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    George Galloway Wins Rochdale By-Election in Blow to Labour Party

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    Mr. Galloway is likely to be a thorn in the main opposition party’s side. Labour was forced to disown its candidate in the special election over antisemitic remarks.A parliamentary district held recently by Britain’s main opposition Labour Party has slipped from its grip after a chaotic election campaign that became emblematic of the anger that has swept through British politics over the war in Gaza.George Galloway, a left-wing firebrand, won the seat in Rochdale, north of Manchester, with 12,335 votes, according to official results announced early Friday. Voting had taken place on Thursday to replace Tony Lloyd, a Labour Party lawmaker who had represented the district but died of blood cancer in January.Mr. Galloway, founder of the far-left Workers Party of Britain, once represented Labour in Parliament but was forced out of the party in 2003 over his outspoken criticism of the Iraq war.In his campaign in Rochdale, Mr. Galloway appealed directly to the district’s Muslim voters, who make up around 30 percent of the electorate. Many of them are angry about the war in Gaza and want Britain to press harder for an immediate cease-fire.In his campaign literature, Mr. Galloway described Keir Starmer, leader of the Labour Party, as a “top supporter of Israel” and suggested his leadership could be weakened by the outcome of the vote. “Imagine — the people of Rochdale coming together to topple the hated Labour leader,” the leaflet added.That prospect may be fanciful, as recent polling suggests Mr. Starmer is more popular with voters than any other leading politician in Britain. But Mr. Galloway’s victory followed a chaotic campaign for Labour. The party was forced to disown its own candidate, Azhar Ali, after a recording revealed that he had claimed that Israel had “allowed” Hamas to go ahead with the Oct. 7 attacks as a pretext to invade Gaza.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Conservatives Suffer Setback in Parliamentary Election in Britain

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      The results came as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak deals with a shrinking economy and discontent over a crisis gripping the country’s health system.Britain’s governing Conservative Party has lost the first of two parliamentary elections in a new blow to its embattled leader, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, whose future has been questioned by critics within his fractious political party.The Conservatives were defeated in Kingswood, near Bristol, by 8,675 to 11,176 votes, losing a seat that the party had previously held. Votes were cast Thursday to replace two Conservative lawmakers who had quit Parliament, with the first set of results announced early Friday morning.With a general election expected later this year, the result is likely to compound Mr. Sunak’s difficulties at a time when the British economy is shrinking, interest rates are high, and Britain’s health service seems to be in a state of almost permanent crisis. Opinion polls show his party trailing the opposition Labour Party by double-digit margins.The results from the second parliamentary election, in Wellingborough, are expected later on Friday morning. Turnout in both contests was low at less than 40 percent, with many people staying home rather than casting a ballot.A woman leaving a polling station after casting her vote in the Kingswood by-election near Bristol, Britain, on Thursday.Phil Noble/ReutersThe gloomy mood within the Conservative Party had already deepened on Thursday, after the release of economic data showing that in the last months of 2023, Britain had officially entered a recession.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Playing for Time, U.K. Leader Sets Up Chance of U.S. Election Overlap

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      Prime Minister Rishi Sunak signaled that voters will go to the polls in the fall, around the time that the United States will be in the midst of its own pivotal vote.When Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said this week that he was not likely to call a general election in Britain before the second half of the year, he was trying to douse fevered speculation that he might go to the voters as early as May. But in doing so, he set up another tantalizing prospect: that Britain and the United States could hold elections within days or weeks of each other this fall.The last time parliamentary and presidential elections coincided was in 1964, when Britain’s Labour Party ousted the long-governing Conservatives in October, and less than a month later, a Democratic president, Lyndon B. Johnson, swept aside a challenge from a right-wing Republican insurgent. The parallels to today are not lost on the excitable denizens of Britain’s political class.