- By Sam Francisco
- Political reporter, BBC News
Rishi Sunak has rejected calls to change course after poor local election results, arguing he can make “progress” with voters ahead of the general election.
Speaking for the first time since the full scale of the Tory losses were revealed, the Prime Minister called the loss of 470 councilors “bitterly disappointing”.
The Conservatives are licking their wounds after a string of defeats in local elections. After the final votes were counted on Sunday, the Tories lost control of 10 councils, more than 470 council seats and a totemic loss of West Midland Mayor Andy Street.
The party also lost 10 Police and Crime Commissioners to Labour, marking a potentially significant blow to the Conservatives if they intend to focus their next general election campaign on law and order.
Appearing to admit for the first time that his party may be on track to lose its majority, Sunak said local election results “suggest we are heading towards a hung parliament, with Labor as the largest party”.
His comments reflect the analysis of leading psephologist Professor Michael Thrasher of Sky News – who suggested that the Labor Party would win 294 seats at the general election.
The projection, which was rejected by some pollsters, used local election results to project a national estimate of the vote share in a general election.
Sunak told The Times: “Keir Starmer backed in Downing Street by the SNP, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens would be a disaster for Britain.
“The country does not need more political negotiations, but action. We are the only party that has a plan to deliver on the people’s priorities.
“I know the last few years have been difficult and I understand why people are frustrated.
“Losing good Conservative councilors and such a fantastic mayor like Andy Street, who has done so much good for the West Midlands, is obviously bitterly disappointing.
“There is work to do and more progress to be made and I am determined that we will come together as a party and show the British people that we are helping them.”
The Labor Party denied that it is planning alliances with other parties to form a government in the next general elections, scheduled for the second half of this year.
Speaking on BBC Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Labor Party election coordinator Pat McFadden said there was now a “sense of belief” that his party could win.
He hailed the party’s “tremendous” election results, especially the victory in the West Midlands mayoral race, which was “beyond our expectations”.
“When people look at the Labor Party now, they can see a different Labor Party compared to a few years ago,” McFadden said.
“A Labor Party that is passing the essential confidence tests that voters are looking for.”
Speaking on Sunday, former home secretary Suella Braverman said Sunak’s plan was “not working”.
“There is no disguising the fact that these were terrible election results for the Conservatives,” Braverman told the BBC.
Sunak must “change tack” towards more right-wing policies in order to win back Tory voters who are “on strike”, she added.
Despite being a frequent critic of the prime minister, Braverman has not called for Sunak to be replaced, arguing it would be “impossible” to change leaders so close to the general election.
Braverman is among several conservative voices who have spoken out to advocate a political shift to the right in light of the dismal local election results.
Miriam Cates, co-president of the New Conservatives group made up mostly of “red wall” deputies since the party joined in 2019, said that her party must offer “patriotism and national security” to avoid falling into the “abyss”.
Writing in the Telegraph, Cates called on Sunak to ignore policies that “serve an international elite” and instead focus on drastically reducing immigration and reforming planning laws to boost housing construction.
Former chief Brexit negotiator Lord David Frost has said he believes it is “too late” to save the Conservative Party from “electoral defeat at the next general election”.
To save the party, Sunak must deliver “more tax cuts, more spending cuts” and a “serious attack on the burden of net zero”, argued Lord Frost.
Damian Green, chairman of the influential One Nation Conservative MPs Group, said that “to suggest that what we need to do is move to the right is irrational in the eyes of the electorate”.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Westminster Hour, the former first secretary said: “I’d just like to look at the seats we’ve lost in the last few days – we’ve lost to parties on our left.”
Conservative Party chairman Richard Holden told the same program that voters wanted the party to present a “clear vision for the country”.
“I want to see lower taxes, but they will be delivered in a sustainable way,” he said.
“I think it’s self-indulgent to talk to ourselves and talk about ourselves right now. Every time I get to the door, I agree with some others who have said, what people want to see is [the Conservative Party] present a clear vision for the country. I think we’ve seen a lot of that from the Prime Minister in recent days: new social security reforms, building on the changes to universal credit that have fundamentally changed the way social security works in this country, and encouraging people to work – which has happened over the last 14 years, but we have to go further.”
