Conservative Party (Great Britain)

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      British Conservatives’ Commitment to Green Policy Is Tested

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      British conservatives kept a seat in a recent election by opposing an ultralow emissions zone, and some are now questioning ambitious emissions-reduction targets.Britain, blanketed by cool, damp weather, has seemed like one of the few places in the Northern Hemisphere not sweltering this summer. Yet a fierce political debate over how to curb climate change has suddenly erupted, fueled by economic hardship and a recent election surprise.The surprise came last week in a London suburb, Uxbridge and South Ruislip, where the Conservative Party held on to a vulnerable seat in Parliament in a by-election after a voter backlash against the expansion of a low-emission zone, which will penalize people who drive older, more polluting cars.The Conservatives successfully used the emission zone plan as a wedge issue to prevail in a district they were forecast to lose. It didn’t go unnoticed in the halls of Parliament, where even though lawmakers are in recess, they have managed to agitate over environmental policy for four days running.Britain’s Conservative government is now calling into question its commitment to an array of ambitious emissions-reduction targets. Tory critics say these goals would impose an unfair burden on Britons who are suffering because of a cost-of-living crisis. Uxbridge, they argued, shows there is a political price for forging ahead.With a general election looming next year, the Tories also see an opportunity to wield climate policy as a club against the opposition Labour Party, which once planned to pour 28 billion pounds, or about $36 billion, a year into green jobs and industries but scaled back its own ambitions amid the economic squeeze.On Monday, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said he would approach environmental policies in a “proportionate and pragmatic a way that doesn’t unnecessarily give people more hassle and more costs in their lives.”It was a strikingly circumspect statement given Britain’s self-proclaimed leadership in climate policy, which goes back to Margaret Thatcher and includes hosting the annual United Nations climate conference in 2021. And it clearly reflected the new political thinking in the aftermath of the Uxbridge vote.Government officials insist Mr. Sunak is not giving up on a ban on the sale of fossil-fuel-powered cars by 2030. Britain remains committed to a benchmark goal of being a net-zero — or carbon neutral — economy by 2050, which is enshrined in law. But on Tuesday, a senior minister, Michael Gove, said he wanted to review a project to end the installation of new gas boilers in homes.Traffic at the edge of the London Ultra-Low Emission Zone this month.Neil Hall/EPA, via ShutterstockEven before Mr. Sunak’s comments, critics contended that Britain’s historically strong record on climate policy had been waning.The Climate Change Committee, an independent body that advises the government, recently said Britain “has lost its clear global leadership position on climate action.” The group cited the government’s failure to use the spike in fuel prices to reduce energy demand and bolster renewables. It also noted Britain’s consent for a new coal mine, and its support for new oil and gas production in the North Sea.Last month, Zac Goldsmith quit as a minister with a climate-related portfolio, blaming “apathy” over the environment for his departure, though he was also a close ally of the former prime minister, Boris Johnson. In a letter to Mr. Sunak, Mr. Goldsmith wrote, “The problem is not that the government is hostile to the environment, it is that you, our prime minister, are simply uninterested.”Climate experts said Britain’s economic troubles fractured what had been a broad political consensus on the need for aggressive action. The schism isn’t just between the two main parties: Even within the Conservative and Labour parties, there are fissures between those who continue to call for far-reaching goals and those who want to scale back those ambitions.“This used to be an issue of across-party consensus; now it is not,” said Tom Burke, the chairman of E3G, an environmental research group. “The Tories have gone out of their way to turn it into a wedge issue, and I think that’s a mistake.”In Uxbridge, however, the strategy worked. The district, with its leafy streets and suburban homes, has one of the capital’s highest ratios of car dependency. That made plans by London’s Labour mayor, Sadiq Khan, to expand an ultra-low-emissions zone to encompass the district a potent issue for Conservatives, who opposed widening the zone.While the plan aims to improve London’s poor air quality, rather than reach net-zero targets, it was vulnerable to accusations that was piling on costs to consumers — in this case drivers of older, more polluting, vehicles.“It’s a really big impact at a time when people are concerned more generally about the cost of living,” said David Simmonds, a Conservative lawmaker in neighboring district of Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner. “In the short term, a lot of people who don’t have the money to buy an electric vehicle or a compliant vehicle are caught by this.”Zac Goldsmith quit as a minister with a climate-related portfolio.Matt Dunham/Associated PressThe surprise Conservative victory also sent alarm bells ringing within Labour. It caused tension between Mr. Khan, who insists the expansion will go ahead, and the party’s leader, Keir Starmer, who seemed to want a delay.“We are doing something very wrong if policies put forward by the Labour Party end up on each and every Tory leaflet,” Mr. Starmer said after the defeat. “We’ve got to face up to that and learn the lessons.”Even before the by-election, Labour had backtracked on its plan to invest billions a year on green industries. It blamed rising borrowing costs, which spiked during the ill-fated premiership last year of Liz Truss. Now, instead of rolling out spending in the first year of a Labour government, the party said it would phase it in.Labour’s fear was that voters would conclude the incoming government would have to raise taxes, which would give the Tories another opening. “Economic stability, financial stability, always has to come first, and it will do with Labour,” Rachel Reeves, who leads economic policy for the Labour Party, told the BBC.Such language is worlds away from a year ago, when Ed Miliband, who speaks for Labour on climate issues, told Climate Forward, a New York Times conference in London, that “the imprudent, reckless thing to do is not to make the investment.”He did, however, also argue that consumers should not carry all the burden of the transition. “The government has to collectivize some of those costs to make this transition fair,” said Mr. Miliband, a former party leader.Climate activists said Labour had made a mistake by highlighting the costs of its plan at a time of tight public finances. But given the broad public support for climate action, particularly among the young, some argue that a debate over which climate policies are the best need not end in failure for Labour.“Voters want something done,” Mr. Burke said. “They don’t want to pay the price for it but equally, they don’t want the government to say they are not doing anything about climate change.”Protesters rally against the Ultra-Low Emission Zone, or ULEZ, this month in London.Andy Rain/EPA, via ShutterstockFor all the new skepticism, climate policy is also deeply embedded in the Conservative Party. Mrs. Thatcher was one of the first world leaders to talk about the threat to the planet from greenhouse gases in 1989. A former prime minister, Theresa May, passed the net-zero pledge in 2019, and Mr. Johnson, as mayor of London, conceived the low-emission zone that boomeranged against Labour in Uxbridge, which Mr. Johnson had represented in Parliament, last week.Alice Bell, the head of climate policy at the Wellcome Trust, noted that some Tory lawmakers were rebelling against Mr. Sunak because they were worried about losing their seats by appearing to be against firm action on climate change.Extreme weather, she said, would continue to drive public opinion on climate change. While Britain’s summer has been cool, thousands of Britons have been vacationing in the scorching heat of Italy and Spain, to say nothing of those evacuated from the Greek island of Rhodes in the face of deadly wildfires.“I’m wondering if we’re going to have some people coming back from holiday as climate activists,” Ms. Bell said. More