“It’s the stuff of gossip around London dinner tables already,” said Kim Darroch, a former British ambassador to Washington who is now a member of the House of Lords. For all the Côte du Rhône-fueled analysis, Mr. Darroch conceded, “it’s hard to reach any kind of conclusion about what it means.”That doesn’t mean political soothsayers, amateur and professional, aren’t giving it a go. Some argue that a victory by the Republican front-runner, Donald J. Trump, over President Biden — or even the prospect of one — would be so alarming that it would scare voters in Britain into sticking with Mr. Sunak’s Conservative Party, as a bid for predictability and continuity in an uncertain world.A supporter of Donald J. Trump laying out signs on Tuesday before an event in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesOthers argue that the Labour Party leader, Keir Starmer, could win over voters by reminding them of the ideological kinship between the Conservatives and Mr. Trump, who remains deeply unpopular in Britain. Mr. Trump praised Mr. Sunak last fall for saying he wanted to water down some of Britain’s ambitious climate goals. “I always knew Sunak was smart,” Mr. Trump posted on his Truth Social account.Still others pooh-pooh the suggestion that British voters would make decisions at the ballot box based on the political direction of another country, even one as close and influential as the United States. Britain’s election, analysts say, is likely to be decided by domestic concerns like the cost-of-living crisis, home-mortgage rates, immigration and the dilapidated state of the National Health Service.And yet, even the skeptics of any direct effect acknowledge that near-simultaneous elections could cause ripples on both sides of the pond, given how Britain and the United States often seem to operate under the same political weather system. Britain’s vote to leave the European Union in June 2016 is often viewed as a canary in the coal mine for Mr. Trump’s victory the following November.Already, the campaigns in both countries are beginning to echo each other, with fiery debates about immigration; the integrity — or otherwise — of political leaders; and social and cultural quarrels, from racial justice to the rights of transgender people. Those themes will be amplified as they reverberate across the ocean, with the American election forming a supersized backdrop to the British campaign.“The U.S. election will receive a huge amount of attention in the run-up to the U.K. election,” said Ben Ansell, a professor of comparative democratic institutions at Oxford University. “If the Tories run a culture-war campaign, and people are being fed a diet of wall-to-wall populism because of Trump, that could backfire on them.”Some argue that if the elections coincide, Keir Starmer, the leader of the opposition Labour Party, could win over voters by reminding them of the similarities between the Conservatives and Mr. Trump.Justin Tallis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesProfessor Ansell identified another risk in the political synchronicity: it could magnify the damage of a disinformation campaign waged by a hostile foreign power, such as the efforts by Russian agents in Britain before the Brexit vote, and in the United States before the 2016 presidential election. “It’s a two-for-one,” he said, noting that both countries remain divided and vulnerable to such manipulation.On Thursday, Mr. Starmer appealed to Britons to move past the fury and divisiveness of the Brexit debates, promising “a politics that treads a little lighter on all of our lives.” That was reminiscent of Mr. Biden’s call in his 2021 inaugural address to “join forces, stop the shouting, and lower the temperature.”Frank Luntz, a Republican strategist who studied at Oxford and has advised Conservative Party officials, said he warned the Tories not to turn their campaign into a culture war. “It will get you votes, but it will destroy the electorate in the process,” he said he told them, pointing out that a campaign against “woke” issues had not helped Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida dislodge Mr. Trump.Mr. Sunak has vacillated in recent months between a hard-edge and more centrist approach as his party has struggled to get traction with voters. It currently lags Labour by 20 percentage points in most polls. While general elections are frequently held in the spring, Mr. Sunak appears to be playing for time in the hope that his fortunes will improve. That has drawn criticism from Mr. Starmer, who accused him of “squatting” in 10 Downing Street.