UK local elections: Labour flips seats it hasn't held in decades

LONDON (AP) — Britain’s governing Conservative Party suffered heavy losses in local election results Friday, further cementing expectations that the Labour Party will return to power after 14 years in a U.K. general election that will take place in the coming months.

Labour won control of councils in England that the party hasn’t held for decades and was successful in a special by-election for Parliament that, if repeated in the general election, would lead to one of the Conservatives′ biggest-ever defeats.

Though the results overall make for grim reading for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, he was able to breathe a sigh of relief when the Conservative mayor of Tees Valley in the northeast of England was reelected, albeit with a depressed share of the vote. The victory of Ben Houchen, who ran a very personal campaign, may be enough to cushion Sunak from any revolt by Conservative lawmakers.

Over 50 countries go to the polls in 2024

For Keir Starmer, the Labour Party leader, it’s generally been a stellar set of results, with the only real negative coming in some areas with large Muslim populations, such as Blackburn and Oldham in northwest England, where the party’s candidates appear to have suffered as a result of the leadership’s strongly pro-Israel stance in the conflict in Gaza.

Perhaps most important in the context of the looming general election, which has to take place by January but could come as soon as next month, Labour won back the parliamentary seat of Blackpool South in the northwest of England. The seat had gone Conservative in the last general election in 2019, when then Prime Minister Boris Johnson made big inroads in Brexit-supporting parts of the country.

In the contest, triggered by the resignation of a Conservative lawmaker following a lobbying scandal, Labour’s Chris Webb secured 10,825 votes, to his second-placed Conservative opponent’s 3,218. The swing from Conservative to Labour, at 26%, was the third biggest since World War II, which would be more than enough to see the party return to power for the first time since it was ejected in 2010.

Starmer went to Blackpool to congratulate Webb on his success and urged Sunak to call a general