LONDON (AFP) – Britain’s ruling Conservative Party suffered heavy losses in local election results on Friday, strengthening expectations that the Labor Party will return to power after 14 years in the UK general election that will be held in the coming months.

Labor won control of councils in England that the party had not held for decades, and succeeded in a special by-election to Parliament, which, if repeated in a general election, would result in one of the biggest Conservative defeats ever.

Although overall the results make bleak reading Prime Minister Rishi SunakHe was able to breathe a sigh of relief when the mayor of Tees Valley in north-east England was re-elected, albeit with a low share of the vote. A victory for Ben Houchen, who ran a highly personal election campaign, may be enough to protect Sunak from any revolt by Conservative lawmakers.

to Keir StarmerIt was generally an excellent set of results, with the only real negatives emerging 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 staunchly pro-Israel stance in Conflict in Gaza.

Perhaps most significant in the context of the imminent general election, which is due to take place by January but could take place next month, Labor has won the parliamentary seat of Blackpool South in northwest England. The seat had gone to the Conservatives in the last general election in 2019, when he was then Prime Minister Boris Johnson It had major successes in the parts supporting Brexit.

In the contest, which was sparked by the resignation of a Conservative lawmaker in the wake of a lobbying scandal, Labour’s Chris Webb received 10,825 votes, compared to 3,218 votes for his second-placed Conservative rival. The switch from the Conservatives to Labour, at 26%, was the third largest since the Second World War, which would be more than enough to see the party back in power for the first time since it was ousted in 2010.

Starmer went to Blackpool to congratulate Webb on his success and urged Sunak to call a general election. Sunak has the power to set the date, and he has indicated that it will be in the second half of 2024.

“This was directed directly at Rishi Sunak to say we are tired of your regression, your chaos and your division and we want change,” he said.

Thursday’s elections In large parts of England it was a task in itself, with voters deciding who would manage many aspects of their daily lives, such as litter collection, road maintenance and local crime prevention, in the coming years. But as the general election approaches, they are being viewed through a national lens.

John Curtis, professor of politics at the University of Strathclyde, said the results so far suggested the Conservatives were losing about half the seats they were trying to defend.

He told BBC Radio: “We may certainly be seeing one of the worst, if not the worst, Conservative performance in local government elections in the last 40 years.”

As of early Friday afternoon, with about a third of the 2,661 seats counted, the Conservatives were down 185 seats while Labor was up 73 seats. Other parties, such as the centrist Liberal Democrats and the Green Party, are also making gains. The UK Reform Party, which is trying to usurp the Conservatives from the right, can also point to some successes, particularly in Blackpool South, where it was less than 200 votes away from clinching second place.