“I’ve got lots that I want to get on with,” Mr. Sunak told reporters Thursday. He could wait until next January to hold a vote, though analysts say that was unlikely, since campaigning over the Christmas holiday would likely alienate voters and discourage party activists from canvassing door to door.Counting votes in Bath, England, during the U.K.’s last general election in 2019.Ian Walton/ReutersWith summer out for the same reason, Mr. Sunak’s most likely options are October or November (Americans will vote on Nov. 5). There are arguments for choosing either month, including that party conferences are traditionally held in early October.In October 1964, the Conservative government, led by Alec Douglas-Home, narrowly lost to Labour, led by Harold Wilson. Like Mr. Douglas-Home, Mr. Sunak is presiding over a party in power for more than 13 years. The following month, President Johnson trounced Barry Goldwater, the hard-right Republican senator from Arizona, who had declared, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.”Sixty years ago, the Atlantic was a greater divide than it is today, and the links between trans-Atlantic elections more tenuous than they are now. Mr. Trump, armed with a social media account and a penchant for lines even more provocative than Mr. Goldwater’s, could easily roil the British campaign, analysts said.And a Trump victory, they added, would pose a devilish challenge to either future British leader. While Mr. Trump treated Mr. Sunak’s predecessor, Boris Johnson, as an ideological twin, he fell out bitterly with Mr. Johnson’s predecessor, Theresa May, and there was little reason, they said, to hope for less drama in a second Trump term.The biggest pre-election danger — much more likely for Mr. Sunak than for Mr. Starmer, given their politics — is that Mr. Trump will make a formal endorsement, either while he is the Republican nominee or newly elected as president, said Timothy Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary, University of London.“Given how negatively most Brits feel toward Trump,” Professor Bale said, “such an endorsement is unlikely to play well for whichever of the two is unlucky enough to find favor with him.” More

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      Rishi Sunak, Britain’s Prime Minister, Is Probably Doomed

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      When Rishi Sunak became prime minister of Britain a year ago, there was little sense of celebration. The markets were in free fall after the disastrous 49-day tenure of his predecessor, Liz Truss, and the government was in disarray. Mr. Sunak, who had been rejected by Conservative Party members earlier in the year, was inserted by lawmakers in the desperate hope he could calm the crisis. Given that the party had just ousted two leaders in quick succession, it was unclear how long he would even stay in the post.One year later, he can take comfort that Britain is in a different place. It’s now possible, for a start, to have a conversation with visitors without being asked what on earth is going on. Projecting decency and stability, Mr. Sunak has calmed the markets, helped to repair relations with the European Union and sated his party’s appetite for regicide. The next election, due by January 2025, is on the horizon. Even party critics concede that Mr. Sunak will lead the Conservatives into it.But that’s where the good news stops for the prime minister. While Mr. Sunak has moved his party out of crisis mode, he is yet to win over voters. Against hopes that a new leader would raise the party’s fortunes, Mr. Sunak’s approval ratings have sunk along with esteem for the Conservatives. The polls repeatedly suggest a 20-point lead for the opposition Labour Party, whose leader, Keir Starmer, businesses and the media view as the prime minister in waiting.Adding to a sense of fatalism, a steady drip-feed of local elections — often set off by the bad behavior of Tory lawmakers — have cost the Conservatives once-safe seats. Two more, including one in Conservative hands since 1931, went over to the opposition last week. Mr. Sunak may be doing his best, in trying circumstances. But at the moment, it’s nowhere near enough.There’s an argument that any leader would struggle with the conditions Mr. Sunak inherited: high inflation, increased borrowing costs and low growth. Across the world, incumbent governments of all stripes are finding their time is up — whether it’s the center-left Labour Party in New Zealand or the right-wing populist Law and Justice party in Poland. When Mr. Sunak has found success, it’s been by making his own weather. His renegotiation of the Northern Ireland protocol, an especially vexed post-Brexit arrangement, showed maturity and won him a brief popularity bounce.Yet economic difficulties have been stubborn. Mr. Sunak, a former chancellor, was picked by lawmakers because of his economic credentials — and he has managed to win back some market confidence. But the government is still boxed in. The right of the party, including the outspoken Ms. Truss, wants tax cuts. Mr. Sunak won’t budge until inflation is down, which is not happening quickly