Britain’s ruling Conservative Party suffered a significant defeat in what was considered its safe constituency, but was out of luck in another of three by-elections as results came in early Friday, a crucial test of popularity for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
The smaller, centrist Liberal Democrats won Somerton and Frome in the south-west of England, overturning a large majority for the Tories, with the Liberal Democrats receiving 21,187 votes to 10,790 for the Conservatives.
But there was better news for Mr Sunak in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, on London’s north-west fringes, where his party narrowly held on to the main opposition Labor Party in the district represented by former prime minister Boris Johnson.
A third contest at Selby and Ainsty in Yorkshire, in the north of England, is yet to be decided.
For Mr Sunak, the by-elections are an anxious foreshadowing of the general election he must call by January 2025. With Britain besieged by high inflation, a sluggish economy and widespread labor unrest, his conservatives face a real threat of being ousted from power for the first time in 14 years.
While Britain shares some of these economic woes with other countries in the wake of the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Conservatives have amplified the problems through policy missteps and political turmoil that peaked during the brief, stormy tenure of Mr Sunak’s predecessor, Liz Truss.
He proposed sweeping but unfunded tax cuts that alarmed financial markets and led to his own downfall after 44 days in office. Mr Sunak abandoned Mrs Truss’s trickle-down agenda and restored Britain’s financial stability. But her legacy is a poisoned chalice for Mr Sunak and his Tory compatriots, along with most British voters.
“The Liz Truss episode really dented her reputation for financial prowess, and it will be very difficult to win it back,” said Tim Bale, a politics professor at Queen Mary University of London. “It’s going to be very difficult.”
Labor’s lead in opinion polls is so convincing that some analysts had predicted in advance that Mr Sunak would become the first prime minister since 1968 to lose three by-elections on the same day.
But the Conservatives’ narrow wins in Uxbridge and South Ruislip defied that expectation. There, when all the votes were counted, the final tally was 13,965 13,470 for Steve Tuckwell of the Conservative Party and 13,470 for Danny Beales of Labour.
By-elections are held when a seat in the House of Commons becomes vacant between general elections. At this time, the contests Mr. Sunak’s predecessors Shri. Reminds me of Johnson’s toxic legacy.
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The Electorate of Selby and Ainsty in the North of England Mr. Nigel Adams, one of Johnson’s closest allies, was being chosen as his replacement, but he quit after not being offered a seat in the House of Lords as he had hoped.
A third contest was held in Somerton and Frome, a rural district in south-west England, where another Conservative MLA, David Warburton, gave up his seat after admitting he had taken cocaine.
“This is probably the closing of a chapter in the story of Boris Johnson’s influence on British politics,” said Robert Hayward, who serves as a Conservative member of the House of Lords. But he said, “It’s a whole other matter of closing the book.”
Because the polls took place in different parts of England, it provided an unusual snapshot of public opinion ahead of the general election. It is after the last general election of 2019, Mr. Johnson’s landslide Conservative victory has captured several trends through British politics.
Uxbridge and South Ruislip are the seats Labor need to win to prove they are credibly closing in on power. Mr. Johnson’s political troubles weakened the Conservatives, but his fortunes were kept alive by public anger at London’s mayor, Labor member Sadiq Khan, who planned to extend the costly ultralow emission zone across all London boroughs, including Uxbridge.
In the Tory strongholds of Selby and Ainst, Labor hopes to show it has regained the confidence of voters in the north and center of England – areas it once dominated but lost to the Tories in the 2019 election.
The vote in Somerton and Frome is a test of the Conservative Party’s fortunes after the so-called “blue wall” – the party’s campaign colors – in the heartland of southern England. It is under pressure in the region from a resurgence of small, centrist, Liberal Democrats.
The Liberal Democrats have benefited from some voters who oppose the Conservatives strategically casting their votes for whoever appears best placed to defeat the Tory candidate.
Candidates in recent British elections have talked about a grand political realignment with an emphasis on values and cultural issues. But analysts said these by-elections were dominated by the cost-of-living crisis – a kitchen-table concern that has hurt the Conservatives after more than a decade in power.
