Labour claim early win in UK vote as closely watched results trickle in

LONDON: Britain's opposition Labour Party won a parliamentary seat in northern England on Friday, beating the governing Conservatives in one of a series of votes that will help gauge public opinion ahead of a full national election due this year.
The parliamentary seat for Blackpool South was up for grabs after the incumbent, elected in 2019 as a Conservative candidate, quit over a lobbying scandal.
Labour candidate Chris Webb won the seat with 10,825 votes. The Conservative candidate came second on 3,218.
The victory set the early tone on what will be a closely watched two days of results from elections for over two thousand of seats on local authorities across England and a handful of high-profile mayoral elections, including in the capital London.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's Conservatives are around 20 percentage points behind Labour in most opinion polls for a national election which Sunak intends to call in the second half of the year.
The results, due throughout Friday and Saturday, will offer some insight into whether those polling trends materialise at the ballot box.
If they do, it could trigger fresh anger in the Conservative Party over Sunak's leadership and the prospect of the party losing power after 14 years.