enough. Facing a winter of high bills, Britons will be feeling the pinch for some time to come.But Mr. Sunak’s biggest challenge is the length of time his party has been in power. The Conservatives, plagued by scandal, have overseen a country where discontent is legion: A survey taken this summer found that three-quarters of people in Britain believe it is becoming a worse place to live. After 13 years of Tory rule — the same amount of time New Labour, under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, enjoyed in office — the other side can’t be blamed for Britain’s woes.Mr. Sunak’s attempts to overcome this fundamental problem are twofold. First, he has accepted that the country is not working and needs to change. His five priorities — halving inflation, stopping the boats carrying migrants across the Channel, cutting National Health Service waiting lists, growing the economy and reducing debt — are designed to reflect key voter concerns. But many are pessimistic that all the goals can be achieved. Continuing health worker strikes, for example, signal that unhappiness with the state of the N.H.S. is unlikely to subside ahead of the election.His second move is more ambitious. In a bid to shake off the baggage of previous Tory governments, Mr. Sunak is trying to depict himself as the change candidate. He has axed David Cameron’s pet project, a high-speed rail network linking the Midlands and the North, and scaled down the net-zero commitments embraced by Boris Johnson and Theresa May. The goal is to show him as a man of action with his own convictions, someone prepared, as he recently put it, to “be bold.” But running against your party’s own record is tricky, and it is already causing resentment among colleagues who served in previous administrations.Hope, strangely, could come from the opposition. Mr. Starmer is yet to be embraced by the public — his job satisfaction ratings remain stubbornly low — and support for his party largely stems from anti-Tory feeling rather than enthusiasm for Labour itself. By depicting Mr. Starmer as a flip-flopping leader at the helm of an ineffectual party, the Tories aim to claw back support. Yet it’s telling that conversations with Conservative lawmakers — some of whom have already begun planning for life after politics — tend to focus more on what will happen after defeat than on how they might win.In Tory circles, a dinner party game is to debate who the next leader might be. The current favorite is Kemi Badenoch, the business secretary who has made a name for herself with attacks on identity politics. But the scale of defeat is key. A small one would see status quo candidates, like the foreign secretary, James Cleverly, or the defense secretary, Grant Shapps, emerge. A wipeout — winning fewer than 200 seats out of 650 — would give the edge to wild-card candidates from the party’s right. In that scenario Suella Braverman, the hard-line anti-immigrant home secretary, would come to the fore.For the Tories, such a contest — full of bloodletting and bombast — could be a disaster, setting the stage for years in the wilderness. To prevent it and to forestall defeat, Mr. Sunak must change the narrative. Politics is unpredictable, as Britain has amply shown in the past eight years. But right now, one thing’s for certain: The prime minister is running out of time.Katy Balls (@katyballs) is the political editor of The Spectator.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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      Scenting Power, U.K. Business Flocks to the Labour Party

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      The governing Conservative Party was long seen as entrepreneurs’ natural ally and lobbyists’ most important target. With an election on the horizon, that’s changing.It was impossible to miss: a large green, yellow and blue off-road vehicle parked in a prime spot in the exhibition hall at the Labour Party’s annual conference. The car belonged to Ineos, one of the world’s largest chemical companies, and its outsize presence, among dozens of businesses and organizations, marked the company’s first time attending the gathering.Andrew Gardner, who runs Ineos’s huge refinery complex in Grangemouth, Scotland, was standing by the vehicle on Tuesday afternoon, grabbing time with passing Labour lawmakers to discuss the company’s goals.He had never attended a Labour conference before, and skipped the governing Conservative Party’s the previous week, but said he had come to this one, in the northern English city of Liverpool, because Labour was expected to form the next government. His colleague Richard Longden, Ineos’s head of communications, chimed in, describing “a vibe here of a party that’s changed, and one that’s looking forward to the future. And business needs to be speaking to them and needs to be seen.”