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NORTHALLERTON, England — As the results of local elections across England and Wales were tallied Friday, they painted a bleak picture for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s ruling Conservative Party and its prospects of holding on to power this year.

The Conservatives lost seat after seat on town councils, while the opposition Labour Party finished strong, taking away votes in areas once considered Tory strongholds.

It was the last test before Sunak and his government must confront voters in a nationwide general election, likely to be held this fall, though it could come sooner, especially if the embattled prime minister faces a rebellion among his own anxious lawmakers.

The BBC projected that Conservatives got 25 percent of the national vote share while Labour claimed 34 percent, with the rest divided among smaller parties. John Curtice, a political scientist who dissects the vote on-air for the BBC, said the results highlighted “deep trouble for Conservatives.”

How did this happen — this dramatic reversal, this nosedive for the Tories? While much of the rest of Europe is expected to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/03/10/portugal-election-2024-results/" target=_blank>tilt right in elections this year</a>, why are British voters looking to the left?

In December 2019, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, with his schoolboy Latin and tousled blond mop, was a vote-getting juggernaut who carried his party to a seemingly unassailable <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/uk-general-election-2019/2019/12/12/cc5ecb98-17ae-11ea-80d6-d0ca7007273f_story.html" target=_blank>80-seat majority in Parliament</a>.

Matt Dunham

But now, after 14 years in power, after pandemic and recession, after five prime ministers in six years and a string of lurid, easy-to-understand scandals, the Tories and their supporters have come to use the word “doom” to describe their present reality.

As in: doom loop, doom spiral, doom and gloom.

When Johnson showed up before the cameras at his local polling station, he was turned away because he forgot to bring his photo ID card — denied a ballot by a law his own party passed. (He returned later in the day with proper identification.)

General election surveys of voter intentions have been consistently brutal for the Conservatives, showing Labour ahead by as much as 20 points. The Tories’ performance in Thursday’s election — when voters picked 2,600 representatives to serve on local councils in England and Wales, alongside 11 metro mayors — didn’t offer much in the way of hope.

Labour also scored a stunning win in a special by-election in the seaside city of Blackpool to replace an outgoing lawmaker in Parliament. Labour Party leader Keir Starmer declared the victory “seismic” and said it sent a direct message to Sunak: The British “want change.”

Peter Byrne

Labour celebrated, too, a win in a mayoral contest in the newly drawn district of York and North Yorkshire, which includes the area Sunak represents. “The prime minister’s own constituents have taken a look at the two parties and chosen Labour,” a party spokesman said.

Keane Duncan, 29, had been the Conservative candidate for mayor here, seeking support in the small towns and villages where his party has dominated for decades. He had promised to make 1,000 stops in 100 days in the district, driving a campaign-poster-plastered minivan that he calls Peggy.

We were with Duncan last week as he reached No. 933, out in the bucolic shires, where he pulled the van over to meet voters at prearranged stops — a telephone box, a mail post, a town hall, graveyards, and pubs with names like “The Dog and Gun.”

William Booth

Duncan made a Conservative Party pitch, but he didn’t press it too hard. Nor did he talk much about Sunak or the party in Parliament.

Yorkshire voted for Brexit in 2016. But long gone are the days when many Conservatives want to stand before the voters and extol the advantages of leaving the European Union, which has been, in most sectors, a flop.

Duncan talked about spending tax money, not cutting taxes. He stressed that he is the son of a bricklayer and health-care worker.

The crowds were minimal, sometimes missing altogether. Those who showed up to meet him were mostly elderly. Since this was about a local election and not a national contest, what they asked about were potholes, bus routes and whether the local authorities should charge for parking in the market towns.

Still, there was unease in the Tory lands. At the quick stops and in follow-up interviews, it was clear the party was in trouble.

“I am a lifelong Conservative voter, but sad to say, I won’t vote Conservative this time around,” Robin Bosomworth, an 84-year-old farmer, said outside the Carpenters Arms tavern. “There’s no feel-good factor.”

Tories are supposed to be for law and order, for keeping the state small and taxes low. “Don’t know where they’ve been on that,” he added.

Bosomworth couldn’t say how the local vote would go, but he predicted that the next British government would be Labour — maybe by a landslide.

Like others, he didn’t have any problem with Sunak personally, “though some say he’s too rich for the job.” (The <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/24/rishi-sunak-net-worth/" target=_blank>prime minister is one of the wealthiest people</a> in the country.)

But Bosomworth and his neighbors could easily recall the squabbling among Conservative lawmakers — the “endless backstabbing,” as one put it — the musical chairs of ministerial appointments and the string of scandals.

The billboard bad behavior began during the covid-19 pandemic with Johnson and the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/01/25/boris-johnson-parties-number-10/" target=_blank>lockdown-busting parties</a> at Downing Street — complete with karaoke, suitcases of smuggled wine, and vomit in the stairways — which suggested there was <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/01/27/boris-johnson-partygate-fines/" target=_blank>one rule for the ordinary people</a> forced to stay home and another for the powerful.

British voters generally care less than Americans do about the private lives of their leaders and lawmakers, but a narrative emerged.