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      Britain’s By-elections: So Far, a Win and a Defeat for the Tories

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      The governing Conservative Party lost in one electoral district but avoided defeat in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, Boris Johnson’s former seat. A third contest was still to be decided.Britain’s governing Conservative Party suffered a crushing defeat in the contest for what had been considered one of its safer seats in Parliament, but avoided losing another district as results came in early Friday in three by-elections, a critical test of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s popularity.The small, centrist Liberal Democrats party won in Somerton and Frome, in the southwest of England, overturning a big majority. In an emphatic victory, the Liberal Democrats received 21,187 votes against the Conservatives’ 10,790.But there was better news for Mr. Sunak in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, in the northwestern fringes of London, where his Conservatives narrowly held on against the main opposition Labour Party in the district that had been represented by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson.A third, critical contest — in Selby and Ainsty, in Yorkshire in the north of England — was still to be decided.For Mr. Sunak, the by-elections were an anxious foretaste of the general election that he must call by January 2025.Uxbridge and South Ruislip is the sort of seat that Labour has needed to win to prove that it is credibly closing in on power. Its failure to do so was attributed by the victorious Conservative candidate to public anger toward the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, a Labour member, for his plans to extend a costly ultralow emission zone across all of London’s boroughs, including Uxbridge.While the result could raise questions about Labour’s ability to win the next general election, the scale of the defeat in Somerton and Frome will most likely alarm Conservative lawmakers who are under pressure in some of the party’s heartland districts in the south of England.With Britain besieged by high inflation, a stagnating economy and widespread labor unrest, his Conservatives face a real threat of being thrown out of power for the first time in 14 years.While Britain shares some of these economic woes with other countries in the wake of the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Conservatives amplified the problems through policy missteps and political turmoil that peaked in the brief, stormy tenure of Mr. Sunak’s predecessor, Liz Truss.She proposed sweeping but unfunded tax cuts that alarmed the financial markets and triggered her own downfall after on 44 days in office. Mr. Sunak shelved Ms. Truss’s trickle-down agenda and restored Britain’s fiscal stability. But her legacy has been a poisoned chalice for Mr. Sunak and his Tory compatriots with much of the British electorate.“The Liz Truss episode really dented their reputation for economic competence, and that will be very hard to win back,” said Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London. “It’s going to be very difficult.”So convincing is the Labour Party’s lead in opinion polls that some analysts predicted in advance that Mr. Sunak would become the first prime minister to lose three so-called by-elections in one day since 1968.But the narrow victory for the Conservatives in Uxbridge and South Ruislip averted that prospect. There, when all votes were counted, the final tally was 13,965 for Steve Tuckwell of the Conservative Party, and 13,470 for Labour’s Danny Beales.By-elections take place when a seat in the House of Commons becomes vacant between general elections. This time around, the contests were also a reminder of the toxic legacy of another of Mr. Sunak’s predecessors, Mr. Johnson.Mr. Johnson resigned his seat in the district of Uxbridge and South Ruislip, on the western fringe of London, after lawmakers ruled that he lied to Parliament over lockdown-breaking parties held in Downing Street during the pandemic.Voters in Selby and Ainsty in northern England were selecting a replacement for one of Mr. Johnson’s closest allies, Nigel Adams, who quit after not being given a seat in the House of Lords, as he had expected.The contest in Somerton and Frome, a rural district in southwestern England, took place because another Conservative lawmaker, David Warburton, gave up his seat after admitting he had taken cocaine.“This is probably the closing of a chapter of the story of Boris Johnson’s impact on British politics,” said Robert Hayward, a polling expert who also serves as a Conservative member of the House of Lords. But he added, “Whether it’s the closing of the whole book is another matter.”Because the voting took place in very different parts of England, it provided an unusual snapshot of public opinion ahead of the general election. It also captured several trends that have run through British politics since the last general election in 2019, when Mr. Johnson’s Conservative won a landslide victory.In Selby and Ainsty, a Tory stronghold, Labour hoped to show that it has regained the trust of voters in the north and middle of England — regions it once dominated but where it lost out to the Tories in the 2019 election.The vote in Somerton and Frome was a test of the Conservative Party’s fortunes in its heartland areas of southern England, known as the “blue wall” — after the party’s campaign colors. It has been under pressure in the region from a revival of the smaller, centrist, Liberal Democrats.The Liberal Democrats have benefited from some voters, who are opposed to the Conservatives, casting their ballots strategically for whoever seems best placed to defeat the Tory candidate.Recent British elections have featured talk of a grand political realignment, with candidates emphasizing values and cultural issues. But analysts said these by-elections have been dominated by the cost-of-living crisis — kitchen-table concerns that hurt the Conservatives after more than a decade in power. More

