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LONDON (AP) — London took center stage on Saturday as the counting of votes began in the capital city's mayoral contest, a day after Britain's governing Conservative Party suffered a drubbing in local election results.
Sadiq Khan, the Labour Party mayor who is chasing a historic third straight election win, had been widely expected to win easily, but there are some concerns that the race may be tighter than previously thought.
That's mainly due to the fact that turnout at Thursday's election — at a total of 40.5% — was higher in the outer suburbs than in the inner city. Khan's main opponent, the Conservatives' Susan Hall, focused her campaign on issues such as a levy imposed on high-polluting vehicles, which has resonated in the suburbs where residents depend more on their cars for work and essential travel.
Also, there are concerns within Labour that Khan may have suffered from the blowback of the party leadership's strong pro-Israel stance over the war in Gaza, which results Friday clearly showed depressed support in strongly Muslim areas in England.
The result is due around lunchtime but officials have cautioned that it could run into the early hours of Sunday.
Overall, the results of Thursday's array of local elections cemented 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 election for a seat in Parliament. If those results are repeated in the general election, it would lead to one of the Conservatives' biggest-ever defeats.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak 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, appears to have been enough to cushion Sunak from any revolt by Conservative lawmakers.
Sunak will be hoping that Andy Street will also hold on in the West Midlands, especially in Birmingham, which has a big Muslim community.
Labour leader Keir Starmer conceded that the party has had issues with Muslim voters, but the results in general were positive for the man who is favorite to become prime minister at the next general election.
“We're fed up with your division, with your chaos, with your failure,” he said Saturday. “If you leave your country in a worse state than when you found it 14 years later, you do not deserve to be in government a moment longer.”
He called on Sunak to call an election now. Sunak has the power to decide on the date, and has indicated that it will be in the second half of 2024.
Thursday’s elections in large parts of England were important in themselves, with voters deciding on who runs many aspects of their daily lives, such as garbage collection, road maintenance and local crime prevention. But with a national election looming, they are being viewed through a national prism.
John Curtice, professor of politics at the University of Strathclyde, said the results show that Sunak has not helped the Conservative brand following the damage accrued by the actions of his predecessors, Boris Johnson and then Liz Truss.
“That in a sense is the big takeaway," he told BBC radio.
Sunak became prime minister in October 2022, after Truss's short-lived tenure. She left office after 49 days following a budget of unfunded tax cuts that roiled financial markets and sent borrowing costs for homeowners surging.
Her chaotic — and traumatic — leadership compounded the Conservatives’ difficulties following the circus surrounding her predecessor Johnson, who was forced to quit after being adjudged to have lied to Parliament over coronavirus lockdown breaches at his offices in Downing Street.
By midmorning Saturday, with most of the 2,661 seats up for grabs in the local elections counted, the Conservatives were down by more than 446 while Labour was up 173. Other parties, such as the centrist Liberal Democrats and the Green Party also made gains. Reform U.K., which is trying to usurp the Conservatives from the right, also had some successes, notably in Blackpool South, where it was less than 200 votes from grabbing second place.