LONDON (AP) – Bad things may come in threes for British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, whose Conservative Party faces a trio of unwanted verdicts from voters this week.
The United Kingdom is holding three special elections for House of Commons seats today that will let a broad cross-section of voters – in northern England, southwest England and on London’s suburban fringe – deliver a verdict on the party that has governed Britain since 2010.
The Tories are bracing for the worst. “Midterm by-elections for incumbent governments are always difficult,” Sunak said on Monday. “I don’t expect these to be any different from that.”
It could be different, or at least rare, if the Conservatives lose all three seats. The last time a governing party lost three by-elections in one day was in 1968 under Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson.
The three elections are part of the still-rippling shockwaves from the turbulent term of ex-leader Boris Johnson. He quit as a lawmaker last month, almost a year after resigning as prime minister, when a standards watchdog concluded he’d lied to Parliament about lawbreaking parties in his office during the coronavirus pandemic.
An ally followed Johnson out the door, and another lawmaker has resigned amid sex and drugs allegations, triggering the three by-elections.
Labour hopes to win Johnson’s old seat of Uxbridge and South Ruislip in suburban London, as well as the mixed urban-rural Selby and Ainsty constituency vacated by Johnson ally Nigel Adams in northern England. The centrist Liberal Democrats are favoured to win in southwest England’s Somerton and Frome, whose Conservative legislator, David Warburton, quit over allegations of cocaine use and sexual misconduct.
A trio of Conservative defeats would increase grumbles that Sunak is failing to turn the party’s fortunes around after the mayhem caused by the scandal-plagued Johnson.
Sunak also took over an economy reeling from the brief term of ex-prime minister Liz Truss, who quit in October after six weeks in office when her tax-cutting economic plans drove up the cost of government borrowing and hammered the pound.
That worsened a cost-of-living crisis that has left one in 20 people running short of food each month, according to the Office for National Statistics.
Three opinion polls this week gave Labour a lead of at least 15 points over the Conservatives nationwide.