“Which is exactly why we’re here,” Mr. Gardner added.In Britain, the Conservative Party has traditionally been seen as the party of business and the guardians of free enterprise. Now, under the centrist leadership of Keir Starmer, Labour is taking over that mantle. As the party inches closer to power, with a general election expected next year, it is engaged in a mutually beneficial love-in with the corporate sector.At the four-day conference this week, attended by 18,500 people, British executives and lobbyists representing industries from finance and technology to construction and defense crammed into bars, corridors and meeting rooms as Labour made its pitch to be “the undisputed party of business,” in the words of Jonathan Reynolds, a lawmaker who speaks for Labour on the issue.The record attendance was boosted by companies showing up for the first time, decamping from their more familiar habitat of Conservative Party gatherings, including Ineos, whose CEO and founder is the billionaire Brexit supporter Jim Ratcliffe.Ineos’s refinery complex in Grangemouth, Scotland. The company, whose founder is a billionaire Brexit supporter, had a strong presence at Labour’s conference.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesMr. Gardner said that Labour was already saying 80 percent of what he wanted to hear in terms of decarbonizing large-scale industry, as the company invests in reducing its carbon emissions. (That off-road vehicle was hydrogen-powered.) But he was there to push for the last portion, which was to lobby Labour not to end natural gas exploration in the North Sea too soon.That message was “slowly percolating,” he said. And there was some evidence that Ineos was being heard: Rachel Reeves, who would become Britain’s first female chancellor if Labour win next year, mentioned Grangemouth in her speech to party members.The party brought together about 200 executives on Monday at a forum within the conference to meet would-be cabinet ministers.“What we are experiencing is a party who tell us that, if elected, they want to be business-friendly government, that they want to work with the private sector in partnership,” said Chris Hayward, who speaks on policy questions for the City of London, Britain’s historic financial district.At a reception on Tuesday evening held by Labour Business, a forum to engage with the commercial sector, the mood was almost euphoric. As guests sipped wine and ate canapés, the group’s chairman, Hamish Sandison, said that not only had the tide turned in terms of Labour’s relationship with business, it had “become a tsunami.”That enthusiasm partly reflects strained relations with the governing Conservatives, particularly over Britain’s exit from the European Union, which many big corporations opposed.Boris Johnson, a former prime minister, famously dismissed the concerns of businesses over Brexit in crude terms. His short-lived successor, Liz Truss, caused markets chaos with her plans for unfunded tax cuts. And although her successor, Rishi Sunak, restored some calm, he has recently upset many businesses by abruptly changing targets on some net zero plans and canceling part of a high-speed train network.Labour has been on a journey, too. Its previous leader, Jeremy Corbyn, promised nationalization of key industries and big increases in public spending funded by higher taxes. That agenda has been unceremoniously junked by Mr. Starmer, who became leader in 2020 and moved to purge his predecessor.Labour’s shift attracted some surprising names, like JCB Hydrogen, an energy firm, which handed out tote bags to party members. Its chairman, Anthony Bamford, was a prominent supporter of Brexit and, during the last general election in 2019, hosted a campaign event for Mr. Johnson.Outside the Labour conference on Tuesday. It had 18,500 people in attendance.Jon Super/Associated PressWhat draws many businesses to Labour is the prospect of a more stable policy environment, which could be cemented by the party’s plans for a long-term industrial strategy — an idea that runs counter to Mr. Sunak’s free-market instincts.Carl Ennis, the head of Siemens in Britain and Ireland, was also at the Labour conference for the first time. He was there to lobby for an “overarching” and long-term approach, which was something that the Conservatives were struggling to provide, he said. “My job is to make the U.K. an attractive place for Siemens to invest its money in,” he said, adding that Labour’s industrial strategy appealed to him.In every meeting room, businesses had the same central plea: Give us consistency. And the Labour party was receptive, said Shevaun Haviland, the director general of the British Chambers of Commerce. “We feel very positive that the party’s listening to what we have to say and what our members have to say,” she said.Ben Wilson, vice president of public policy for Mastercard, said that his experience of engaging with the party was “indicative of how open Labour is to business,” saying that he and other executives had the opportunity to discuss policies that could form part of the platform of the “next government.”All this has revived memories of the 1990s when, in the years before Tony Blair became prime minister, the party wooed business over lunches and dinners in what was nicknamed the “prawn cocktail offensive.” This time much of the interaction has been over breakfast with Ms. Reeves, nicknamed the “scrambled eggs and smoked salmon offensive.”