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      Why Boris Johnson Will Be Tested in UK by Local Elections

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      The British prime minister is under fire for lockdown-breaking parties. But many voters are skeptical that the opposition can solve issues such as soaring prices.BURY, England — Oliver Henry tries not to talk politics at his barbershop to avoid inciting arguments among his customers. But when Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain was fined recently by the police for breaking his own coronavirus laws, the bickering at Chaps Barbers was unavoidable.“Some people despise him, and other people really love him,” he said, referring to Mr. Johnson, whose Conservative Party faces an important electoral test Thursday as the prime minister battles a swirling scandal over parties in Downing Street that flouted lockdown rules.As he trimmed a client’s hair last week, Mr. Henry said he voted for Mr. Johnson’s Conservatives in the last general election, in 2019, and, grateful for government financial support during the pandemic, was not planning to abandon the prime minister yet.Whether millions of others feel the same when they vote Thursday in elections for local municipalities could determine Mr. Johnson’s fate. His leadership is again on the line, with his own lawmakers mulling a no-confidence motion that could evict him from Downing Street — and a poor result could tip them over the edge.Bury, England. Millions voting in local elections on Thursday could determine Mr. Johnson’s fate.Mary Turner for The New York TimesOne thing that has saved Mr. Johnson so far is his reputation as an election winner, someone able to reach out to voters in places like Bury, the so-called red wall regions of the north and middle of England. These areas traditionally voted for the opposition Labour Party but largely supported Brexit and turned to the Conservatives in the 2019 general election. What happens in them on Thursday will be watched closely.Elections are taking place only in some parts of the country, with around 4,400 seats being contested in more than 140 municipalities. Voting is also taking place in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Conservatives are braced for losses. They are trailing Labour in opinion polls, the prime minister is mired in scandal and voters are feeling the pain of spiking energy, food and other prices.But things may still not be as easy for Labour as they might seem. Many of the seats contested on Thursday were last up for grabs in 2018, when Labour did well, giving it limited room to advance.Voting is for elected representatives known as councilors in municipalities that control issues like garbage collection, highway maintenance and planning rules. Turnout will most likely be low, and many of those who cast a ballot will be thinking more about potholes than Downing Street parties.A statue of Robert Peel, a 19th century Conservative prime minister, in his hometown, Bury.Mary Turner for The New York TimesLabour is also struggling to make a big breakthrough and win back its old heartland “red wall” areas, like Bury, the birthplace of Robert Peel, a 19th century Conservative prime minister. In recent decades, the area has suffered from deindustrialization.In Bury South, it elected Labour lawmakers to Parliament for years before 2019, when the Conservatives narrowly snatched the seat. But the winner, Christian Wakeford, recently defected to Labour. James Daly, a Conservative, won the other parliamentary seat, Bury North, in 2019 by a margin of just 105 votes.If Labour is ever going to fully regain control over Bury, now should be a good time. At the Brandlesholme Community Center and Food Bank, close to Chaps Barbers, its chairwoman, Jo Warburton, sums up the situation locally in a word: “diabolical.”Meat and poultry stalls at Bury Market. Many people there are struggling with high prices.Mary Turner for The New York TimesSoaring energy bills are forcing some people to choose between eating and heating, she said, adding, “Nobody can afford to live.” Ms. Warburton recently put out a plea for additional donations after having almost run out of food to offer. Even people with jobs are increasingly in need of groceries, including one person who said she had been surviving on soup for a week, Ms. Warburton added.Because the food bank is a charity, Ms. Warburton tries to keep out of politics. But she said that while local Labour Party politicians support the center, she has had little contact with Conservatives. As for the government in London, “they haven’t got a clue about life,” she said.Across town, one Bury resident, Angela Pomfret, said she sympathized in particular with those who have young families. “I don’t know how people are able to survive,” she said. “I am 62, and I am struggling.”Ms. Pomfret said she had been unable to visit her mother, who died during the coronavirus pandemic, because of Covid restrictions, so she was at first annoyed by news about illicit parties taking place in Downing Street at the same time.But while Ms. Pomfret says she will vote for Labour, she bears no grudge against Mr. Johnson and says she is not against him personally.Polling station signs in a Bury community center that also houses the Brandlesholme food bank ahead of elections.Mary Turner for The New York TimesNor is there much hostility toward him at Bury Market, where Andrew Fletcher, serving customers at a meat and poultry stall, acknowledges that trade is a little depressed at present but does not blame the government. “I will be voting Tory,” he said. “I don’t think Labour could do any better.”Trevor Holt, who has spent 39 years as an elected member of Bury Council for the Labour Party and twice served as the town’s mayor, is convinced that Mr. Johnson is a big liability for the Tories.“I think Boris Johnson is very unpopular, people think he’s either a fool or a crook — and he’s probably both, isn’t he?” he said with a laugh, drinking tea in a cafe at a building he opened as mayor in 1997. The cost of living is also eroding support for the Conservatives, he added. His expectations are cautious, however, and he thinks that Labour will “gain some seats” rather than sweep to a big victory.Trevor Holt, who has spent 39 years as an elected member of Bury Council for the Labour Party and twice served as the town’s mayor, is convinced that Mr. Johnson is a big liability for the Tories.Mary Turner for The New York TimesLabour currently controls Bury Council, and that means that it takes the blame for many things that go wrong locally as well as for some unpopular policies.Moves to build more homes on green spaces have provoked opposition, as have plans for a clean air zone, a proposal — now being reconsidered after protests — that would charge for journeys in some more polluting vehicles.To complicate matters, there is also a fringe party campaigning for more support for an area of Bury called Radcliffe. In the Royal Oak pub, Mike Smith, a councilor for the party, Radcliffe First, who is running for re-election, describes his patch as “an archetypal forgotten ‘red-wall’ town,” comparing it to Springfield, the fictional setting of “The Simpsons.”“If they need to build a sewage works, they’ll try to put it in Radcliffe,” he said.Campaigners and candidates for the Radcliffe First political party at the Royal Oak pub in Bury after canvassing for votes.Mary Turner for The New York TimesAt another table in the pub, which filled steadily before a soccer match was screened, Martin Watmough described Mr. Johnson as “an absolute charlatan,” and said he would support Labour in the local elections, adding that the Conservatives had lost the trust of many voters.But Nick Jones, the leader of the Conservatives on Bury Council, is bullish, considering the political headwinds against his party generated by the lockdown party scandal. He is hoping to win a handful of seats.Mr. Jones is campaigning not so much for the prime minister as against Labour’s record locally. Speaking in another pub in Bury, he highlighted issues including the clean air zone plan, the state of the highways (“a disgrace,” in his opinion) and the frequency of refuse collections.Nick Jones, leader of the Conservatives on Bury Council, is bullish and hoping to win a handful of seats. Mary Turner for The New York TimesWhen the conversation turns to Mr. Johnson, who visited Bury last week, Mr. Jones is careful to be loyal.But his political pitch has little to do with a scandal-prone prime minister, whose immediate fate could depend on results of elections like these.The message to the voters in Bury, Mr. Jones said, is: “We are not talking about Downing Street, we are talking about your street.” More

