The scandals of clandestine parties held during the pandemic, the economic recovery after the health crisis, the increase in the cost of living, the Ukrainian War, a kind of rancidity that has established itself among part of the population and even the disheveled look of Boris Johnson will be some of the aspects that will accompany the British to the polls this Thursday (5).
Regional elections in the UK will decide who will occupy the thousands of seats on city councils, district councils and other divisions of local politics. But they will also be a kind of personal referendum on the prime minister, a test of his leadership at the head of the Conservative Party and perhaps a harbinger of the challenge the Labor opposition will face if it emerges victorious.
In general, major international issues do not usually have a great influence on local disputes. Under normal circumstances, it matters little to a voter choosing a new town councilor in a small town in northern England whether Boris sends £300m in military aid to Ukraine.
But the consequences of the conflict in the local dynamics, such as the increase in the cost of living, are indeed decisive when it comes to voting. It will still be the first regional election after Brexit and at a time when Covid is starting to lag behind – and local leaders will be judged for their conduct in the period.
This equation also includes the personal image that the British built of the prime minister — shaped in recent months by a series of scandals. The report of the internal investigation that looked into the irregular events that took place in Downing Street, the seat of the government, concluded, without mentioning Boris directly, that there were “failures of leadership and judgment” by different members of his management.
The prime minister was fined, becoming the first head of government to be punished for breaking the law while in office. It is also the subject of an investigation that investigates whether he deliberately lied to Parliament when he denied the holding of clandestine parties. “I am absolutely disgusted with the way he behaved,” John Jones, 75, a resident of Newcastle-under-Lyme, told Reuters news agency. “I’m tired of seeing him act like a clown. Just look at his haircut and the way he dresses to tell he’s not taking this job seriously.”
Votes like that of Jones, which Boris has already lost, were crucial in recent elections to consolidate the Conservative government. If the polls’ projections come to fruition, however, the change in the landscape of the British political landscape could become a landmark in the demise of the prime minister’s coreligionists and a new chance for the opponents of the Labor Party.
“This can both strengthen the opposition and create the pretext for the Conservatives to somehow try to ‘get rid’ of Boris before the next election. [gerais]of the next test of strength”, says Leandro Consentino, political scientist and professor at Insper.
The farewell of Boris, whose political wit has so far helped him stay in office, may not come so easily — but it’s also never been closer. The expected defeat in this Thursday’s elections could be the trigger to foment the vote of no confidence that has haunted the prime minister for months.
If 54 of the 360 ​​Conservative deputies in Parliament send a request to a party body to challenge their leadership, the process that could trigger the resignation begins.
The precedent already exists. In 2019, the poor performance in local elections boded well for Boris’s predecessor, Theresa May. The conservative lost about 1,300 seats in the election in May of that year and, the following month, was forced to resign from her leadership position.
Carolina Pavese, professor of international relations at ESPM, says that the election will not bring big surprises in terms of which party dominates each region of the country. But the long-term scenario could change and influence the general elections, scheduled, although with no set date, for 2023.
“What will be taken now is a photograph of the current political situation, of public opinion today, but this will provide input for the parties to work on what is lacking in their images and in their agendas.”
In the expert’s view, Boris acted similarly to Joe Biden and managed to raise domestic political capital through an external crisis such as the Ukraine War. Both announced billions of dollars in aid packages for Kiev in recent weeks. The Briton became the first Western leader to address the Ukrainian parliament since the conflict began, and there he made promises that Ukraine will win the war.
“If, on the one hand, the war has a real negative economic impact for the UK, on ​​the other hand it has presented itself as an opportunity for Boris to employ political capital and strengthen his role as a leader to try to change public opinion in his favor”, he says. Pavese.
For Consentino, a defeat by the Conservatives this Thursday will be almost entirely debited to Boris. Perhaps this is the fear of some candidates who, despite sharing the same caption with the prime minister, omitted his name and image from campaign materials and began to call themselves “local conservatives”, marking a distance from the prime minister’s national agenda.
“It says a lot that the Conservative candidates themselves are ashamed to associate with him and are trying to deceive voters,” said Angela Rayner, deputy leader of the Labor Party. “Without answers to the cost-of-living crisis, they are trying to hide from their own government’s record.”
The Insper professor points out, however, that conservatives who bet on the frying of Boris in the hope that a new name will emerge in time for the next general elections are making a risky move. “By ruffling their leader, they can themselves lose leadership and control of the government.”
This is perhaps the chance Labor has been waiting for since 2010, when Gordon Brown left Downing Street. The economics editor of the British newspaper The Guardian described the advantage of Boris’ opponents with a sporting metaphor. “In football, it would be the equivalent of a striker two meters from the goal with one foot on the ball and the defenders out of sight. If the Labor Party doesn’t swell the net now, then there’s really only one question to ask: when on Earth is likely to?”
Thus, the political environment, while favorable to Labour, could, in practice, backfire. With the United Kingdom out of the European Union, in post-coronavirus recovery and involved in the Ukrainian War, it is not known how the party that has been opposition for the last 12 years would behave in government.
