Skip to main content

London elections set to leave British PM May down, but not out

Voters in London are expected to punish Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservative Party at local government elections this week which could embolden critics of her Brexit strategy, but are not expected to trigger her downfall.

London and some other regions will on Thursday elect the local officials in charge of day-to-day public spending - a vote as much about issues like refuse collection and road repairs as it is about the national debate on immigration and May’s plan to take Britain out of the European Union after a 2016 referendum.
The elections are seen as a bellwether of public sentiment and polls show voters are ready to deliver a critical verdict on both May’s leadership and her party’s eight years spent pursuing a policy of public spending cuts to shore up Britain’s finances.
“A government that’s been in power for eight years with an austerity program is naturally going to suffer at elections,” said Robert Hayward, a former Conservative lawmaker who now sits in parliament’s upper house and specializes in polling analysis.
A YouGov survey published on April 26 gave the opposition Labour Party, led by Jeremy Corbyn, a 22 percentage point lead over the Conservatives in London, putting it on course for its best performance in the capital for 40 years.
Thursday’s vote will come less than a year after a snap parliamentary election splintered the previously rock-solid foundations of May’s position, stripping her party of its majority in a vote she had expected to win easily.
The result of that general election has been a weakened leadership, open dissent among Conservative lawmakers over exiting the EU and a nagging fear for some investors that her government could fall and be replaced by socialist-led Labour.
Thursday will not directly affect May’s practical ability to govern: the vote does not cause seats in parliament to change hands and the slim working majority she has thanks to a deal with a smaller party will be unaffected.
But a below-par performance will embolden critics in her party and could then complicate the already-difficult task of executing her Brexit plan without making concessions to pro-EU factions, such as agreeing to stay in the EU customs union.
“Politicians always look at the last set of election results and by definition they’re going to look at what happens on May 3 and make a judgment on that,” Hayward said.
“It will have an impact on what has to happen in the budget, ‘Do I take a more militant view in relation to the Customs Union, or Brexit, or nurses, or numbers of policemen?’”
The key results in London will be Wandsworth and Westminster, both boroughs with a strong Conservative tradition that are now within reach of Labour.
However, anything short of a total Conservative wipeout is not expected to generate renewed calls for her to quit.
Although her party is deeply divided over Brexit, neither the faction that seeks a clean break from the EU nor those who favor a closer relationship have shown an appetite for a leadership contest before Britain has left the bloc.
Continue Reading: London elections set to leave British PM May down, but not out

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Sex robot SHOCK: Increasing sophistication of AI will cause massive issues, experts warn

The growing sophistication of creepily real sex robots is leading to moral and legal dilemmas, a leading academic has warned. As technology has expanded sex robots have become increasingly lifelike, bringing about a the need for a revolution in how we think about sex, morals and the legal status of these sex robots, according to Kent Law School Professor Robin Mackenzie. Prof Mackenzie specialises in areas such as robotics and the ethical and legal relations between humans and robots. She said: "Sex, law and ethics will never be the same. Sooner than we think, technologists will create sentient, self-aware sex robots, capable of emotional/sexual intimacy.” Prof Mackenzie added: "Humans having sex with other humans who are unable to consent to sex, like children and adults lacking decision-making capacity, is seen as unlawful and unethical. So is human/animal sex. Such groups are recognised as sentient beings who cannot consent to sex with interests in ne

Why are more women than men illiterate?

Two-thirds of the world’s illiterate adults are women. So what is preventing girls and women from learning to read and write? As part of this year's 100 Women, a team in India's capital Delhi will be looking at ways to tackle this problem.  Why are more women than men illiterate?

Kremlin: Putin and Trump agreed to exchange information on North Korea

The Kremlin said on Friday that President Vladimir Putin and his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump had agreed in a phone call to exchange information about North Korea and cooperate on possible initiatives to resolve a crisis around the Asian nation. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call that Putin and Trump had also spoken about establishing contacts with North Korea. The two men had also talked about improving dialogue between Russia and the United States, Peskov said. The Kremlin earlier on Friday released a statement about the phone call between the two leaders. Continue Reading: Kremlin: Putin and Trump agreed to exchange information on North Korea