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      Johnson Is All Apologies Before Parliament After ‘Partygate’ Fine

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      Though opposition politicians called him out, only one member of his own Conservative party called on him to resign.Boris Johnson, the prime minister of Britain, apologized to members of Parliament after he was fined by police for attending a lockdown party in Downing Street during the height of the pandemic.Neil Hall/EPA, via ShutterstockLONDON — Prime Minister Boris Johnson faced Parliament on Tuesday as an awkward pioneer in British politics: a confirmed lawbreaker who misled fellow lawmakers but remains ensconced in the nation’s highest elected office.Apologizing profusely for his recent police fine for breaching coronavirus restrictions, Mr. Johnson tried to move on from a scandal over illicit Downing Street parties that has threatened his hold on power. The war in Ukraine and a lack of obvious successors to him have conspired to keep him in his job, at least for now.But Mr. Johnson’s political resilience did not mask the weighty legal and constitutional issues at stake. Opposition lawmakers hammered the prime minister for flouting the rules he imposed on others and accused him of misleading Parliament when he claimed that none of the social gatherings held in his office had been improper.“He knows he’s dishonest and incapable of changing, so he drags everybody else down with him,” said Keir Starmer, the leader of the Labour Party. He urged backbench members of Mr. Johnson’s Conservative Party not to follow “in the slipstream of an out-of-touch, out-of-control prime minister.”Only a single Conservative lawmaker, Mark Harper, called on Mr. Johnson to resign. Several echoed the arguments of his cabinet ministers that the scandal was a distraction at a time when Europe is facing its gravest security crisis since World War II. Forcing out their leader now, they said, would be a mistake.Still, the angry, emotional tenor of the debate revealed how deeply the scandal has blackened Mr. Johnson’s reputation. No prime minister in living memory has been formally designated as a lawbreaker, and he faces the prospect of additional fines for attending other illicit parties. Tory lawmakers began drifting out of the chamber as the debate wore on, suggesting limits to the party’s backing for him.The angry, emotional tenor of the debate in Parliament revealed how deeply the scandal has blackened Mr. Johnson’s reputation.Tolga Akmen/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Johnson stuck to his penitent tone, apologizing more than a dozen times, though he never explicitly admitted to breaking the law, when asked directly. He was especially contrite about his previous statements to Parliament, which pose a particular danger to him since they have been exposed as misleading, either intentionally or unwittingly.“It did not occur to me, then or subsequently, that a gathering in the Cabinet room just before a vital meeting on Covid strategy could amount to a breach of the rules,” Mr. Johnson said. “That was my mistake and I apologize for it unreservedly.”Ministers caught lying to Parliament are expected to resign under rules written in what is known as the ministerial code. As recently as 2018, a Conservative lawmaker, Amber Rudd, quit as home secretary after admitting that she had “inadvertently misled” lawmakers over government targets for removing illegal immigrants.“The ministerial code is quite clear: deliberately misleading Parliament is a resigning offense since it prevents Parliament doing its job of scrutiny,” said Vernon Bogdanor, an expert on constitutional issues and professor of government at King’s College London. “The trouble is that there is no means of enforcing this principle against a prime minister if his party continues to support him.”Indeed, the ultimate arbiter of the ministerial code is the prime minister himself. Mr. Johnson has disregarded this system of checks and balances before, in 2020, when they involved a member of his government.That was when Mr. Johnson’s independent ethics adviser, Alex Allan, concluded that the home secretary, Priti Patel, had breached the ministerial code in her treatment of members of her staff, even if she was not aware she was bullying them. Despite that finding, Mr. Johnson decided that Ms. Patel had not breached the code and should not resign, and it was ultimately Mr. Allan who quit.Now Mr. Johnson is in the odd position of being a prime minister who is accused of breaking the code, making him effectively the judge and jury in his own case. He has made it clear that he has no intention of stepping down, declaring that the best way to come back from this scandal is to deliver on behalf of the British people.“It’s something the people who drew up the ministerial code didn’t really anticipate happening,” said Hannah White, deputy director of the Institute for Government, a London-based think tank. Under what she called the “good chap” theory of government, the prime minister would typically have resigned before getting to this point.Understand Boris Johnson’s Recent TroublesCard 1 of 5Turmoil at Downing Street. More

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      How Biden and Boris Johnson Reached the Same Place on Virus Policy