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      British By-elections: What to Know

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      Three seats in Parliament recently occupied by Conservatives are up for grabs in an election that may show which way the political winds are blowing.One of the last things Britain’s prime minister, Rishi Sunak, needs right now, while he’s trailing in the opinion polls as the economy stalls, is a test of his electoral popularity.But on Thursday, he faces three contests, as voters in different parts of England select replacements for a trio of lawmakers from his Conservative Party who have quit Parliament, including former Prime Minister Boris Johnson.The votes, known as by-elections, happen when a seat in the House of Commons becomes vacant between general elections. In the British system, every elected lawmaker represents a district, so when they quit, those voters decide who will succeed them.Hanging over the contests is the poisoned legacy of Mr. Johnson, who angrily quit Parliament after lawmakers ruled that he had lied to them about Covid-lockdown-breaking parties in Downing Street.Because the government will not change whatever the outcome, voters often use such by-elections to register unhappiness with their political leaders. And with inflation and interest rates high, labor unrest boiling and the health service struggling, Mr. Sunak’s Conservatives are braced for the possibility of losing all three contests.That would make Mr. Sunak the first prime minister to suffer a triple by-election defeat in one day since 1968. It would also stoke fears among Conservatives that, under his leadership, they are heading for defeat in a general election expected next year.But by-elections are unpredictable, so nothing is certain on this so-called super Thursday. And so low are expectations for the Conservatives that even winning one would be a welcome relief for Mr. Sunak.Here’s where voters are casting ballots:Uxbridge and South RuislipThis is the seat vacated by Mr. Johnson, and it lies on the fringes of London, the capital. Although the inner areas of the capital tilt to Labour, the main opposition party, outer London, with its suburbs and larger homes, is much better territory for the Conservatives. Mr. Johnson’s majority in the last general election was relatively modest at 7,210 votes, and the scandal-hit former prime minister is a divisive figure, so Labour hopes to win here.But the Conservatives see an opening in a plan to expand an ultralow-emissions program to areas including Uxbridge and South Ruislip. The expansion, pressed by London’s Labour mayor, Sadiq Khan, would cost those driving older, more polluting cars. Conservatives are campaigning against the expansion. The Labour candidate for the area has also said he is against the expansion, though Labour’s leader has not taken a stand.Parliamentary candidates onstage ahead of the by-election for the seat previously held by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson in Uxbridge this month.Susannah Ireland/ReutersSelby and AinstyThe contest in Selby and Ainsty, in Yorkshire in the north of England, is another aftershock of recent political turbulence because the lawmaker who quit, Nigel Adams, was a close ally of Mr. Johnson’s. He resigned after not being awarded a seat in the House of Lords, as he had expected. This is a scenic part of northern England but also one with a mining history, and Labour will be hoping it can snatch the seat.That would send a powerful signal that the party is returning to popularity in the north and middle of England — areas it once dominated but where it lost out in the 2019 general election. Yet, it’s a tall order. If Labour can succeed in Selby and Ainsty, where the Conservative majority in 2019 was 20,137, that would set a record for the size of a majority overturned by Labour in a by-election. So victory for Labour here would suggest it is well on course for a general election victory.Somerton and FromeInstead of Labour, the smaller, centrist Liberal Democrats are seen as the main challengers to the Conservatives in Somerton and Frome, in the southwest of England.The vote follows the resignation of David Warburton, who quit after admitting that he had consumed cocaine. The Lib-Dems have a strong tradition of success in this attractive, mainly rural part of the country, and they held this electoral district until 2015.In the last election, the Conservatives won a big majority, 19,213. But since then, the they have suffered losses in some of their heartland areas in the south of England, the so-called blue wall, named after the party’s campaign colors.At the same time, the fortunes of the Liberal Democrats have been revived considerably. This year, they performed well in elections in local municipalities, and last year, they stormed to victory in a by-election in Tiverton and Honiton, also in the southwest. More

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      As Sunak Makes His Case to Britons, the Economy Could Undermine It

