Conservatives suffer heavy London losses in local elections
LONDON: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party lost control of traditional strongholds in London and suffered losses elsewhere in local elections, early results last night showed, as voters punished his government over a raft of scandals.
Johnson’s party was ousted in Wandsworth, a lowtax Conservative stronghold since 1978, part of a trend in the British capital where voters used the elections to express anger over a costofliving crisis and fines imposed on the prime minister for breaking his own Covid19 lockdown rules.
It also lost control of the borough of Barnet, which has been held by the party in all but two elections since 1964. The Labour Party also won the council of Westminster, a district where most government institutions are located.
‘‘This is a warning shot from
Conservative voters,’’ Daniel Thomas, the Conservative leader of Barnet council, said.
The overall tally, due overnight, will offer the most important snapshot of public opinion since Johnson won the Conservative Party’s biggest majority in more than 30 years in the 2019 general election.
The ballot is the first electoral test for Johnson since he became the first British leader in living memory to have broken the law while in office. He was fined last month for attending a birthday gathering in his office in 2020, breaking Covid19 restrictions.
The losses in the local elections will increase pressure on Johnson, who has been fighting for his political survival for months.
Yesterday’s local elections decide almost 7000 council seats, including all those in London, Scotland and Wales, and a third of the seats in most of the rest of England. — Reuters