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      Two different leaders with differing approaches landed on a policy of coexisting with the virus. Analysts say they had little choice.LONDON — On the evening of Dec. 21, Prime Minister Boris Johnson appeared from 10 Downing Street to tell anxious Britons they could “go ahead with their Christmas plans,” despite a surge in new coronavirus cases. At nearly the same moment, President Biden took to a White House podium to give Americans a similar greenlight.It was a striking, if unintended, display of synchronicity from two leaders who began with very different approaches to the pandemic, to say nothing of politics. Their convergence in how to handle the Omicron variant says a lot about how countries are confronting the virus, more than two years after it first threatened the world.For Mr. Johnson and Mr. Biden, analysts said, the politics and science of Covid have nudged them toward a policy of trying to live with the virus rather than putting their countries back on war footing. It is a highly risky strategy: Hospitals across Britain and parts of the United States are already close to overrun with patients. But for now, it is better than the alternative: Shutting down their economies again.“A Conservative prime minister trying to deal in a responsible way with Covid is very different than a Democratic president trying to deal responsibly with Covid,” said Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster in Washington. And yet, he said, their options are no longer all that different.“From both a medical perspective and a political perspective,” Mr. Garin said, “there’s not as strong an imperative for people to hunker down in the way they were hunkering down a year ago.”President Biden, taking office, promised to pay greater heed to scientific advice and embraced measures like “expanded masking, testing and social distancing.”Al Drago for The New York TimesSome analysts say the two leaders had little choice. Both are dealing with lockdown-weary populations. Both have made headway in vaccinating their citizens, though Britain remains ahead of the United States. And both have seen their popularity erode as their early promises to vanquish the virus wilted.Several of Mr. Biden’s former scientific advisers this week publicly urged him to overhaul his strategy to shift the focus from banishing the virus to a “new normal” of coexisting with it. That echoes Mr. Johnson’s words when he lifted restrictions last July. “We must ask ourselves,” he said, “‘When will we be able to return to normal?’”Devi Sridhar, an American scientist who heads the global health program at the University of Edinburgh, said, “The scientific community has broad consensus now that we have to use the tools we have to stay open and avoid the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021. But it’s not easy at all, as we are seeing.”The alignment of Mr. Johnson and Mr. Biden is significant because Britain has often served as a Covid test case for the United States — a few weeks ahead in seeing the effects of a new wave and a model, for good or ill, in how to respond to it.Miami this week. Several of Mr. Biden’s former scientific advisers have publicly urged him to shift the focus from banishing the virus to a “new normal” of coexisting with it.Saul Martinez for The New York TimesIt was the first country to approve a vaccine and the fastest major economy to roll it out. Its frightening projections, from Imperial College London, about how many people could die in an uncontrolled pandemic helped push a reluctant Mr. Johnson and an equally reluctant President Donald J. Trump to call for social distancing restrictions in their countries.That Mr. Johnson and Mr. Trump initially resisted such measures was hardly a surprise, given their ideological kinship as populist politicians. When Mr. Johnson locked down Britain, several days after his European neighbors, he promised to “send the virus packing” in 12 weeks. Mr. Trump likewise vowed that Covid, “like a miracle,” would soon disappear. Both later suffered through bouts with the disease.Mr. Biden, taking office, promised a different approach, one that paid greater heed to scientific advice and embraced difficult measures like “expanded masking, testing and social distancing.” Though Mr. Johnson never flouted scientific advice like Mr. Trump, he was sunnier than Mr. Biden, continuing to promise that the crisis would soon pass.For Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the major obstacle is not defiant regional leaders or the opposition but members of his own Conservative Party.Pool photo by Jack HillBut both he and Mr. Biden have languished politically as new variants have made Covid far more stubborn than they had hoped. Last July 4, with new cases dropping and vaccination rates rising, Mr. Biden claimed the United States had gained “the upper hand” on the virus. Weeks later, the Delta variant was sweeping through the country.In England, with nearly 70 percent of adults having had two doses of a vaccine, Mr. Johnson lifted virtually all social-distancing rules on July 19, a bold — some said reckless — move that the London tabloids nicknamed “Freedom Day.” After a midsummer lull in cases that appeared to vindicate Mr. Johnson’s gamble, the Omicron variant has now driven new cases in Britain to more than 150,000 a day.Mr. Biden and Mr. Johnson have different powers in dealing with the pandemic. As prime minister, Mr. Johnson can order lockdowns in England, a step he has taken twice since his first lockdown in March 2020. In the United States, those restrictions are in the hands of governors, a few of whom, like the Florida Republican Ron DeSantis, have become vocal critics of Mr. Biden’s approach.For Mr. Johnson, the major obstacle is not defiant regional leaders or the opposition but members of his own Conservative Party, who fiercely oppose further lockdowns and have rebelled against even modest moves in that direction.Riders in the London tube last month. The Omicron variant has now driven new cases in Britain to more than 150,000 a day.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesThe prime minister has kept open the possibility of further restrictions. But analysts say that given his eroding popularity, he no longer has the political capital to persuade his party to go along with an economically damaging lockdown, even if scientists recommended it.Mr. Johnson is “essentially now a prisoner of his more hawkish cabinet colleagues and the 100 or so MPs who seem to be allergic to any kind of public health restrictions,” said Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary, University of London. They “just feel that the state has grown too big in trying to combat Covid and that they really don’t want the government to grow any bigger,” Mr. Bale said.Some British analysts draw a comparison between red-state governors like Mr. DeSantis and Conservative lawmakers from the “red wall,” former Labour strongholds in the Midlands and the north of England that Mr. Johnson’s Tories swept in the 2019 election with his promise to “Get Brexit done.”Las Vegas Boulevard during a lockdown in May 2020. Bridget Bennett for The New York TimesThese are not low-tax, small-government conservatives in the tradition of Ronald Reagan or Margaret Thatcher, but right-leaning populists who model themselves on Mr. Trump and the Mr. Johnson who championed the Brexit vote — voters the prime minister would need to win re-election.Some critics argue that Mr. Biden and Mr. Johnson are both out of step with their countries. Britons have proven far more tolerant of lockdowns than the lawmakers in the prime minister’s party. In parts of the United States, by contrast, popular resistance to lockdowns is widespread and deeply entrenched.“Biden suffers from seeming to do too much and Boris suffers from seeming to do too little,” said Frank Luntz, a Republican strategist who was a classmate of Mr. Johnson’s at Oxford University. “Biden would have done a better job if he had led Britain, and Boris would have done a better job if he led the U.S.”Ice skaters in London last month.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesMr. Biden, unlike Mr. Johnson, does not face an internal party rebellion on his Covid policy. But the continued grip of the pandemic has sapped the president’s poll ratings, stoking fears of a Republican landslide in the midterm elections. The calls for change from members of Mr. Biden’s former scientific brain-trust, some said, reflected concerns that his Covid messaging was lagging reality.Others pointed out that the president’s determination to keep schools and businesses open, despite the soaring number of cases, signaled that a change in thinking was underway in the White House — if a few months later than that in Downing Street.“When Biden says we ought to be concerned but not panicked, he’s meeting Americans where they are,” Mr. Garin, the Democratic pollster, said. “He’s also meeting the science where it is.”Stephen Castle contributed reporting. More