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      Britain’s Conservative government faces a morass of problems, some new, others longstanding, that are stymying Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.Prime Minister Rishi Sunak hopes to hold onto power by selling himself as the repairman for a broken Britain. On Wednesday, he got a faint sign that the repair work was gaining traction: the government announced that Britain’s inflation rate in June was 7.9 percent, a decline from the previous month.But the rate is still higher than that of Britain’s European neighbors and more than twice that of the United States. And it is just one of a morass of economic problems — from spiraling debt to labor shortages to sputtering growth — that are stymying Mr. Sunak as he makes the case that his Conservative Party, in government for the past 13 years, deserves to stay there after an election that he must call by January 2025.The Conservatives will face an early test of their political fortunes on Thursday, with three by-elections, special elections to fill seats in Parliament vacated by Tory lawmakers. The party is girding itself for a long day.“They’re running out of runway,” said Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London. “These by-elections are likely to be a referendum on the government, and they could lose all three.”Shoppers in London last month. Britain’s annual inflation rate is higher than that of its European neighbors and twice that of United States.Tolga Akmen/EPA, via ShutterstockMr. Sunak, a former chancellor of the Exchequer who once worked at Goldman Sachs, has cultivated a reputation as a technocrat and problem solver. He has thrown off the supply-side ideological experimentation of his predecessor, Liz Truss, and the have-your-cake-and-eat-it style of her predecessor, Boris Johnson.But Mr. Sunak’s return to fiscal prudence has yet to reinvigorate Britain’s growth. On the contrary, inflation is forcing the Bank of England to hike interest rates aggressively to avert a wage-price spiral. The tight-money policy threatens to tip the economy, already stagnant, into recession. And it is inflicting pain on millions of Britons who face soaring rents and higher rates on their mortgages.Inflation, economists agree, is likely to continue to drop in the next six months, perhaps even enough to meet Mr. Sunak’s goal of halving the rate to 5.2 percent by year-end. But Britain’s other problems — anemic growth, low productivity, a labor shortage, and a crumbling National Health Service — are not likely to be fixed in time for him to claim a full turnaround before he faces the voters.“Low productivity and low growth make economic policy challenging,” said Mahmood Pradhan, head of global macro economics at Amundi, an asset manager. “It reduces fiscal space. It’s a very tight straitjacket to be in.”With deteriorating public finances, Mr. Sunak can neither spend heavily to raise wages for striking doctors or railway workers, nor can he offer tax cuts to voters. As things stand, he is already at risk of missing another of his five pledges: to reduce national debt. Government debt has risen to more 100 percent of gross domestic product for the first time since 1961, according to the latest data.Striking junior doctors outside Queens Hospital in Rumford in March.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesFor two years, the government has frozen the income brackets for personal income taxes rather than raising them with inflation, driving up the effective rates. As a result, Mr. Sunak finds himself in an awkward paradox: a free-market Conservative heading into an election with a government that is imposing the greatest tax burden on the electorate since World War II.Critics argue he has no one to blame but himself. Mr. Sunak supported the fiscal austerity of the Conservative-led government of David Cameron and his chancellor, George Osborne, which hurt Britain’s productivity and hollowed out its public services. And he championed Brexit, which cut into its trade with the European Union, scared off investment and worsened its labor shortage.“He’s quite rare in being directly associated with both Cameron-Osborne austerity and Johnsonian hard Brexit,” said Jonathan Portes, a professor of economics and public policy at Kings College London. “Many other senior Tories could plausibly claim that they didn’t really buy into one or the other. Not Sunak.”This week’s by-elections attest to Mr. Sunak’s predicament. One seat belonged to Mr. Johnson, who resigned from Parliament after a committee recommended suspending him for misleading lawmakers about his attendance at parties during the coronavirus pandemic lockdowns. Another was held by an ally of Mr. Johnson, who also quit, and the third by a lawmaker who resigned after allegations of drug use and sexual misconduct.While Mr. Johnson’s soiled legacy and Conservative Party scandals will play a role in these races, analysts say the cost-of-living crisis will be the dominant theme. Few governments, Professor Bale noted, win elections when real wages are eroding, as they are in Britain. In the latest polls, the opposition Labour Party leads the Conservatives by close to 20 percentage points.The specter of a sweeping defeat has put Mr. Sunak under pressure from Tory backbenchers to offer voters relief in the form of tax cuts or help in paying their mortgages. The most analysts expect, however, is for him to promise a reduction in income taxes next spring, to be deferred until after the election.As Mr. Sunak likes to remind people, not all of Britain’s problems are unique or self-inflicted. Like many other countries, it suffered from supply bottlenecks after pandemic lockdowns ended, from rising food prices and from the lingering impact of soaring energy prices after Russia invaded Ukraine.Yet Britain’s core inflation rate — which excludes volatile energy and food prices and is a gauge for domestic price pressures — has remained high at 6.9 percent, compared to 4.8 percent in the United States and 5.4 percent in the eurozone.“That does suggest these inflation dynamics have become more embedded than they have in other countries,” said Kristin Forbes, a professor of management and global economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a former member of the Bank of England’s rate-setting committee.Britain, she said, had the misfortune of being hit by both the energy spike, like its neighbors in Europe, and strong domestic inflationary pressures because of a tight labor market, like the United States.Commuters cross London Bridge last week. Unlike most countries, Britain still has more people out of the labor force than before the pandemic.Andy Rain/EPA, via Shutterstock“The U.K. was facing a more difficult challenge than the other countries, in the sense it was really hit by a confluence of shocks that were greater than the individual shocks hitting other countries,” Professor Forbes said.But there are other problems that are distinctively British. Unlike most countries, Britain still has more people out of the labor force than before the pandemic. A majority say they can’t work because of long-term illnesses, a problem exacerbated by the crisis in the N.H.S. With so many job vacancies, wages are rising rapidly, which further fuels inflation.Mr. Sunak has offered to increase public sector wages by 5 percent to 7 percent to end strikes that have closed Britain’s schools and crippled the health service. But that has yet to quell the labor unrest.Britain has so far avoided a recession, surprising some economists. But its resilience could crack, as people curtail spending to pay their rising mortgage bills. Already, about 4.5 million households have had to swallow rate increases since the Bank of England started raising interest rates in December 2021. The rest, another 4 million, will be affected by higher rates by the end of 2026.As with other Western leaders, Mr. Sunak’s fortunes may be largely out of his hands. Last month, the Bank of England, stung by the virulence of inflation, unexpectedly raised interest rates by half a percent, to 5 percent. Traders are betting that rates will climb further still, to about 5.8 percent by the end of the year — implying several more rate increases that would mean higher financing costs for businesses and households and hurt economic growth even more.“The more tightening we see, the risk of recession rises,” said Mr. Pradhan, who served as a deputy director of the International Monetary Fund. “It wouldn’t take very much to tip the U.K. economy into recession.” More

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      Legacy of Boris Johnson Looms Over By-election to Replace Him

