By Alistair Smout and William James
LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s Labor Party won a landslide victory in a parliamentary seat in northwest England on Friday, underscoring the scale of the challenge facing British Prime Minister Rishi Chung in general elections over the next two years.
Compounding the situation for the Conservative Party, which is lagging behind in the national polls and heading for defeat in the 2024 national elections, one of the ruling party’s most senior politicians, Sajid Javid, has said he plans to step down.
The country’s former finance minister joins a growing group of Conservative MPs set to leave Westminster at the next national election, facing a strong prospect of being out of power for the first time since 2010.
Pollsters said the scale of the Conservative defeat in Chester was in line with national polls, giving Labor a 20-point lead.
The vote delivered the first election verdict since the party launched a messy infighting that ousted Boris Johnson and Liz Truss as prime minister.
Sunak became prime minister on October 25, inheriting a party divided and volatile during the economic crisis, tasked with fighting rising inflation and restoring confidence in financial markets.
Incumbent parties rarely do well in these one-off elections held outside the national electoral calendar when MPs leave office.
In Chester, Labor candidate Samantha Dixon won 61% of the vote, compared to 22% for the Conservative candidate. Labor has held the seat of Chester since the 2015 national election, when the party won a majority of just 93 votes.
“It’s important to see this election in context,” a Conservative spokesman said. “By-elections for governing parties, not to mention parties that have been in government for 12 years, are always tough, and this is Labour, which they’ve held for three consecutive elections.”
Charles Walker, one of the Conservative MPs not contesting the next election, said Sunak was doing the right thing in a difficult environment, but defeat at the next national election was inevitable.
“It’s almost impossible to recover from,” Walker told the radio. “I believe what Rishi Sunak is doing is making sure Labor doesn’t wipe the floor with us, so … we create a viable opposition.”