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      For Johnson, a Political Rebuke as Omicron Variant Engulfs Britain

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      The prime minister’s Conservative Party lost a seat it had held for more than a century, a loss that could hamper his efforts to address the Omicron variant now sweeping Britain.LONDON — In the pre-dawn hours of Friday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson learned that his Conservative Party had crashed to defeat in a district it had represented for more than a century. Twelve hours later, Britain reported more than 90,000 new cases of Covid-19 as the Omicron variant engulfed the country.Each of those events would be daunting enough on its own. Together, they pose a uniquely difficult challenge to Mr. Johnson as he struggles to navigate his nation through the latest treacherous phase of the pandemic.The electoral defeat exposed the vulnerability of a prime minister who built his career on his vote-getting skills. Normally reliable Conservative voters turned on the party in striking numbers, disgusted by a steady drip of unsavory ethics disclosures and a growing sense that the government is lurching from crisis to crisis.The defeat came on top of a mutiny in the ranks of Conservative lawmakers, around 100 of whom voted against Mr. Johnson’s plan to introduce a form of Covid pass in England earlier in the week. Having been politically rebuked, he now has less flexibility to impose new restrictions to curb a virus that is spreading explosively.Mr. Johnson is betting he can avert a full-blown crisis by massively accelerating Britain’s vaccine booster program. But so far, the rate of infections is outrunning the percentage of people getting their third shots. With the variant doubling every 2.5 days, epidemiologists warn that some type of lockdown might ultimately be the only way to prevent an untenable strain on hospitals.Waiting for vaccinations at a center in London. Mr. Johnson is betting he can avert a full-blown crisis by massively accelerating Britain’s vaccine booster program.Andrew Testa for The New York Times“What on earth is the prime minister going to do if the rising Covid numbers means he is getting strong scientific advice to take further restrictive measures?” said Jill Rutter, a senior research fellow at UK in a Changing Europe, a research institute. Mr. Johnson was able to pass his recent measures thanks to votes from the opposition Labour Party. But that dramatized his political weakness, Ms. Rutter noted, and resorting to it again would further antagonize his own rank and file. “That’s politically a terrible place for the prime minister to be,” she added.Indeed, Mr. Johnson needs to worry about fending off a leadership challenge — a once-remote scenario now suddenly plausible as Conservative lawmakers worry that the calamitous result in North Shropshire, a district near England’s border with Wales, could translate into defeat in the next general election.The victorious Liberal Democrat candidate, Helen Morgan, overturned a majority of almost 23,000 won by the former Conservative lawmaker, Owen Paterson, at the last general election, in 2019. Mr. Paterson, a former cabinet minister who had held the seat since 1997, resigned last month after breaking lobbying rules, despite an unsuccessful effort by Mr. Johnson to save him.Helen Morgan, the Liberal Democrat lawmaker, won a seat held by the Conservative party for more than a century.Jacob King/Press Association, via Associated PressAbout the only reprieve for Mr. Johnson is that Parliament recessed for the Christmas holiday on Thursday. That will temper the momentum behind any possible leadership challenge, at least until Conservative lawmakers return to Westminster after the New Year and assess the state of their party and the country. A prime minister who just a week ago was promising to save Christmas may now need Christmas to save him.“I totally understand people’s frustrations,” Mr. Johnson said on Friday. “In all humility, I’ve got to accept that verdict.” But he also blamed the news media, telling Sky News, “some things have been going very well, but what the people have been hearing is just a constant litany of stuff about politics and politicians.”Mr. Johnson’s standing has been weakened by claims, widely reported in the papers, that his staff held Christmas parties in Downing Street last year at a time when they were forbidden under coronavirus restrictions.The cabinet secretary, Simon Case, had been investigating those allegations but on Friday evening, he abruptly withdrew after a report surfaced that he was aware of a separate party held in his own office last year. Though another civil servant, Sue Gray, will take over the investigation, the latest disclosure is only likely deepen to public suspicion about the government’s behavior.Even before the election loss in North Shropshire, there was speculation that Mr. Johnson could face a formal challenge to his leadership, little more than two years after he won a landslide election victory in December 2019.Mr. Johnson could face a challenge to his leadership from within his own party. Jessica Taylor/UK Parliament, via Associated PressTo initiate a no-confidence vote, 54 lawmakers would have to write to the chairman of the committee that represents Conservative backbenchers, Graham Brady. Such letters are confidential, but analysts do not believe that prospect is close.Even so, Friday’s result will increase jitters in Downing Street. North Shropshire was one of the Conservative Party’s safest seats, in a part of Britain that supported Brexit, Mr. Johnson’s defining political project. Many Labour Party voters and others hostile to the Conservatives coalesced around the Liberal Democrats, the party deemed most likely to defeat the Tories in that region — a practice known as tactical voting.Were this to be repeated nationally in the next general election it could deprive the Conservatives of perhaps 30 seats and, in close contest, affect the outcome, said Peter Kellner, a former president of the polling firm YouGov.“Tactical voting has a chance to make a material difference to the politics of Britain after the next general election,” he said.In recent weeks, Labour has moved ahead of the Conservatives in several opinion surveys, which also recorded a steep drop in Mr. Johnson’s approval ratings. Political analysts said that could also put the prime minister in a vulnerable position, given the transactional nature of his party.“The Tory Party is a ruthless machine for winning elections,” said Jonathan Powell, a former chief of staff to Prime Minister Tony Blair. “If that is continuing into an election cycle, the party will get rid of him quickly.”A memorial to victims of the coronavirus in London this week.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesBut while the political climate remains volatile, most voters are more preoccupied by the effect of the Omicron variant as they prepare for the holiday season. Scientists said it was too soon to say whether the variant was less severe than previous ones, but they warned that even if it was, that would not necessarily prevent a swift rise in hospital admissions, given the enormous number of infections.“If you have enough cases per day, the number of hospitalizations could pose potentially great challenges for any hospital system,” said Neil Ferguson, an epidemiologist at Imperial College London, whose frightening projections about the virus prompted Mr. Johnson to impose his first lockdown in March 2020.Ms. Rutter said Mr. Johnson could yet emerge unscathed if the variant is milder than feared, hospitals are not overwhelmed, and the booster program is effective. Earlier this year, his fortunes revived when Britain’s vaccination rollout was fast and effective, allowing him to remove all restrictions in July.By weakening Mr. Johnson’s position, however, the defeat in North Shropshire is also likely to embolden his rivals, among them the chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, and the foreign secretary, Liz Truss. Any resulting tensions within the cabinet are likely to erode Mr. Johnson’s authority further.All of that is a dangerous recipe for a prime minister who may find himself forced to return to Parliament to approve further restrictions.“In March 2020, he had massive political capital coming off the back of that fantastic election victory,” Ms. Rutter said. “He’s managed in that time to pretty much squander that political capital, certainly within his party.” More

