Tories Romping in U.K.

Elections are underway in the United Kingdom, by-elections and council elections that could be analogized to off-year races in the U.S. They are significant in part because they are the first U.K. elections since 2019. The London Times reports:

The initial results from the UK’s first elections since 2019 paint a rosy picture for the Conservative Party. They have taken Hartlepool from Labour and held the mayoralty in Tees Valley, two of a “hat-trick” of contests they are confident of winning, the third being the mayoral race in the West Midlands.

The Hartlepool race was much watched, as Hartlepool had been a Labour stronghold for decades. But this year the Conservative candidate won going away, by almost a 2-1 margin. This is part of a strong trend toward working-class constituencies that were once dominated by Labour turning to the Tories.

The Conservatives are also doing well in Council elections:

The Tories have also taken control of councils in Dudley, Northumberland, Nottinghamshire Harlow, Basildon and Nuneaton and picked up seats in other places, including Sunderland and Redditch. Labour has lost more than 100 councillors so far.

The Labour Party’s fortunes sank under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, and he was replaced a year or so ago by Sir Keir Starmer, but Starmer has been unable to stop the bleeding:

Last night Sir Keir Starmer said he was “bitterly disappointed” and vowed to change his party.

Yes, but how? Labour no longer has much to offer working-class or middle-class Britons, having become a party of “woke” urban leftists. The North, formerly home to the “red wall” of Labour dominance–in the U.K., red is left and blue is right–has gone over to the Conservatives.

These trends, of course, are much the same as we have seen in the U.S., and we can hope that this week’s U.K. elections are a harbinger of what will happen here next year.

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