“Ever since I became shadow chancellor I’ve had this aim to reach out to business,” Ms. Reeves, a former economist at the Bank of England, said at a small event on the sidelines of the conference. “A lot of the businesses that I’ve met over the last two and a half years would have seen, in some of the announcements this week, their fingerprints on our policies.”While some on the left of the party were unnerved by the dominant presence of business and its influence on future policy, other supporters suggested it was the inevitable result of Labour’s double-digit poll lead.“Businesses are here in numbers,” said Stephen Kinsella, a former antitrust lawyer and Labour donor. “There are a lot of people who want to back a winner, think they have spotted a winner and realize they need to get to know the people who are going to be in government.” More

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      UK’s Labour Holds Party Conference After a Big Win

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      Just ask Britain’s opposition Labour party.Only a month ago, some Labour Party officials were fretting about the risks of fighting a parliamentary election in Scotland days before the party’s annual conference.What if the party underperformed, just before its leader, Keir Starmer, had to make one of the most important speeches of his career?In the end, the opposite happened.Labour exceeded its own expectations, trouncing the Scottish National Party in the district of Rutherglen and Hamilton West, outside Glasgow.It now seems the timing could not have been better. The victory not only promised to energize the gathering in Liverpool, but it also offered a road map for how Britain’s main opposition party could defeat the Conservatives and regain power after 13 years.“One thing is now clear,” Labour’s triumphant candidate, Michael Shanks, said to a cheering crowd on Friday. “There’s no part of this country where Labour can’t win. Labour can kick the Tories out of Downing Street next year and deliver the change that people want and this country so badly needs.”That is a message that Labour’s leaders will push relentlessly over the next three days, and it captures a paradox at the heart of British politics: Labour, the party of change, is seeking to lock in its current trajectory, while the Conservatives, the incumbents lagging in the polls, are desperate to shake up the political landscape.That dynamic helps explain why the Conservative leader, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, scrapped part of a costly high-speed rail project — one long supported by both parties — and is restyling himself as a disrupter. “Be in no doubt,” he told his party conference last week in Manchester, “it is time for a change, and we are it.”Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain on Wednesday at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester. He has tried to position himself as a “change candidate,” even as his party has held power for 13 years.Oli Scarff/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFor Mr. Starmer, the goal is less far-fetched, if still challenging, according to analysts: He needs to give voters good reasons to vote for his party, rather than simply against the unpopular Conservatives.“Keir Starmer has done a lot of things faster than he expected,” said Jonathan Powell, who served as chief of staff to a previous Labour prime minister, Tony Blair. “His task now is to make the sale to the public, which doesn’t really know him.”That will most likely involve Mr. Starmer reiterating the five missions that he set for the party in February, focused on economic growth, clean energy, the National Health Service, crime reduction and expansion of opportunity.A few of these missions sound not unlike the goals Mr. Sunak has set. And if Labour wins power, it will face the same funding squeeze that has shackled the Conservatives. But Mr. Starmer at least is not hobbled by his party’s record in government. Polls suggest that serial scandals under one of Mr. Sunak’s predecessors, Boris Johnson, and the misbegotten tax policies of another, Liz Truss, have lingered in voters’ minds.