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      Britain’s Conservatives Lose ‘Safe’ Seat, Dealing a Blow to Boris Johnson

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      The governing party lost to the Liberal Democrats a district that it had represented for more than a century.LONDON — Britain’s Conservative Party on Friday crashed to an election defeat in a district it had represented for more than a century, dealing a second stinging blow to Prime Minister Boris Johnson in a week of political turmoil that has shaken his leadership.In a contest on Thursday to select a new member of Parliament for North Shropshire, a district near the border with Wales, to the northwest of London, voters abandoned the Conservatives in favor of the centrist Liberal Democrats in one of the biggest voting upsets of recent years.The victorious Liberal Democrat candidate, Helen Morgan, overturned a majority of almost 23,000 won by the former Conservative lawmaker Owen Paterson at the last general election, in 2019. Mr. Paterson, a former cabinet minister who had held the seat since 1997, resigned last month after breaking lobbying rules despite an unsuccessful effort by Mr. Johnson to save him.The defeat follows a rebellion on Tuesday in which about 100 of Mr. Johnson’s own lawmakers refused to support government plans to control the rapid spread of the Omicron coronavirus variant. As well as embarrassing Mr. Johnson, the mutiny forced him to rely on the support of the opposition Labour Party to pass the measures, sapping his authority.Prime Minister Boris Johnson faced a mutiny from Conservative lawmakers who refused to support government plans to control the rapid spread of the Omicron variant.Jessica Taylor/Agence France-Presse, via Uk Parliament/Afp Via Getty ImagesMr. Johnson’s standing has also been weakened by claims that his staff held Christmas parties in Downing Street last year at a time when they were forbidden under coronavirus restrictions. The cabinet secretary, Simon Case, is investigating those allegations and his report is expected soon.When the results in North Shropshire were announced early Friday, Ms. Morgan had secured 17,957 votes; Neil Shastri-Hurst, the Conservative, had gotten 12,032; and Ben Wood, for Labour, had received 3,686. The vote counting for Thursday’s election took place overnight.“Tonight the people of North Shropshire have spoken on behalf of the British people,” Ms. Morgan said after her victory. “They have said loudly and clearly, ‘Boris Johnson, the party is over.’”She added that the voters had decided that Mr. Johnson was “unfit to lead and that they want a change.” She thanked Labour supporters who had given her their votes saying, “Together, we have shown that we can defeat the Conservatives not with deals behind closed doors, but with common sense at the ballot box.”Although the Liberal Democrats had hoped to pull off a surprise victory, the size of their majority was striking and unexpected. Ed Davey, the leader of the party, described the result as “a watershed moment,” adding in a statement, “Millions of people are fed up with Boris Johnson and his failure to provide leadership throughout the pandemic, and last night, the voters of North Shropshire spoke for all of them.”On Friday, Mr. Johnson said he accepted responsibility for the result. “I totally understand people’s frustrations,” he said. “I hear what the voters are saying in North Shropshire. In all humility, I’ve got to accept that verdict.”However, in an interview with Sky News, he also appeared to blame the news media, saying that “in the last few weeks, some things have been going very well, but what the people have been hearing is just a constant litany of stuff about politics and politicians.”Oliver Dowden, the chairman of the Conservative Party, also acknowledged the scale of the defeat. “I know that voters in North Shropshire are fed up, and I know that they have given us a kicking,” he told the BBC, adding that he and his party had “heard that message from them loud and clear.”Even before the loss of the seat, there was speculation that Mr. Johnson could face a formal challenge to his leadership little more than two years after he won a landslide general election victory in December 2019.To initiate a no-confidence vote, 54 of Mr. Johnson’s lawmakers would have to write to Graham Brady, the chairman of the committee that represents Conservative backbenchers. Such letters are confidential, but analysts do not believe that prospect is close. Parliament is now in recess, giving the prime minister a short political breathing space.Even so, Friday’s result is likely to increase jitters in Downing Street because North Shropshire was one of the Conservative Party’s safest seats, in an area of Britain that supported Brexit, Mr. Johnson’s defining political project.Despite their pro-European stance, the Liberal Democrats — who finished well behind Labour in North Shropshire in the 2019 general election — successfully presented themselves as the only credible challengers to the Tories in the constituency.Election staff counting votes in the  by-election on Thursday in Shrewsbury, England.Christopher Furlong/Getty ImagesBy doing so, they appeared to have persuaded a significant number of Labour’s voters to switch to them in order to defeat the Conservatives. Earlier in the year, the Liberal Democrats caused an upset when they won a seat from Mr. Johnson’s party in the well-heeled district of Chesham and Amersham, northwest of London.To some extent, the circumstances of Mr. Paterson’s resignation always made the North Shropshire seat hard to defend for the Conservative Party. But critics say that Mr. Johnson was the main architect of that situation through his unsuccessful efforts to save Mr. Paterson last month.In addition to the furor over the Christmas parties, Mr. Johnson also faces questions about whether he misled his own ethics adviser over what he knew about the source of funding for an expensive makeover of his Downing Street apartment.Roger Gale, a veteran Conservative lawmaker and a critic of Mr. Johnson, told Sky News that the prime minister had about three weeks over the holiday period to regroup, but would have to do so very fast. “We’ve had two strikes: First of all, the Conservative Party in the House of Commons earlier this week, now this result,” Mr. Gale said. “One more strike, and I think he’s out.”In recent weeks, Labour has moved ahead of the Conservatives in several opinion surveys, which also recorded a drop in Mr. Johnson’s approval ratings. Political analysts said that could put the prime minister in a vulnerable position, given the transactional nature of his party.“The Tory Party is a ruthless machine for winning elections,” said Jonathan Powell, a former chief of staff to Prime Minister Tony Blair. “If that is continuing into an election cycle, the party will get rid of him quickly.”But, while the political climate remains volatile, most voters are probably more preoccupied by the effect of the Omicron variant as they prepare for the holiday season.Mr. Johnson has placed his hopes of political recovery on a speedy roll out of coronavirus vaccine boosters. Earlier this year, his fortunes revived when Britain’s initial vaccination effort proved fast and effective, allowing the country to remove all restrictions in July.Antivaccination protesters outside Parliament on Monday.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesSpeaking before the North Shropshire result, Matthew Goodwin, a professor of politics at the University of Kent, said that Mr. Johnson could recover but may also be in danger of handing the next election to Labour through his errors.“I don’t think it’s over for Johnson,” Professor Goodwin said. “I think this is salvageable.” But, he added, “Johnson has entered that territory whereby oppositions don’t necessarily win elections because governments end up losing them.” More

