The British Conservative Party is in trouble. If that wasn’t already obvious after the crushing defeat in the municipal elections in May, it is now in no doubt. By-elections are scheduled for Thursday in three constituencies. All three have been held by the Conservatives for years. But on Friday the ruling party appeared to have lost two hands: one to the left-wing Labor Party, the other to the Liberal Democrats.

The defeat was especially painful for the Conservatives. Although it was feared before that perhaps all three constituencies would be lost for the Conservatives. In that sense, it’s quite odd. At least that’s how Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak tries to put it. According to him, the election results show that the national election in one and a half years is ‘not a race’.

The former constituency of Boris Johnson

The Prime Minister is sticking to one constituency narrowly defended by his party: Uxbridge & South Ruislip. That is the former constituency of Boris Johnson, the former prime minister who won the general election for the Conservatives in 2019 but then succumbed to scandal. Johnson hastened midterm elections by relinquishing his parliamentary seat after critical reports. It stated that as prime minister he had lied to parliament. Johnson then left politics. Two other Conservatives also followed suit.

In the United Kingdom, the 650 members of parliament are not elected by a national register, as in the Netherlands, but per constituency. Because three Conservative MPs resigned, a new representative must be elected in their district in the meantime.

The fact that Labor, contrary to expectations, did not win at Uxbridge & South Ruislip, shows that the opposition party cannot yet consider itself fully wealthy. Although Labor leader Keir Starmer spoke to Selby & Ainsty, where his party won, of a ‘historic victory’.

Not very green

Labor themselves were quick to analyze on Friday that the cause of the disappointing results in Uxbridge & South Ruislip, a London suburb, was Labor mayor Sadiq Khan’s wrong policies. Khan recently decided to ban excessively polluting cars from August in many suburbs, as well as in central London.

With this analysis, the Labor Party seems to have distanced itself from this green policy. This fits in well with the trend whereby opposition parties are moving ever further towards the political center and above all trying to offend as few voters as possible with plans that are too left-wing. In this way he hoped to take full advantage of the current unpopularity of the Conservative Party.

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