“People don’t like the Tories — they’re prepared to vote for Labour,” said Steven Fielding, an emeritus professor of political history at the University of Nottingham, who is attending the conference as a delegate. “But there is a sense that Labour has to give those voters something.”One thing Labour does not want to give them is the drama that spiced up the Conservative conference, with its attention-grabbing speeches by Ms. Truss and Suella Braverman, the home secretary, both of whom appeared to be vying for the future of the party even as Mr. Sunak tried to assert his control.At a pre-conference briefing for delegates, Mr. Fielding said, Labour officials warned them to avoid unguarded late-night conversations with journalists. “This is not a place to debate policy,” he said, paraphrasing the party’s message. “This is not a time for disagreement. This is a time for nailing the lead Labour has.”In polls of whom Britons would prefer as prime minister, Mr. Starmer ranks roughly even with Mr. Sunak, even though Mr. Starmer’s party is far ahead of the Conservatives.Hannah McKay/ReutersMr. Starmer will no doubt gladly discuss the by-election. Labour won back the seat from the Scottish National Party, which had held it since 2019, with a resounding 58.6 percent of the vote, an increase of 24.1 percentage points over its last election, while the S.N.P. scored 27.6 percent, a decline of 16.6 points.“You couldn’t have had better walk-up to the conference,” said Nicola McEwen, a professor of public policy at the University of Glasgow. “The scale of the victory is more than they could have hoped for.”Professor McEwen cautioned that by-elections, with their low voter turnouts and strong anti-incumbent bias, do not automatically translate into similar gains in general elections. But she said the Labour Party had run an effective, disciplined campaign in Rutherglen — one it could rerun in districts across Scotland, where the S.N.P., like the Conservatives, is battling acute voter fatigue.Were Labour to replicate its success throughout Scotland, it could pick up 42 seats, according to John Curtice, a professor and pollster at the University of Strathclyde. (It currently has only two.) That would restore the party to a level of dominance that it has not had since 2014, when the S.N.P., riding a wave of support for Scottish independence, emerged as a dominant political force.Such a gain could help Labour amass a clear majority in Parliament, even if — as Professor Curtice said was likely — the party’s nearly 20-point advantage over the Tories tightens somewhat in the coming months.If the S.N.P. maintained its current number of seats, Labour would need to beat the Tories by 12 percentage points just to eke out a single-seat majority in Westminster, according to Professor Curtice. But for every 12 seats that Labour wins in Scotland, it could give up two percentage points to the Tories and still gain a majority.Labour still faces challenges, political analysts said. Mr. Starmer, a former public prosecutor, is not nearly as charismatic a figure as Mr. Blair was in 1997. In polls of whom Britons would prefer as prime minister, he ranks roughly even with Mr. Sunak, even though his party is far ahead of the Conservatives.As prime minister, Mr. Sunak retains an ability to set the agenda. After Mr. Sunak announced the suspension of the rail project, called High Speed 2, Mr. Starmer acknowledged that Labour would have to honor it. “I can’t stand here and commit to reversing that decision,” Mr. Starmer told the BBC. “They’ve taken a wrecking ball to it.”But on Friday, the Labour leader was not looking over his shoulder at the Tories. In a jubilant detour to Scotland, on his way to Liverpool, he sounded very much like a politician who could see a clear path to 10 Downing Street.“You blew the doors off,” Mr. Starmer told a victory rally. “Because we’ve changed, we are now the party of the change here in Scotland. We’re the party of change in Britain, the party of change right across the whole country.” More

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      Scottish By-election Result: Labour Beats S.N.P. in Key Parliamentary Vote

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      The opposition party took back a parliamentary seat from the Scottish National Party, in a win that observers said showed a path to power in next year’s general election.Britain’s opposition Labour Party won back a parliamentary seat in Scotland on Friday by a thumping margin, after a closely watched race that had been viewed as a barometer of the party’s national appeal before a general election next year.In a dramatic swing of votes, Labour unseated the Scottish National Party from the Rutherglen and Hamilton West district, a cluster of towns outside Glasgow that had been held by the S.N.P. since 2019. Voters triggered the by-election by recalling the party’s representative, Margaret Ferrier, after she violated lockdown restrictions during the coronavirus pandemic.The result was striking evidence of a Labour revival in Scotland. But the broader significance is for the party’s looming national contest with the governing Conservative Party. Analysts said the