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      As Johnson Draws a Happy Face, Britons Confront a Run of Bad News

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      There’s a cognitive dissonance between Mr. Johnson’s upbeat appraisal of British life and the ills facing its citizens, including gas and food shortages and fears of rising energy prices.LONDON — Britons are lining up for gas, staring at empty grocery shelves, paying higher taxes and worrying about spiraling prices as a grim winter approaches.But to visit the Conservative Party conference in Manchester this past week was to enter a kind of happy valley, where cabinet ministers danced, sang karaoke and drained flutes of champagne — Pol Roger, Winston Churchill’s favorite brand, naturally.Nobody captured the bonhomie better than Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who told a whooping crowd of party faithful, “You all represent the most jiving, hip, happening, and generally funkapolitan party in the world.”The cognitive dissonance extended beyond the Mardi Gras atmosphere. In his upbeat keynote speech, Mr. Johnson characterized the multiple ills afflicting Britain as a “function of growth and economic revival” — challenging but necessary post-Brexit adjustments on the way to a more prosperous future.It was at least his third explanation for the food and fuel shortages, which continued in some areas after three weeks. Initially, he denied there was a crisis. Then, he said the shortages were not about Brexit — contradicting analysts, union leaders, food producers and business owners — but were hitting every Western country as they emerged from the pandemic. And finally, he cited the stresses as evidence that Brexit was doing its job in shaking up the economy.“It is the ultimate in post-hoc rationalization — the idea that this is a well-thought-out plan, that we intended to do this all along,” said Jill Rutter, a senior research fellow at the U.K. in a Changing Europe, a London think tank.Few politicians have either the indomitable cheer or the ideological flexibility of Mr. Johnson, so it was hardly surprising that he tried to put the best face on Britain’s run of bad news. He remains utterly in command of the Conservative Party, which has an 80-seat majority in the Parliament, and comfortably ahead of the opposition Labour Party leader, Keir Starmer, in opinion polls.Cars lined up for gas in Slough, west of London, late last month.Mary Turner for The New York TimesYet political analysts and economists said there were risks in the Panglossian tone he struck in Manchester. With inflation projected to continue at a relatively high level, and the government admitting that shortages could continue until Christmas, voters could quickly sour on Mr. Johnson. Then next year come tax rises, after he broke his promise not to increase them last month.In hindsight, some said, the conference might be seen as a high-water mark for the prime minister.“A few days of disruption to fuel supplies makes the government look foolish,” said Jonathan Portes, a professor of economics and public policy at King’s College London. “Much larger fuel bills are a much bigger deal.”Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary, University of London, said Mr. Johnson could come to resemble James Callaghan, the Labour prime minister who was toppled in 1979 after a winter of fuel shortages and runaway inflation, when he did not appear sufficiently alarmed about the pileup of problems.When Mr. Johnson bounded into the auditorium at the conference last week, stopping to kiss his wife, Carrie, he looked anything but alarmed. Between jokes and jibes at the opposition, he presented a blueprint for a post-Brexit economy that he claimed would deliver high wages for skilled British workers, rather than lower-cost immigrants from the European Union, and put the onus on businesses to foot the bill.Companies and previous governments “reached for the same old lever of uncontrolled immigration to keep wages low,” Mr. Johnson said. “The answer is to control immigration, to allow people of talent to come to this country, but not to use immigration as an excuse for failure to invest in people, in skills and in the equipment, the facilities, the machinery they need to do their jobs.”That model is worlds away from Singapore-on-Thames, the catchphrase once used by the intellectual authors of Brexit to describe an open, lightly regulated, business-friendly hub that they said Britain would become once it cast off the labor laws and other shackles of Brussels. Nobody is talking about removing labor laws now (indeed, Mr. Johnson may soon move to raise Britain’s minimum wage).A shopper browsing empty shelves in a supermarket in London last month.Justin Tallis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesContradictions between protectionists and free-marketeers have run through the Brexit movement from the start. “I describe it as Little England versus Global Britain,” Mr. Portes said, noting that Mr. Johnson, because of his lack of fixed convictions, was well-suited to hold this coalition together.Since Mr. Johnson’s landslide election victory in 2019, however, the gravity in the Conservative Party has shifted decisively toward protectionism and anti-immigration policies. That was the message that helped the Tories lure disenchanted, working-class, former Labour voters in the industrial Midlands and North of England.Many of these voters want the jobs that would come with the revival of British heavy industry, not better opportunities for hedge-fund managers in London. Conservative politicians who once championed the Singapore-on-Thames model now play it down.Mr. Johnson has embraced a blame-it-on-business message which, while at odds with his party’s traditional principles, is popular with his new base. He singled out the trucking industry, arguing that its failure to invest in better truck stops — “with basic facilities where you don’t have to urinate in the bushes,” he said — was one of the reasons young people did not aspire to becoming drivers.“It’s all of a piece with his move toward a much more populist style,” Mr. Bale said. “Johnson is pressing the right buttons, as far as these people are concerned.”His tough-on-business language has scrambled the traditional lines in British politics. On Friday, voters were treated to the curious spectacle of Mr. Starmer lashing out at Mr. Johnson for his attacks on business and presenting the Labour Party as the better partner for Britain’s corporations.For Mr. Johnson, critics said, the biggest risk is a lack of credibility. His initial claim that the food and fuel shortages were not caused by Brexit sounded unconvincing, given that his own government predicted rising prices and shortages of both in a 2019 report on the potential disruptions in the event of a “no-deal Brexit,” in which Britain would leave the European Union without a trade agreement.A station that ran out of gas in Slough last month.Mary Turner for The New York TimesThe report, known as Operation Yellowhammer, laid out “reasonable worst-case planning assumptions,” among them that “certain types of fresh food supply will decrease” and that “customer behavior could lead to local shortages” of fuel. Though Britain negotiated a bare-bones trade deal with Brussels, its effect was similar to that of no deal.While it’s true that Mr. Johnson is indisputably setting his party’s agenda, it is not clear that the internal debates over the shape of a post-Brexit future are entirely settled. Rishi Sunak, the popular chancellor of the Exchequer, spoke at the conference about his years in California, and how he viewed Silicon Valley as a model for Britain.“I’m not sure that having a truck-driver shortage is part of that vision,” Ms. Rutter, the research fellow, said. More