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      The vote to pick a new member of Parliament in the ex-prime minister’s once-reliably Conservative district is just one of three by-elections on Thursday that will give a snapshot of Britain’s mood.When Boris Johnson paid a surprise visit last year to the Swallow pub and poured some pints, he seemed to leave the clientele more agreed on his skills as a barman than as a politician.“He asked me whether it was a decent pint — and it was,” said Tony O’Shea, 55, holding up a photo on his phone of the moment he was served a beer by Mr. Johnson, then the prime minister. Still a fan, Mr. O’Shea described Mr. Johnson as a “lovable rogue” whom he had voted for in 2019.On the other side of the pub, however, Jenny Moffatt, 73, had no complaints about the drinks she was served by Mr. Johnson. But she described him as “a buffoon,” with a tendency to “pontificate.”Love him or laugh at him, Mr. Johnson was an outsize presence both in British politics — and here in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, the district of outer London that he represented in Parliament. Now he is gone: He was forced out of Downing Street last summer and chose to resign his seat in Parliament last month after a ruling by senior lawmakers that he had lied to Parliament about lockdown-breaking parties.That leaves voters in his constituency to determine on Thursday what kind of post-Johnson future they prefer — to stick with the Conservatives or flip to Labour. Since the district was created in 2010, there have only been Tory representatives in Parliament but the party now trails badly in national opinion polls.Mr. O’Shea, who runs a cleaning company, said he was unsure for whom he will cast his ballot on Thursday. “There are a lot of people, irrespective of what has happened, who would still vote for Boris because of his character,” he said.It is partly thanks to Mr. Johnson’s tarnished legacy, however, that the current prime minister, Rishi Sunak, faces three unwelcome tests on Thursday in so-called by-elections — contests in local parliamentary districts — that fall at a time of roaring inflation and economic stagnation.As well as Mr. Johnson’s seat on the fringes London, there is a vacancy in Selby and Ainsty, in northern England, where one of Mr. Johnson’s allies, Nigel Adams, also quit. In both these contests, the Labour Party, the main opposition, detects the scent of success.A third contest was called when David Warburton, another Conservative, resigned after admitting he had used cocaine. In the race to succeed him in Somerton and Frome, in southwest England, the centrist Liberal Democrats are seen as the main challengers.Steve Tuckwell, second from left, the Conservative candidate running for a parliamentary seat in Boris Johnson’s former district, at a debate with other candidates this month. Susannah Ireland/Reuters“There is a sense that the by-elections are the end of the Boris Johnson era — this electoral test wouldn’t have happened but for him,” said Robert Hayward, a Conservative member of the House of Lords and a polling expert. He added that, because the three seats are being fought in three very different areas, they will give a rare snapshot of opinion across the country.“For the Conservatives, it will be a challenge and damaging if they lose all three,” said Mr. Hayward, while adding that “if they win even one it would substantially lift their spirits because expectations are so low.”Perhaps surprisingly, given their poor national poll ratings — trailing Labour by around 20 percentage points — the Conservatives are optimistic in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, where in the 2019 general election Mr. Johnson won by a relatively modest majority.However, the party is relying on local issues to buoy them, rather than counting on affection for Mr. Johnson. Indeed, the former prime minister has largely been airbrushed from the Tories’ campaign literature, has not been asked (or offered) to campaign for the new Tory challenger in his former district, Steve Tuckwell, and has had only a brief phone call with him.“Boris Johnson was a marmite politician” said David Simmonds, a Conservative lawmaker in the neighboring area of Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner, referring to a salty, yeasty paste that Britons tend to either love or hate.“There were people here who voted Conservative because they liked Boris Johnson and other people who stopped voting Conservative because they didn’t think he was the right person,” he added. “But that’s history, he’s not on the ballot paper at this election, I think people have moved on a while ago.”The résumé of Mr. Tuckwell is strikingly different from that of Mr. Johnson, who was educated at Eton College, Britain’s most famous private school, and Oxford University. By contrast Mr. Tuckwell stocked shelves at a supermarket as a part-time job when he was young, and then was employed as a postal worker. A protest against plans to extend an ultra low emission zone for vehicles, known as ULEZ, across all London boroughs, in London, in April.Maja Smiejkowska/ReutersMr. Tuckwell’s campaign stresses his local credentials in part because his main rival, the Labour Party’s Danny Beales, is now an elected councilor in Camden, an inner London municipality. (Mr. Beales was born and raised in the Uxbridge and South Ruislip district.)The Conservatives also have a pressing local issue because the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, a Labour member, plans to extend an ultra low emission zone across all of London’s boroughs, including Uxbridge, effectively levying a fee on drivers of older, more polluting, cars.The plan, known as ULEZ, already operates in central London and aims to improve the quality of the city’s air, which has been found to have contributed to the death of one girl in the city.The threatened new cost has alarmed many drivers in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, and Mr. Tuckwell has likened the scheme to the tactics of a famed highwayman, Dick Turpin, an 18th century figure whose exploits were romanticized after his execution and who, according to legend, may have once lived locally.“After all, Turpin asked for a few shillings — not four-and-a-half grand a year,” Mr. Tuckwell wrote, totaling the cost of using a noncompliant car every day of the year to more than £4,500, or about $5,870.Mr. Beales has been under pressure on the issue and recently said that now is “not the right time” to extend ULEZ because of the squeeze it puts on incomes.But that is not enough to satisfy some. Outside his home, Neil Wingerath said the new rules would cost him £12.50 each time he drove his 13 year-old Land Rover SUV.“I’m not a Conservative but I am persuaded to vote Conservative because of ULEZ,” said Mr. Wingerath, 67, a retired accountant, who added that the resale value of his car had halved since the announcement of the ULEZ expansion to the area. “They are unsellable locally.”Even on this most local of issues, however, there is no escaping the legacy of Mr. Johnson who, in a newspaper article, recently condemned the “sheer bone-headed cruelty,” of the extension of ULEZ to outer London.His critics point out that the policy was introduced in inner London, by none other than Mr. Johnson himself when he served as the city’s mayor. More

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      Britain’s Tories Expected to Face Election Losses

