British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on May 5 promised to work "as hard as ever" after a disastrous set of election results saw his Conservative Party being unseated across several local authorities and even losing a mayoralty stronghold in the West Midlands region of England.
The British Indian leader admitted his disappointment after Andy Street, the party’s popular Mayor of West Midlands, narrowly lost to Labour rival Richard Parker by a mere 1,508 votes after a recount had to be ordered for the knife-edge result. This leaves Mr. Sunak with a solo sliver of hope in Ben Houchen, who had held on to the party’s mayoralty in Tees Valley on Friday amid a virtual sweep for the Opposition parties, with Labour in the lead.
"It's been disappointing of course to lose dedicated Conservative councillors and Andy Street in the West Midlands, with his track record of providing great public services and attracting significant investment to the area, but that has redoubled my resolve to continue to make progress on our plan,” Mr. Sunak said in a statement.
"So we will continue working as hard as ever to take the fight to Labour and deliver a brighter future for our country," he said.
While Tory rebels have begun circling, the echo this time does not seem to be around replacing Mr. Sunak as party leader but piling pressure on him to get tougher on the party's core issues like setting a cap on legal migration and dramatically cutting taxes. Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman is leading this charge and issued a stinging rebuke in ‘The Daily Telegraph’ to demand that it was time for Sunak to move on from “managerialism” and show strong leadership.
“Let me cut to the chase so no one wastes time over-analysing this: we must not change our leader. Changing leader now won’t work: the time to do so came and went. The hole to dig us out is the PM’s, and it’s time for him to start shovelling,” writes the sacked Indian-origin ex-minister, who is at the forefront of the backbench rebellion.
"Either we start fighting to win now, or we'll have no one else to blame when this week’s political earthquake is made to look like a mere tremor come the general election night,” she said.
Others have chimed in to say it was time for Sunak to “wake up and smell the coffee” because the local election results show that the Labour Party is on course to stomp to victory in a general election, expected later this year.
Opposition leader Sir Keir Starmer has hailed his party’s “phenomenal result”, which included Labour’s Sadiq Khan being re-elected for a record third term as London Mayor on Friday.
But Mr. Starmer also appealed to the voters who had punished the party over its weak stance on the Israel-Gaza conflict, after analysis showed that Labour suffered losses to independents and the anti-war Worker's Party of Britain in areas with large Islamic populations as a result.
"I have heard you. I have listened. And I am determined to meet your concerns and to gain your respect and trust again in the future," said Mr. Starmer.
But on the whole, the Labour camp will be celebrating this weekend as it virtually swept the mayoral elections across England, winning in Liverpool, South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire, and Greater Manchester.
With most of the results now in for the elections held for local councils on Thursday, Labour looks set to have grabbed over 1,100 seats. The Liberal Democrats beat the Tories into second place by winning over 500 seats as the Conservatives lost around 400 of previously held seats of local councillors, who manage day to day issues such as waste collection, roads and local infrastructure as well as crime fighting.
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