Conservatives lose 2 seats in blow to prime minister

LONDON — British Prime Minister Boris Johnson suffered a double blow as voters rejected his Conservative Party in two special parliamentary elections dominated by questions about his leadership and ethics.

He was further wounded when the party’s chairman quit after the results came out Friday, saying Conservatives “cannot carry on with business as usual,” and a former party leader said the country needed “new leadership.”

The centrist Liberal Democrats overturned a big Conservative majority to win the rural southwestern England seat of Tiverton and Honiton, while the main opposition Labor Party reclaimed Wakefield in northern England from Johnson’s Tories.

The contests, triggered by the resignations of Conservative lawmakers hit by sex scandals, offered voters the chance to give their verdict on the prime minister just weeks after 41% of his own MPs voted to oust him.

“The people of Tiverton and Honiton have spoken for Britain,” said the area’s newly elected Liberal Democrat lawmaker, Richard Foord. “They sent a loud and clear message: It’s time for Boris Johnson to go, and go now.”

Defeat in either district would have been a setback for the prime minister’s party. Losing both increases jitters among restive Conservatives who already worry the ebullient but erratic and divisive Johnson is no longer an electoral asset.

Party chairman Oliver Dowden resigned, saying, “Our supporters are distressed and disappointed by recent events, and I share their feelings.”

“I will, as always, remain loyal to the Conservative Party,” he added, without offering an endorsement of Johnson.

Former Conservative leader Michael Howard, who like Johnson was a strong backer of Britain’s exit from the European Union, urged the party to remove him as leader.

“The party, and more importantly the country, would be better off under new leadership,” Howard told the BBC.

The prime minister was 4,000 miles away at a Commonwealth summit in Rwanda as the drama unfolded.

“I’m not going to pretend these are brilliant results,” Johnson said at a news conference in Kigali. “We’ve got to listen, we’ve got to learn.”

The electoral tests came as Britain faces the worst costof-living crisis in a generation, with Russia’s war in Ukraine squeezing supplies of energy and food staples at a time of soaring consumer demand while the coronavirus pandemic recedes.

Johnson won a big majority in a 2019 general election by keeping the Conservatives’ traditional voters — affluent, older and concentrated in southern England — and winning new ones in poorer, post-industrial northern towns where many residents felt overlooked by governments for decades.