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      Almost the first thing I saw when I arrived in the London suburb of Uxbridge was two teenage girls in school uniforms getting into a fistfight in the shopping mall outside the underground station. Uxbridge is a middle-class place, stodgy but diversifying, whose voters are squeezed by a cost of living crisis and anxious about rising public disorder. Until last month, it was represented by Boris Johnson, and, as Labour lawmaker Steve Reed told me, it hasn’t sent a member of the left-leaning Labour Party to Parliament since 1966.But last month Johnson, who’d stepped down as prime minister in 2022, resigned his seat rather than face discipline for lying to Parliament regarding his shameless socializing during the pandemic lockdown. And in the election next week to replace him, Labour candidate Danny Beales is considered the favorite, a sign of just how far Tory fortunes have fallen.The contest in Uxbridge and South Ruislip — the full name of Johnson’s former constituency — is one of three elections happening next Thursday to fill seats that Conservatives have vacated. There’s also an election in Selby and Ainsty, where Johnson’s ally Nigel Adams quit shortly after Johnson did, reportedly furious about the political machinations that had thwarted his elevation to the House of Lords. And there’s one in Somerton and Frome, where the Conservative David Warburton resigned in a scandal involving cocaine and allegations of sexual misconduct.A recent poll shows the Labour candidate ahead in Selby and Ainsty, where in 2019 Adams won more than 60 percent of the vote. In Somerton and Frome, the candidate of the centrist Liberal Democrats appears to have a strong chance of prevailing. “My central expectation is that we lose all three,” a Conservative lawmaker told the BBC.Obviously, that’s not guaranteed. When I spoke to Joshua Simons, head of Labour Together, a think tank close to Labour leadership, he suggested that Conservatives were strategically exaggerating their pessimism to lower expectations. Still, there’s a broad sense that, with national elections due sometime in the next 18 months, the Conservative Party is imploding. “We Are on For a Massive Defeat,” blared a headline in the Financial Times, quoting a former Tory cabinet minister.The U.K.’s conservative collapse looks particularly stark when set against the ascendant right in much of the rest of Europe. Italy has a prime minister from a party with fascist roots. The far-right Vox could be part of the next government in Spain. There are right-wing governments in Sweden and Finland. Conservatives just won a second term in Greece. The last French election was a contest between the center-right Emmanuel Macron and the far- right Marine Le Pen, and though Le Pen lost, she appears to be gaining support in the wake of the recent riots. Even in Germany, where shame about the Holocaust once seemed to inoculate its people against right-wing extremism, the reactionary Alternative for Germany just won its first mayoral election, and in a recent poll it was the second most popular party in the country.Yet in Britain, the right appears to be approaching something like free fall, with a recent poll showing Labour with a 21-point lead nationally. It’s quite a turnaround, given that, until recently, the Tories were often called the most successful political party in the world. Less than four years ago, the party won its fourth consecutive national election by a staggering margin, leaving Labour, then led by the leftist Jeremy Corbyn, decimated. “It was catastrophic,” said Reed. “It was really in question as to whether the Labour Party could survive.” A 2021 New Republic article was subtitled, “How the Tories Became Unbeatable.”It would be nice, as someone who wants to see social democracy thrive, to report that Labour has since discovered some brilliant strategy for beating the right. In truth, though, if conservative hegemony in Britain is starting to break down, the Tories deserve most of the credit, both for their dissipation and their mismanagement.There have been so many Conservative sex and corruption scandals that the phrase “Tory sleaze” has become a cliché, and the ruling party’s decadence is matched by its incompetence. Covid created economic misery worldwide, but since the pandemic the U.K. has performed significantly worse than its peers in the rest of Europe. Among the reasons for this malaise are the fallout from Brexit, finalized in 2020, and the supply-side fantasies of Liz Truss, Johnson’s successor, who sent the economy into a tailspin during her 44 days in office.Today inflation is no longer in the double digits, but as of May, it was still at 8.7 percent, “the highest among the world’s big, rich economies,” as Reuters reported. Rent has reached record highs, and spiking interest rates are clobbering homeowners, since unlike in America, most British mortgages have their rates locked in for only two or five years. “People are seeing, you know, £500 to £600 a month increases in their mortgages, which people just can’t afford at the moment,” said Reed.Britain’s prized National Health Service is in crisis as well, with a record 7.47 million people on waiting lists for routine hospital care. On Thursday, junior doctors — postgraduate trainees who make up about half of doctors in English hospitals — went on strike over low pay. That comes after a nurses’ strike that ended late last month. Reed, who is chairing Beales’s Labour campaign in Uxbridge, points out that the hospital there is crumbling. “There is literally masonry falling out of the roofs, and parts of it are closed off because water is leaking through the roof,” he said.Simons of Labour Together told me he’s visited Uxbridge twice in the last week, and said that voters there “hate the Tories, and hate British politics at the moment.” Now, that’s very different from saying that people like or trust Labour. Scarred by the mortifying rout of the 2019 election, the Labour politicians I spoke to were decidedly humble about their own connection with voters. But they at least see things trending their way.“I think they’re going to show just how incredibly unpopular the Tories are at the moment,” Angela Rayner, deputy leader of the Labour Party, said of next week’s elections. “And I think they’ll show how much work the Labour Party has done to regain the trust. We’re still on that journey, by the way. I’m not complacent about that. But I think people are starting to listen to the Labour Party now.” For that, they have the Tories to thank.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Trounced, Conservatives Feel Voters’ Wrath in English Heartlands

