediate future of local politics in the United Kingdom, with issues such as the Northern Ireland protocol, Partygate, and the Channel Migrant Crisis likely to play a role in who voters end up lending their support to.
However, according to a report by The Telegraph, the British Tory Party looks set to be one of the biggest losers on the day, with a survey predicting the Conservatives will lose around 550 local seats to their electoral rivals.
The Prime Minister’s increasingly gaff-prone government are likely the cause of this political freefall, with controversies such as the so-called “partygate” scandal — which saw Boris Johnson break his own lockdown rules — as well as tax hikes and the ongoing energy and inflation crises likely some of the factors which look set to cause political disaster for those in power.
“The renewed ‘partygate’ focus has made a poor situation for the Conservatives even worse by persuading even more Conservative supporters not to turn out at the local elections,” said pollster Martin Baxter.
“The results could now be bad for Boris Johnson, especially if the Conservatives lose many hundreds of council seats and key flagship councils like Wandsworth or Westminster,” he continued.
A myriad of other crises — including one Tory MP being convicted of child sex offences, another leaping to that MP’s defence and calling the conviction a “miscarriage of justice”, and another found to have watched porn in parliament — have likely not helped matters for Boris Johnson, who is also reported to have a weather eye on potential coups coming from within his own party.
Meanwhile, Keir Starmer’s Labour looks set for a significant comeback, with the survey finding that the leftist party could gain over 800 seats as a result of Thursday’s vote. While Starmer has also been implicated in lockdown-breaking parties — ‘beergate‘ — he seems to have avoided much scrutiny on that so far, improving his party’s election chances.
This victory would result in the greatest seat advantage the party has had at the local level over its right-wing rival since 1996, which saw rising star Tony Blair wipe the floor with John Major’s Conservatives during that year’s local elections.
Despite this positive polling though, Starmer has been warned that he needs to distance himself and his party from the country’s militant left, whose past prominence has been linked to the Labour Party’s recently dismal showings at the ballot box.
The Times now reports that some within Labour want Starmer to go further and turf them out of the group completely.
“Forcing them to back down wasn’t enough,” said one source within the party who described not throwing a number of hardline leftist MPs out of Labour after they signed an anti-war petition over the conflict in Ukraine.
“Keir should have booted them out then,” the source said.
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