Britain’s Labour Party on Saturday won mayoral polls in London and central England, in crushing defeats for British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s unpopular Conservatives ahead of a national election due later this year.
While Labour politician Sadiq Khan’s re-election as London mayor was widely expected, Labour also snatched a surprise, narrow victory in the central West Midlands region that is home to Britain’s second-largest city of Birmingham.
The wins are Labour’s latest in local elections to councils and mayoralties on Thursday and could fuel fresh calls for Sunak to step down.
Photo: AFP
Opinion polls predicted that Labour would win the next national election, propelling party leader Keir Starmer to power and ending 14 years of Conservative government.
Sunak has said he intends to call a vote in the second half of this year.
Conservative West Midlands Mayor Andy Street lost to his Labour opponent Richard Parker. Street’s 37.5 percent of the vote was eclipsed by 37.8 percent for Parker, a razor-thin margin translating to 1,508 votes.
Street, who has served as mayor since 2017, ran a campaign emphasizing his personal record on investment, while downplaying his Conservative affiliation. He publicly disputed Sunak’s decision to scrap the high-speed HS2 rail link from Birmingham to Manchester last year.
Khan’s victory in London, his third in a row, came despite some public anger over knife crime and the Ultra Low Emission Zone that charges drivers of older, more polluting vehicles a daily fee.
“It’s been a difficult few months, we faced a campaign of nonstop negativity,” Khan said in a speech after the results showed he had won 43.8 percent of the vote against 33 percent for the Conservatives’ candidate, Susan Hall.
“For the last eight years, London has been swimming against the tide of a Tory [Conservative] government and now with a Labour Party that’s ready to govern again under Keir Starmer, it’s time for Rishi Sunak to give the public a choice,” he said.
Khan, 53, became the first Muslim mayor of the British capital in 2016.
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