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      Defections in the once solidly Conservative southern “blue wall” drove large losses in recent municipal elections.LITTLEWICK GREEN, England — Aged 22 and not long out of college, George Blundell never expected to win when he ran in municipal elections against a Conservative Party bigwig in a region long loyal to the Tories. But for a young, enthusiastic, former politics student it still seemed worth a shot.“I was like, ‘Well, what’s stopping me’? It’s not something you get to do every day, is it?” recalled Mr. Blundell, a member of the centrist Liberal Democrats, as he sipped a beer outside the village pub where he once washed dishes as a summer job.To his surprise, Mr. Blundell is now a councilor representing the area around Littlewick Green, having defeated the powerful incumbent in perhaps the biggest upset from local elections that have sent shock waves through Britain’s governing Conservative Party.Unhappy about Brexit and aghast at the economic chaos unleashed during Liz Truss’s brief leadership last year, traditional Conservative voters are deserting the party in key English heartlands, contributing to the loss of more than 1,000 municipality seats in voting this month.With a general election expected next year, that is alarming for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who has earned solid marks as a problem solver and seems to have stanched the party’s bleeding from the Ms. Truss fiasco, but whose party nevertheless lags far behind the opposition Labour Party in opinion polls.In these affluent areas within reach of London — called the “blue wall” after the campaign color of the Conservatives — the Liberal Democrats and the Greens, rather than Labour, made big gains in this month’s local elections. But when the next general election comes, the defection of voters from the Conservative Party could deprive Mr. Sunak of a parliamentary majority and propel Labour’s leader, Keir Starmer, into Downing Street.The village pub at Littlewick Green, near Maidenhead.Olivia Harris for The New York TimesIt could also sweep from Parliament prominent Conservatives — like the chancellor of the Exchequer, Jeremy Hunt, and the senior cabinet minister, Michael Gove — who hold seats in Conservative southern heartlands, as does the former prime minister, Theresa May, the member of Parliament for Maidenhead.According to Robert Ford, professor of political science at the University of Manchester, they have only themselves to blame because many moderate Conservatives feel their party has abandoned them, rather than the other way around.“Their Conservative Party was about stable government and low taxes, and looking after the City of London,” he said, referring to the financial district to which many voters here commute. “This Conservative government has delivered none of that.”“Rishi Sunak turning up and saying ‘Don’t worry, I know we spent five years burning down the house, but someone who is not an arsonist is in charge now,’” Professor Ford said. “Well, it’s not enough.”Certainly, it proved insufficient in Littlewick Green which, with its village pub, cricket field and pavilion flying British flags, is an unlikely spot for a political insurrection.Yet, so successful was Mr. Blundell that, when he joined a crowd of around 200 people celebrating the coronation of King Charles III, they greeted their newly-elected representative with spontaneous applause.Mr. Blundell, who works as a training adviser for an education firm, said he blushed so hard that “I basically turned into a human tomato.” He added: “I’ve known them all for a long time, and I want to do well by them and help them out — even if it’s the smallest things.”Mr. Blundell prevailed in Littlewick Green, despite its tony image as a place having a cricket field, a village pub, and a pavilion flying British flags.Olivia Harris for The New York TimesIn this quintessential corner of “blue wall” Britain, Mr. Blundell lives with his siblings (he is a triplet) and mother, a vicar, in a house that was once used as a set by the makers of “Midsomer Murders,” a TV detective show featuring gory crimes in scenic English villages.Mr. Blundell attributes his victory to a combination of national politics, local factors and the complacency of local Conservatives. The night of the count was “spectacular,” he added.Simon Werner, the leader of the Liberal Democrats in Windsor and Maidenhead, thinks the success can be repeated in a general election. “The ‘blue wall’ is crumbling,” he said. “We’ve proved we can do it on a local basis and now we have to step up and do it at the general election next year.”In part, the events here represent the aftershocks of the polarizing leadership of Boris Johnson, who won a landslide general election victory in 2019 with the support of voters in deindustrialized areas in the north and middle of England. But Mr. Johnson’s bombastic, pro-Brexit rhetoric, disdain for the business sector and focus on regenerating the north of England never endeared him to moderate Conservatives in the south.Most stuck with the Tories in 2019 because Labour was then led by the left-winger, Jeremy Corbyn. But with the more centrist Mr. Starmer now firmly in charge, the prospect of a Labour government is no longer so scary for many traditional Tories, liberating them to abandon the Conservatives.Professor Ford added, the Tories had caricatured and pilloried their own supporters for years, with some Conservative politicians characterizing such voters as a privileged elite.“If you tell people often enough that they are not welcome, eventually they will get the message,” said Professor Ford.Even some Conservative lawmakers admit they are worried by the appeal of the Liberal Democrats to these voters.“Those traditional moderate Conservatives for whom the world works very well — who were happy to be in the European Union because it worked for them — yes, I am concerned to attract them back from the Liberal Democrats,” said Steve Baker, a government minister and lawmaker who represents Wycombe, close to Windsor and Maidenhead.Mr. Blundell chats with his mother in Littlewick Green.Olivia Harris for The New York TimesThere are demographic factors at play as well, as younger voters relocate from London, a Labour stronghold, forced out by high property prices.But local issues are important, too. At Maidenhead Golf Club, which was established in 1896, there is anger that the Conservative-controlled municipality facilitated plans to construct around 1,800 houses on the 132 acres of land the club rents — threatening to make the club homeless.Merv Foulds, a former club treasurer and lifelong Conservative voter, said that on election day he decided not to join his wife at their polling station, adding: “If I had I would not have voted Tory.”Both locally and nationally the Conservatives are seen as untrustworthy, he said, while Mr. Sunak has yet to prove persuasive.“Sometimes, when he speaks, you just get the feeling he is speaking down to you,” said Mr. Foulds, an accountant. “At least with Boris you felt that he was talking to you — even though he might have been talking drivel, and maybe lying through his back teeth as well.”In Woodlands Park, a less affluent district of Windsor and Maidenhead, Barbara Hatfield a cleaner, said she had voted for several parties in recent elections but was worried about hikes in food prices and angry about development in the town center.A house decorated with a Union Jack in Littlewick Green.Olivia Harris for The New York Times“Maidenhead is terrible, it looks like Beirut,” she said of the town, where there has been construction work, adding that she was unsure how she would vote in a general election.Another uncommitted voter is Mr. Blundell’s mother, Tina Molyneux, who ministers at local churches as well as being head of discipleship and social justice in the diocese of Oxford. She has her own theory of why her son was victorious.“Everybody was saying ‘There’s got to be a change,’” she said. “There was something to do with youth and a fresh approach.”Rev. Molyneux said she had previously voted for Mrs. May, whom she still respects, but will not support her at the general election because the Conservatives have “gone to the right.” More

