an alert for Sunak’s conservative party – L’Express

For Labor Party leader Keir Starmer, who hopes to enter Downing Street, this result “redraws the political map”. “Winning in these two Labor strongholds shows that people largely want change and that they are ready to place their trust in our Labor Party, which has changed, to achieve it,” he reacted.

In these two constituencies as throughout the country, voters “want a Labor government determined to keep its promises”, “with a real project to rebuild our country”, he continued, promising that Labor would “give back” to United Kingdom “its future”. In polls, Labor has a wide lead ahead of expected UK-wide elections next year.

Labor candidate Sarah Edwards won the seat of Tamworth in central England, once held by the Conservatives, by 1,316 votes, sweeping away a lead of almost 20,000 votes. The Conservatives lost the seat of Mid-Bedfordshire (central England) by 1,192 votes, which they had won by 24,664 votes in 2019. This is the most bitter defeat for the Conservatives in a by-election since 1945.

These two votes were held at a time when the rating of the Prime Minister, who strives to present himself as an incarnation of change although his party has been in power for 13 years, is at its lowest since his arrival at Downing Street ago. almost a year.

The Labor opposition itself described these seats as “very safe” for the Conservatives. The latter themselves recognize that these two elections are being held in a “difficult” context locally. The departure of outgoing MPs in these two constituencies bears the mark of the Boris Johnson era, who had no other choice but to leave power in 2022 after a succession of scandals, first and foremost that of the parties organized in Downing Street in violation of anti-Covid rules.

In Mid-Bedfordshire, the legislative by-election was organized due to the resignation of Conservative MP Nadine Dorries, an ardent defender of the former Prime Minister. The former culture minister quit her post as an MP after being refused a seat in the House of Lords, and accused the current head of government of abandoning the “fundamental principles of conservatism”.

In the constituency of Tamworth, voters had to nominate the successor to Chris Pincher, at the heart of the affair which was fatal to Boris Johnson. The MP had grabbed the buttocks of one man and squeezed the private parts of another one drunken evening at the end of June 2022 at the very exclusive Carlton Club in London, which once hosted the British Conservative Party. Subjected last year to intense pressure to say what he knew about Chris Pincher’s past on previous incidents, Boris Johnson admitted an “error” in appointing him a few months earlier.

After asserting the opposite, Downing Street ended up recognizing that Boris Johnson had been informed in 2019 of old accusations against Chris Pincher, assuring that he had “forgotten” them.

Chris Pincher, MP for the constituency since 2010, ended up resigning after his appeal against his suspension of Parliament, which could in any case have given rise to a by-election, was rejected.

Rishi Sunak is currently touring the Middle East amid the war sparked by Hamas attacks on Israel. He visited the Jewish state and Saudi Arabia on Thursday, and is due to go to Egypt on Friday.