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      Labour Leader, Keir Starmer, Struggles to Emerge From Boris Johnson’s Shadow

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      Competent but low on charisma, Keir Starmer has yet to give British voters a clear reason to support the main opposition party, critics say.LONDON — If Prime Minister Boris Johnson went to one extreme with his pithy 2019 election slogan — “get Brexit done” — the leader of the opposition Labour Party, Keir Starmer, has gone to the other.Ahead of Labour’s annual conference, which began this weekend, Mr. Starmer penned a policy statement designed to showcase his beliefs that ran to more than 11,000 words. Despite that novella-like length, it is unlikely to compete with the best-sellers.Serious, competent but lacking charisma, Mr. Starmer is a mirror image of Mr. Johnson, a polarizing politician renowned for phrasemaking and showmanship rather than steadiness or a firm grip on policy.Yet when Mr. Starmer speaks to Labour members in the English seaside city of Brighton this week, he badly needs some pizazz — both to raise his profile and to explain the agenda of a party that suffered a crushing election defeat in 2019 under its previous, left-wing leader, Jeremy Corbyn.“If you put Keir Starmer and Boris Johnson together they would be the ideal politician,” said Steven Fielding, a professor of political history at Nottingham University. But after a lackluster year, Professor Fielding said, Mr. Starmer “has got to communicate his sense of purpose and what the point of the Labour Party is under his leadership in post-Covid Britain.”“It’s an existential question he has to ask himself, to answer and then communicate,” Professor Fielding said.No one doubts the intelligence, seriousness or competence of Mr. Starmer, a former chief prosecutor who worked his way from a modest start in life to the highest echelons of the legal establishment.Critics say Mr. Starmer has failed to make his presence felt in a way that enhances Labour’s public standing.Justin Tallis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBut some think he is not savvy enough politically, while others accuse him of picking internal fights to underscore his opposition to the Corbynite left. Those include a dispute over changes to the voting system for future party leadership contests that would probably have stopped a left-winger from getting the top job again. That plan caused sufficient anger within the party that Mr. Starmer was forced to put forward a watered-down version instead.Yet the more telling complaint is that he has simply failed to make his presence felt in a way that showcases the party’s positions or enhances its standing with the public. Nor, critics say, has he exploited Mr. Johnson’s numerous setbacks.Elected last year following Labour’s catastrophic 2019 defeat, Mr. Starmer has spent much of his leadership detoxifying a party whose image was marred by persistent infighting over allegations of anti-Semitism. That culminated in the suspension of Mr. Corbyn, who remains excluded from Labour’s parliamentary group.That focus on interparty turmoil, along with the 80-seat majority that Mr. Johnson’s conservatives enjoy, has relegated Labour to the role of an onlooker in Parliament — so much so that Mr. Johnson brazenly broke a vow and raised taxes this month without fear that Mr. Starmer and his colleagues could do much to take advantage of it.Perhaps mindful of the need to confront the Conservatives more aggressively, Mr. Starmer stepped up his criticism this weekend, telling the BBC that there had been a “complete lack of planning” by the government over the shortage of truck drivers that has Britons anxious about the delivery of fuel and goods.In terms of election strategy, Labour faces a huge challenge. In 2019, it lost a clutch of parliamentary seats in its former strongholds — the middle and north of the country — as working-class voters warmed to Mr. Johnson, with his pro-Brexit agenda and willingness to wade into culture wars.That left Mr. Starmer with the unenviable task of winning back those traditional Labour voters behind the so-called “red wall” without alienating anti-Brexit supporters in big cities like London, where the party’s support is increasingly concentrated.His bad luck is that the pandemic has dominated the media agenda, keeping the government at center stage and giving it a megaphone to trumpet its leadership role, whether merited or not.During the early months of the Covid crisis, the prime minister floundered, initially resisting lockdowns then having to reverse course, and Mr. Starmer outperformed Mr. Johnson in their head-to-heads in Parliament. The government’s effective vaccine rollout revived the Conservatives’ fortunes, but that effect has now faded and Britain faces an uncertain winter, with the effects of the pandemic difficult to predict. Still, Mr. Johnson is polling reasonably well for an accident-prone leader in the middle of his term.Critics on the left say that Mr. Starmer’s camp has opted for platitudes and shied away from distinctive left-of-center policies to avoid offending any electoral group.“They thought that Starmer is Biden and Johnson is Trump, and that Johnson would self-destruct,” said James Schneider, a former spokesman for Mr. Corbyn. “The difference is that Biden is a hugely more appealing figure to the American public — he has an everyman appeal.”A Jeremy Corbyn mask at the Labour conference in Brighton on Saturday.Justin Tallis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWhen Labour lost an election for a vacant parliamentary seat in northern England in May, Mr. Starmer suffered another self-inflicted setback with a botched reshuffle of his top team. He appeared to blame his deputy, Angela Rayner, for the defeat, stripping her of a key position, but he was forced to retreat in the face of a backlash and eventually gave her more responsibilities.A full-blown leadership crisis was averted when Labour unexpectedly went on to win an election in another northern constituency, Batley and Spen, in July.But there may be challenges to Mr. Starmer’s authority as he prepares to take on Mr. Johnson in a general election that must take place by 2024 but is expected a year earlier. One Labour member on the ascent is Andy Burnham, the mayor of Manchester, who has raised his profile during the pandemic.Others in the party are still committed to Mr. Corbyn’s hard-left agenda and remain angry about Mr. Starmer’s push to change the voting system. It also wants Mr. Corbyn reinstated to the parliamentary group.The worry for more moderate Labour supporters is that they may be seeing a repeat of the leadership of Ed Miliband, who, like Mr. Starmer, came from the “soft left” of the Labour Party, but who lost the 2015 general election.Tom Baldwin, a former spokesman for Mr. Miliband, said that he believed Mr. Starmer could win and that he could well be an effective prime minister. But he was also critical of his lack of a convincing message and his focus on internal battles, which he said “are not going to help us reconnect ourselves to voters.”“I would prefer if the Labour Party were having a conversation with the country about the country,” Mr. Baldwin said.Mr. Starmer’s supporters say voters will become disenchanted with Mr. Johnson in light of his broken promise not to raise taxes, and that the government will fail to deliver on his pledges to bring prosperity to neglected parts of the country.Anti-Brexit demonstrators in Brighton on Saturday. Mr. Starmer needs to avoid alienating such voters in big cities while trying to win back traditional Labour support elsewhere.Justin Tallis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesOnce “normal” politics resumes after the pandemic, voters will ultimately warm to Mr. Starmer, they argue. Though he prefers to talk about policy rather than personality, Mr. Starmer spoke movingly about his upbringing in a recent interview with Piers Morgan.Still, his personality is very different from that of Mr. Johnson, and most analysts believe his best tactic is to lean into his strengths, hoping that voters are drawn to a man who exudes stability after years of political turmoil.It is also critical, political analysts say, that Mr. Starmer give voters a clear reason to support the Labour Party.“He’s got to find a message, he’s got to be able to communicate that message and to be able to sell it, and he’s not done any of this so far,” Professor Fielding said. “Competence isn’t enough.” More

