The UK’s main opposition Labour Party yesterday called on British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to call a general election, after seizing another parliamentary seat from the Conservatives and making gains in English local elections.
Labour leader Keir Starmer said its candidate’s win in Blackpool South in northwest England sent a clear message to Sunak, who has until January next year at the latest to call polls.
“That wasn’t just a little message, that wasn’t just a murmur. That was a shout from Blackpool: ‘We want change,’” he said on a visit to congratulate Chris Webb, the new member of the parliament (MP) of the district.
Photo: Reuters
“Blackpool speaks for the whole country in saying: ‘We have had enough now, after 14 years of failure, 14 years of decline, we want to turn the page and start afresh with Labour,’” Starmer said.
Labour, out of power since 2010 and trounced by former British prime minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party at the last general election in 2019, won Blackpool South with a 26 percent swing — the third-largest margin from the Conservatives to Labour at a by-election since World War II.
The vote was triggered by a lobbying scandal that saw the area’s Conservative MP resign. Polling on Thursday coincided with a mix of council, mayoral and other local contests across England.
The polls represent the last major ballot box test before Sunak faces a nationwide vote expected in the second half of the year.
The Conservatives are defending hundreds of seats they secured last time local elections were held in 2021 and are tipped to suffer heavy losses.
Early results showed that Labour was making gains in council seats, but all eyes were on key regional and London mayoral races, the outcomes of which were only expected later yesterday and today.
Conservative Party chairman Richard Holden described the results so far as “disappointing.”
Starmer said it showed that Labour, beset by ideological infighting and claims of anti-Semitism under hard-left former leader Jeremy Corbyn, was once again an electoral force.
Labour was now “a fundamentally different party” than four years ago, Starmer told Sky News television.
In London, Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan is expected to win a record third term.
However, mayoral contests in the West Midlands and Tees Valley, in northeast England, are predicted to be tight.
A victory for the Labour opposition in either of the regions, home to bellwether constituencies, would be hailed as further evidence voters are ready to return the party to power nationally.
The US government has signed defense cooperation agreements with Japan and the Philippines to boost the deterrence capabilities of countries in the first island chain, a report by the National Security Bureau (NSB) showed. The main countries on the first island chain include the two nations and Taiwan. The bureau is to present the report at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee tomorrow. The US military has deployed Typhon missile systems to Japan’s Yamaguchi Prefecture and Zambales province in the Philippines during their joint military exercises. It has also installed NMESIS anti-ship systems in Japan’s Okinawa
‘WIN-WIN’: The Philippines, and central and eastern European countries are important potential drone cooperation partners, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung said Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) in an interview published yesterday confirmed that there are joint ventures between Taiwan and Poland in the drone industry. Lin made the remark in an exclusive interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper). The government-backed Taiwan Excellence Drone International Business Opportunities Alliance and the Polish Chamber of Unmanned Systems on Wednesday last week signed a memorandum of understanding in Poland to develop a “non-China” supply chain for drones and work together on key technologies. Asked if Taiwan prioritized Poland among central and eastern European countries in drone collaboration, Lin
NO CONFIDENCE MOTION? The premier said that being toppled by the legislature for defending the Constitution would be a democratic badge of honor for him Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) yesterday announced that the Cabinet would not countersign the amendments to the local revenue-sharing law passed by the Legislative Yuan last month. Cho said the decision not to countersign the amendments to the Act Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures (財政收支劃分法) was made in accordance with the Constitution. “The decision aims to safeguard our Constitution,” he said. The Constitution stipulates the president shall, in accordance with law, promulgate laws and issue mandates with the countersignature of the head of the Executive Yuan, or with the countersignatures of both the head of the Executive Yuan and ministers or
CABINET APPROVAL: People seeking assisted reproduction must be assessed to determine whether they would be adequate parents, the planned changes say Proposed amendments to the Assisted Reproduction Act (人工生殖法) advanced yesterday by the Executive Yuan would grant married lesbian couples and single women access to legal assisted reproductive services. The proposed revisions are “based on the fundamental principle of respecting women’s reproductive autonomy,” Cabinet spokesperson Michelle Lee (李慧芝) quoted Vice Premier Cheng Li-chiun (鄭麗君), who presided over a Cabinet meeting earlier yesterday, as saying at the briefing. The draft amendment would be submitted to the legislature for review. The Ministry of Health and Welfare, which proposed the amendments, said that experts on children’s rights, gender equality, law and medicine attended cross-disciplinary meetings, adding that
RSS