The Brits Mark The Coronation By Crushing Conservatives In Local Elections Across England

England had local council races yesterday— something akin to state legislative races in the U.S. The Conservatives knew they were in for a drubbing, but not nearly the drubbing they got as votes starting coming in for the roughly 8,000 seats being filled. The Conservative party had publicly predicted it would lose fewer that 500 seats nationally. They lost more than double that. Labour now has more seats in the local councils the the Conservatives do, something that hasn’t been the case since 2002.

I should add that there is little enthusiasm for Labour but they are viewed by the voters as clearly the lesser evil. If yesterday’s trends hold into 2025, when new Parliament is elected, Labourwill take between 36-38% of the vote to the Conservatives’ 28-30%. This was more a vote of no confidence in Boris Johnson and Liz Truss’ disatrous policies, corruption and confusion than it is a rejection of the new party leader, Rishi Sunak.

The last I checked, the Conservatives had lost 960 seats and Labour had gained 635, the Lib Dems gained 416 and the Greens gained 200. (Other parties lost 375 seats). The Guardian reported that “Among Conservative MPs, this positive spin on the loss of hundreds and possibly as much as 1,000 Tory seats was not going down well on Friday. Some have even bluntly admitted the terribleness of the results. Johnny Mercer, the MP for Plymouth Moor View, where Labour gained the council, gave the most direct admonishment to his party that it would need to ‘learn from this’ and ‘make a material difference to the quality of people’s lives.’ What Sunak will need to worry about in the short to medium term is whether his backbenchers are prepared to give him time to turn things around in the face of an increasingly likely general election win for Labour. If the view takes hold that a Labour victory against Sunak is inevitable, some Conservative MPs will in effect throw in the towel, take on second jobs, and mentally check out of politics for the next year. One Tory MP with a relatively safe southern seat said his main reaction was mulling his own private-sector job options given his lack of appetite for a stint in opposition.”

We’re hoping that state legislative elections in Virginia this year will be as strongly opposed to conservatives and will help flip the House of Delegates blue and strengthen the narrow Democratic hold on the state Senate. Please consider contributing to the Virginia progressives Blue America has endorsed here.

Today the Brits are crowned Charles III king, basically a tourist attraction. A few days ago a YouGov poll for the BBC found that something like 70% of Brits between the age of 18 and 35 say they aren’t interested in the royal family. People over 65, though— or 58% of them anyway— are interested in the royals. (42% of senior citizens aren’t). In the Commonwealth (14 other countries besides the UK consider the British monarch their head of state), the coronation is primarily drawing apathy and criticism. “Last year, when Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness welcomed Prince William and his wife, Kate, during a royal tour of the Caribbean, he announced that his country intends to become fully independent. It made for an awkward photo with the royal couple, who were also confronted with protests calling for Britain to pay slavery reparations.”