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      Labour's Kim Leadbeater Wins U.K. By-Election in Batley and Spen

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      The election this week of the sister of Jo Cox, a lawmaker who was killed in 2016, was seen as a victory for Labour’s leader in a region where Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservatives had made big inroads.LONDON — Britain’s opposition Labour Party on Friday scored an unexpected if narrow victory in a battle for an open Parliament seat that was widely seen as a critical test for the party’s leader, Keir Starmer, who has been under pressure for failing to revive the party’s fortunes.Many had expected that the Conservatives would take the seat, which Labour has held since 1997, because of the spoiler campaign of George Galloway. The victory will be a big relief for Mr. Starmer, who faced criticism in May when his party lost a by-election in Hartlepool, another former stronghold in the north of England.That result added weight to the idea that support for Labour had collapsed in the “red wall,” former industrial areas of England in which Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservatives have been making big inroads.Results announced early Friday gave the Labour candidate, Kim Leadbeater, a win of just 323 votes over her Conservative Party rival, Ryan Stephenson, after an acrimonious contest in Batley and Spen, one of Labour’s traditional heartland seats in northern England.Voting in the by-election took place on Thursday after a campaign marred by claims of intimidation, including one episode in which Ms. Leadbeater was heckled aggressively and another that led to the arrest of a man on suspicion of assault in connection with an attack on Labour supporters.Ms. Leadbeater acknowledged that it had been “a grueling few weeks” but added, “I am absolutely delighted that the people of Batley and Spen have rejected division and they voted for hope.”Labour fought hard to retain Batley and Spen, which was represented in Parliament by Ms. Leadbeater’s sister, Jo Cox, until she was murdered by a far-right fanatic in 2016.Ms. Leadbeater’s narrow path to victory was a complicated one. She was competing not only against the Conservative candidate, Mr. Stephenson, but also against Mr. Galloway, a former lawmaker and veteran left-wing campaigner who sought to divert support from Labour.Although Labour held off the challenge from Mr. Galloway, its share of the vote in Batley and Spen was lower than in the 2019 general election.Since the Brexit referendum in 2016, Mr. Johnson’s Conservative Party has succeeded in winning over many of Labour’s core voters in working-class communities in the north and middle of England.Before the result in Batley and Spen, there had been news media speculation that Mr. Starmer would be vulnerable to a leadership challenge if Ms. Leadbeater lost, as many were expecting.Most analysts believed that Mr. Starmer would have been safe regardless of the result, because there is no credible alternative waiting in the wings. But the victory — narrow as it was — will be especially welcome news for the party leaders, because the contest could have been avoided.The by-election was triggered in May when the area’s former Labour lawmaker, Tracy Brabin, was elected to another job as West Yorkshire mayor, requiring her to step down from Parliament. Mr. Starmer was accused of mismanaging the situation and putting the seat at risk by allowing her to run for the mayoral position.Since he took the job of leader last year, Mr. Starmer, a former top prosecutor, has tried to unite the party after it was routed in 2019 parliamentary elections under the stewardship of Jeremy Corbyn, its left-wing leader at the time.Mr. Starmer’s critics have accused him of a lack of charisma and of failing to set out a convincing alternative policy agenda to that of the Conservatives.His defenders have appealed for patience and have contended that the pandemic has made it hard for the opposition to impress voters whose attention is focused on government efforts to bring Covid-19 restrictions to an end.In his election literature, Mr. Galloway had called on voters to abandon Labour to increase pressure on Mr. Starmer and force him out of his job.When the count was completed early Friday, Ms. Leadbeater won 13,296 votes, Mr. Stephenson was in second place with 12,973 and Mr. Galloway third with 8,264.Labour “won this election against the odds,” Mr. Starmer said. “And we did so by showing that when we are true to our values — decency, honesty, committed to improving lives — then Labour can win.” More