Johnson’s health secretary, Matt Hancock, resigned after he was caught breaking pandemic social-distancing rules by <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/06/25/matt-hancock-affair-allegations-covid/" target="_blank">kissing an aide in his office</a>. The party’s deputy chief whip stepped down following reports that he had drunkenly groped two men at a private club. Another Tory lawmaker quit over revelations he’d watched pornography in the House of Commons. Yet another left after he was caught up in a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/05/sexting-scandal-honey-trap-uk-william-wragg/" target="_blank">sexting scam</a>.

The party has not been helped by a churn of leaders and forgettable prime ministers, who hold office for months, not years.

There was Prime Minister David Cameron, who bowed out after <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/for-david-cameron-a-quick-departure-after-a-stunning-defeat/2016/06/24/8d5ff592-3a04-11e6-9ccd-d6005beac8b3_story.html" target="_blank">losing the Brexit vote</a>. Theresa May was <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/boris-johnson-uk-prime-minister/2019/07/24/42bce126-ac93-11e9-9411-a608f9d0c2d3_story.html" target="_blank">pressured out</a> because she couldn’t get Brexit done. Johnson did Brexit but was brought down by his handling of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/07/uk-boris-johnson-resignation/" target="_blank">those lockdown parties</a>. Then Liz Truss became the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/20/liz-truss-shortest-prime-minister-uk/" target="_blank">shortest-serving prime minister</a> in British history after <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/28/boe-uk-pound-intervention/" target="_blank">crashing the economy</a> with unfunded tax cuts.

Chris J. Ratcliffe

Sunak — a Hindu teetotaler who fasts one day a week — promised to bring back sanity, and many say he has. But because he hasn’t narrowed the gap with Labour, some Tories are plotting a revolt.

Up in Yorkshire, outside the Greyhound pub, Rob Burn, 70, who sells gardening supplies, said he imagined he would still vote Conservative. “I like Rishi. He’s only a little guy but he stands his corner.”

But the prime minister has not been well served by his lawmakers. “They’re all jumping ship,” Burn said.

In all, 63 Conservative lawmakers have announced that they will not run for reelection this year — compared with just 18 from the Labour Party.

Alyson Baker, a Conservative Party councilor in a local parish, came out to give Duncan, the young mayoral candidate, a boost.

Asked why voters appear to be moving away from the Conservatives, she wondered aloud: “It’s like the seven-year itch, isn’t it? Voters want a break. They’re just ready for a change.”

In the little village of Balk, Joy Maude, in her 70s, represents that “doom” the Tories have been worried about.

“Nobody is accountable anymore,” she fumed. “They’re all liars and all done nothing.”

She assumed Labour would win the next general election, and “they’re all left-wingers, so God help us.”

Maude said she would switch her vote from Conservative to the Reform UK party, which is the reborn Brexit party, pushing for lower taxes and net-zero immigration. Some of the Reform candidates have suggested that climate change is a hoax and that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/coronavirus/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">coronavirus</a> vaccines are harmful.

Voters tell pollsters their top concerns are the cost of living and the level of care provided by the National Health Service.

WPA Pool

Sunak has vowed to reduce inflation and cut waiting times for NHS appointments. But he is also betting that immigration is still an issue with resonance and has promised to “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/08/11/uk-migration-rwanda-stop-the-boats/" target=_blank>stop the boats</a>,” the daily spectacle of desperate migrants risking their lives on rubber rafts trying to cross the English Channel.

Sunak’s government plans to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/22/uk-rwanda-sunak-flights/" target=_blank>fly asylum seekers arriving by boat to Rwanda</a>. No flights have taken off yet. But the Home Office last week began a self-proclaimed “large scale” operation to detain asylum seekers destined for removal.

Tony Travers, a political scientist at the London School of Economics, said the voters interviewed by The Washington Post mirrored the sense that the Conservative Party is riven with factionalism and “has become ungovernable.”

During Johnson’s peak, the Tories gained seats in the north, in the “red wall” once dominated by Labour. Those were the sort of voters who wanted Brexit done, but they also wanted “a big state to protect them,” Travers said. The Conservative base, though, is in the more-affluent south, “which just wants lower taxes and basically to be left alone,” he said.

Travers said the scandals and the revolving door of prime ministers reflected the challenges of a party long in power, “where they are electing people who might not have passed muster before.”

The political scientist imagined that Sunak’s party might spin the local election results as not as bad as they could have been: “Well, this is bad. We didn’t do very well. But hey, Labour should have done better, so let’s keeping going.”

Overseas Press Club, Kim Wall Award, "Occupied," 2018

 Overseas Press Club, Robert Spiers Benjamn Award Citation, "Mexico's Middle Class," 2012  

Overseas Press Club, Robert Spiers Benjamin Award Citation, "Mexico at War," 2010

Finalist, Pulitzer Prize, Breaking News, "Fort Hood Shooting," 2010

University of Texas at Austin, literature 

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Vannevar Bush Fellow

William Booth is The Washington Post’s London bureau chief. He was previously bureau chief in Jerusalem, Mexico City, Los Angeles and Miami.

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