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      Britain’s New Voter ID Rules Are Raising Hackles

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      Critics say the Conservative government’s new requirements are meant to discourage voting by young people and members of minority groups, who are likely to be Labour voters.The rituals around voting have changed little for decades in Britain, where electors give their names and addresses to polling station staff, are checked off a list and then handed a paper ballot to mark and cast in a box.But on Thursday a new requirement will be added for those choosing thousands of elected representatives for municipalities in England: proof of identity.And while voters in many countries take that obligation for granted, the move has unleashed a political storm in Britain.Critics claim the change could reduce turnout, discourage young people from voting and disenfranchise some minority voters and others who are less likely to have a passport or driver’s license.Requiring proof of ID could deter people either from going out to vote or from actually doing so if the new checks lead to long delays at polling stations, they say.And one quirk of the new system that has particularly incensed the critics is a concession allowing some older people to use as ID the cards that entitle them to free or reduced-fee travel, while preventing younger folk to use their travel cards in the same way.Given that older voters are statistically more likely than the young both to vote and to support the Conservative Party, led by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, some opposition politicians fear a finger on the scales. The leader of the centrist Liberal Democrats, Ed Davey, accused the government of “undermining our democracy.”Ed Davey, the leader of Britain’s Liberal Democrats, said the new regulations on voter ID would undermine democracy.Henry Nicholls/ReutersEven one senior Conservative lawmaker, David Davis, has reservations. “The introduction of Voter ID has been shown to reduce turnout. This is bad for our democracy,” he wrote on Twitter.A similar push has proved contentious in parts of the United States. Several states where Republicans control the legislature and the governor’s seat have introduced new identification requirements as well as broader voting restrictions.But in Britain the furor also reflects the country’s longstanding resistance to identity cards, which are a common feature in many of its continental European neighbors.A 2005 effort by Prime Minister Tony Blair to introduce national identity cards was abandoned in the face of staunch opposition. (Mr. Blair still urges their adoption, although now in digital form.)Britons did carry identity cards during World War II, though they were abandoned in 1952 after a famous case in which Clarence Willcock, a dry cleaner from north London, refused to show documentation to a police officer who pulled over his car. When the matter came to court, a judge ruled in Mr. Willcock’s favor.Acceptable documents for modern-day voters will include a driver’s license or passport, and the government says it is simply following standard practice in most Western nations to protect the integrity of the electoral system.An official survey found that 96 percent of the electorate held a form of ID with a photo that respondents thought was still recognizable. That number fell to 91 percent when including only those with ID cards that had not expired.Those who lack the necessary documentation could apply for a new form of photo ID that the government calls a voter authority certificate.Prime Minister Rishi Sunak defended the regulations in Parliament on Wednesday, saying they were “commonplace” throughout Europe and in Canada.Dan Kitwood/Getty ImagesHowever, there were just 85,689 applications for those cards, representing 4.3 percent of the estimated two million people who did not have valid photo ID, according to openDemocracy, an independent media platform that focuses on the political process.In requiring proof of identity, the government is offering a solution to a nonexistent problem, critics say. The Electoral Commission, the independent body that governs elections in Britain, said that in recent years there had been “no evidence of large-scale electoral fraud.”Of the 1,386 suspected cases reported to police between 2018 and 2022, nine led to convictions and six cautions were issued. In most instances, officers either took no further action or resolved the matter locally, it said.Critics fear that any barrier to participation in the electoral process will particularly affect minority groups. Clive Lewis, a Labour lawmaker, argued that those people already felt excluded from the political process, adding that “voter ID will make it even harder for marginalized groups to vote.”And a parliamentary committee noted “the widely voiced concerns about the potential impact of the introduction of mandatory voter ID on certain societal groups and for some with protected characteristics, including people with disabilities, members of LGBTQ+ communities, Black and ethnic minority groups and older people.”Questioned in Parliament on Wednesday, Mr. Sunak said that a voter ID requirement was “common in European countries, it’s common in Canada and it’s absolutely right that we introduce it here too.”John Curtice, a professor of politics at the University of Strathclyde, said most countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development would expect people to show ID when they vote, as they must in Northern Ireland, where rules were introduced to deal with voting irregularities there.“From an international perspective you could say you should be doing it. From a domestic perspective the issue is, what’s the problem?” he said, noting that few cases of electoral fraud had been successfully prosecuted.Professor Curtice added that some categories of acceptable identification “look a little curious,” in particular the use of travel cards by older people.Ideally, such changes should have been made on a cross-party basis with the agreement of opposition politicians, he said.Another risk is that turning away voters who fail to provide valid ID could spark disputes, perhaps raising the suspicions about the fairness of election results that they were designed to allay. That is most likely in municipal elections, where turnouts tend to be low and just a handful of votes can decide the outcome of some contests.As to the likely scale of any impact, Professor Curtice said it was hard to predict.“The honest answer is that we don’t know and that we may never know,” he said, “unless there is an enormous drop in turnout, and that is particularly in places where fewer people have passports.” More