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Rishi Sunak is under pressure from senior Conservatives to deliver on his flagship pledges after his own party chair described the disastrous local election results as a \u201cwake-up call\u201d. <\/p>\n
The prime minister was dealt a major blow in his first election test as the Tories lost dozens of councils to Labour and the Lib Dems, leading to comparisons with the dire days of the mid-1990s. <\/p>\n
His MPs warned that voters now needed to see tangible improvements in the NHS and the economy before next year\u2019s general election if they were to vote for the Tories. <\/p>\n
As a blame game erupted within the party, allies of Mr Sunak also challenged his critics to speak out and not \u201cwhisper anonymously\u201d. <\/p>\n
It comes as: <\/p>\n
One calculation suggested the Tories were \u201cnot far off\u201d the \u201crock bottom\u201d support seen under John Major Sir Keir Starmer claimed the results meant Labour was on course for a majority government at the next general electionExperts warned it was a close-run fight and Labour\u2019s support \u201cmay just be enough\u201d to win The Lib Dems and the Greens saw major breakthroughs, with the latter winning sole control of a council for the first time Mr Sunak conceded the results were “disappointing” but defiantly insisted he had not detected a \u201cmassive groundswell of movement\u201d towards Labour. <\/p>\n
With close to all 230 contested councils declared, the Conservatives had lost almost 1000 councillors and 45 local authorities.<\/p>\n
Some 18 of those are now controlled by Labour, which had picked up just shy of 450 councillors \u2013 while the Liberal Democrats pocketed eight local authorities and just over 300 councillors.<\/p>\n
Among the councils now controlled by Labour are those in key general election battlegrounds, where the party hopes to unseat Tory MPs, including in Swindon, Medway, Dover and East Staffordshire. Among the councils snatched by the Lib Dems was Windsor and Maidenhead, where former prime minister Theresa May is MP. <\/p>\n
After overnight counting, experts suggested the Tories could lose a totemic 1,000 seats, but that threat appeared to recede as the day went on. <\/p>\n
Before the vote, the prime minister had warned the party faced a \u201chard\u201d set of elections in the wake of the \u201cbox set drama\u201d of recent months after the ousting of both Boris Johnson and Liz Truss from No 10 last year. <\/p>\n
As ex-councillors across the country lined up to blame the government, veterans minister Johnny Mercer described it as a \u201cterrible night\u201d for the party, while Tory chairman Greg Hands said it was a \u201cwake-up call\u201d. <\/p>\n
Senior Tories said Mr Sunak now had to show definite progress on his key priorities before next year\u2019s general election. <\/p>\n
One former cabinet minister, who supported Mr Sunak\u2019s bid to become Tory leader, told The Independent he now had to \u201cdeliver on his five priorities\u201d, which includes halving inflation in a bid to ease the cost of living crisis and cutting health service waiting lists. <\/p>\n
Lord Barwell, a Tory peer who served as Mrs May\u2019s chief of staff in No 10, said Mr Sunak had to \u201cdeliver improvements on the key issues that matter\u201d, including growing the economy and rebuilding the NHS. But he warned Mr Sunak now faced a \u201chell of a job\u201d to close the gap with Labour. <\/p>\n
There were also calls for outright policy changes, with veteran MP, Sir John Redwood, saying voters would have turned out if the party had offered Tory policies. He criticised \u201chigh taxes, lack of control of our borders, and too much local and national government interference\u201d. <\/p>\n
Home secretary Suella Braverman was also warned to \u201cdo her job\u201d and \u201caddress the big issues of the day\u201d by Tory MP Rehman Chishti, who said her rhetoric on illegal migration \u201cfeeds into the far-right\u201d, at a count in Kent where the party lost Medway Council. <\/p>\n
Sir Keir, meanwhile, hailed “fantastic” results, which he said showed Labour had won back the trust of voters and put the party \u201con course for a Labour majority at the next general election\u201d. <\/p>\n
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer celebrates his party\u2019s local election results in Chatham, Kent (Gareth Fuller\/PA)<\/p>\n
(PA Wire)<\/p>\n
His party won a series of key battlegrounds, including Stoke, where it hopes to take back seats at the general election.<\/p>\n
A projected national vote share, calculated for the BBC by the noted polling expert Sir John Curtice, found that if all of Britain had voted, and behaved the same way, Labour would take 35 per cent of the vote, the Conservatives 26 per cent, Liberal Democrats 20 per cent and others 19 per cent. <\/p>\n
Sir John said that 26 per cent was \u201cnot far off rock bottom \u2026 where John Major was at in the 1990s\u201d. But he warned, based on these results, that Labour might struggle to win the next election. <\/p>\n
He said that it \u201cmay just be enough to take Labour to [a majority] in the House of Commons”.<\/p>\n
Professor Michael Thrasher predicted for Sky News: \u201cLabour easily becomes the largest in a hung parliament but falls 28 seats short of an overall majority.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Liberal Democrats also hailed a \u201cgroundbreaking\u201d results, which leader Sir Ed Davey said showed people were \u201csick to the back teeth\u201d of the Conservative government. As the election post-mortem examination got underway, Tory MPs also criticised the party\u2019s election campaign. <\/p>\n
One said that there had been \u201cno concept of modern campaigning\u201d, accusing the party of blanketing voters with leaflets rather than identifying those who might support it. There was also criticism that seats in the \u201cblue wall\u201d in the south had been Tory for so long the party had not done enough to identify its own voter base. <\/p>\n
One Tory staffer campaigning in the south of England told The Independent the party only targeted households they thought were almost certain to vote Conservative. The campaign team had not wanted to encourage others to vote for fear they would back another party, and the alternative of them not voting at all was deemed preferable, they said.<\/p>\n
Mr Sunak will try to get back on the front foot next week with the publication of the government\u2019s long-awaited NHS primary care plan, designed in part to free up more GP appointments. <\/p>\n
Former defence secretary Liam Fox predicted the PM would \u201cown these results\u201d and challenged critics within their party \u201cdon\u2019t whisper anonymously\u201d. <\/p>\n
It followed a claim from a loyalist of Mr Johnson and Ms Truss that the prime minister would have \u201cno option but to own these results\u201d after three years in charge of the UK economy and because \u201cit was he and his supporters who forced Boris and then Liz out of office in order to install him in Downing Street\u201d. Speaking to the BBC, they added: \u201cIt is little wonder so many previous Conservative voters failed to back us yesterday.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster email Rishi Sunak is under pressure from senior Conservatives to deliver on his flagship pledges after his own party chair described the disastrous local election results as a \u201cwake-up call\u201d. The prime minister was dealt […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1981,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[173],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n