London: UK PM Rishi Sunak’s fate hangs in balance as Britain’s ruling conservatives are expected to suffer heavy losses in crunch local elections this week which are likely to increase pressure on the British Prime Minister.
These polls are the last major electoral test before the general election that Sunak’s party, in power since 2010, seems destined to lose to the Labour opposition. Sunak said that he wants to hold a nationwide vote in the second half of the year, but a bruising defeat in Thursday’s votes could force his hands earlier.
“These elections form a vital examination for the Sunak premiership — road-testing its claim that the plan is working and the degree to which voters still lend that notion any degree of credibility,” political scientist Richard Carr told AFP. Local elections typically result in losses for incumbent governments, and pollsters predict that the Conservatives will lose around half of the council seats they are defending.
It is stated that Sunak’s immediate political future depends on the reelection of two prominent Tory regional mayors in central and northeastern England’s West Midlands and Tees Valley regions. Conservative MPs would be encouraged if Andy Street and Ben Houchen, two of the party’s mayors, emerged victorious so that Sunak could turn things around for the general election.
However, there is much conjecture in the UK parliament that a poor performance would prompt certain disgruntled Conservative MPs to attempt to unseat Sunak before the national election. “If Andy Street and Ben Houchen both lose, any idea that Sunak can carry on is surely done,” said Carr, a politics lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University. “Whether that means he rolls the dice on a general election or gets toppled remains to be seen.”
According to British media, a group of disgruntled Conservative MPs have drafted a “policy blitz” for Sunak’s replacement should he suffer significant setbacks this week. Several analysts have stated that after Sunak replaced Liz Truss in October 2022, the Conservatives have offered some stability, thus it would be insane to remove another leader.
Some argue that because the party’s reputation has already been destroyed, why not make one last, desperate attempt to avert the anticipated Labour landslide? It would need about 52 MPs to write letters of no confidence in Sunak to start an internal party vote to remove him, which is a difficult task. “I still expect Sunak will lead the Conservatives into the general election,” Richard Hayton, a politics professor at Leeds University, told AFP.
“But some MPs may seek to move against him, which will further damage his standing with the general public.” After Truss’s catastrophic 49-day premiership, during which her unfunded tax cuts created market volatility and caused the pound to plummet, Sunak, 43, was appointed internally by the Tory party. In most public surveys, the Tories continue to lag Labour, led by Keir Starmer, by double digits, despite Sunak’s repeated resets of the leadership.
Sunak’s satisfaction rating reached a combined all-time low of minus 59% in an Ipsos survey conducted earlier this month. On Thursday, almost 2,500 council members will be on the ballot in England, along with Sadiq Khan, the Labour mayor of London, who is running for a record-breaking third term. When the majority of the council seats up for reelection were last put to vote in 2021, former Conservative leader Boris Johnson was well-liked because he introduced the Covid-19 vaccine.