victory suggested that Labour could make significant inroads against the Scottish National Party next year, which could give it the margin to amass a clear majority in Parliament over the Tories.Though a Labour victory was expected, its scale was not. The wide margin gives a welcome shot of momentum to the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, two days before his party gathers in Liverpool for its annual conference. It will add to the sense that Labour, with a nearly 20-point advantage over the Conservatives in national polls, is a government in waiting.It also dramatizes the collapsing fortunes of the Scottish nationalists, for many years a hugely powerful force in Scottish politics, led by the charismatic Nicola Sturgeon. Her sudden resignation in February plunged the party into division, and within months it was hit by a financial scandal that undermined voter confidence.Labour had been left with only a single seat in Scotland after its bruising defeat in the 2019 general election, while the surging S.N.P. picked up 48 seats. Even before Thursday’s vote, polls had suggested that Labour could grab back as many as half of those seats in the next election, which would give it a valuable cushion, even if its lead over the Conservatives narrows nationally.When all the votes were tallied early on Friday morning, the district elected the Labour candidate, Michael Shanks, over the Scottish nationalist candidate, Katy Loudon, by a margin of 9,446. The seat had traded hands between the parties several times since it was created in 2005; Ms. Ferrier had held a margin of only 5,230 people.Labour won 58.6 percent of the vote, an increase of 24.1 percentage points over its last election, while the S.N.P. drew 27.6 percent, a decline of 16.6 percentage points. The Conservatives won only 3.9 percent, a decline of 11.1 points, while 11 other candidates split the remainder of the vote.Speaking to cheering supporters, Mr. Shanks said the results sent an unmistakable message that “it’s time for change,” adding, “There’s not a part of this country where Labour can’t win.”Anas Sarwar, the leader of the Scottish Labour Party, characterized it as a “seismic” victory in an interview with the BBC. “Scottish politics has fundamentally changed,” he said.If Labour were to perform as well in every constituency in Scotland as it did in Rutherglen, it could win more than 40 seats in a general election and re-establish itself as the dominant party in Scotland, John Curtice, a professor at the University of Strathclyde and a leading pollster, told the BBC.“This is a remarkably good result for the Labour Party,” he said.Turnout for by-elections is typically lower than in general elections, but the 37 percent turnout in this vote was a particularly steep decline from 2019. Analysts attributed that to a combination of heavy rain and a requirement for voter ID — a first in a Scottish election — which officials said may have resulted in some people being turned away from polling places.But the low turnout did not hamper Labour, which had poured resources into the race. Mr. Starmer and other Labour leaders campaigned aggressively in the district, emphasizing Mr. Shanks’s roots in the community, where he is a teacher.The result is a stinging setback for Humza Yousaf, who replaced Ms. Sturgeon as Scottish National Party leader and first minister of Scotland, and who campaigned energetically on behalf of Ms. Loudon, a former teacher and respected local council member.For all the euphoria among Labour officials, some observers said the result was as much a reflection of disgust with Ms. Ferrier’s behavior, and fatigue with the S.N.P. more broadly amid an ongoing cost of living crisis, as it was of excitement about Mr. Shanks and Labour.“The S.N.P. has brought Scotland to its knees,” Elizabeth Clark, 68, a retired nurse in Rutherglen, said last month.Still, as polls closed at 10 p.m. on Thursday, Jackie Baillie, the deputy leader of the Scottish Labour Party, was confident. “It is clear for all to see,” she said, “that Scottish Labour is once more a serious force in Scottish politics.” More

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      A Resurgent Labour Party Sees Scotland as a Springboard to Power

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      As the Scottish nationalists stumble, a by-election near Glasgow this fall will test support for the opposition Labour party ahead of Britain’s coming general election.For Britain’s opposition Labour Party, the road to 10 Downing Street is likely to run through Scotland. And the first steps on that road lie in a cluster of commuter towns southeast of Glasgow, where Labour is trying to win over swing voters like Cara Scott, in a closely watched parliamentary vote that will test the party’s appeal ahead of a coming general election.Ms. Scott, 18, a geography student who studies in Edinburgh, enthusiastically supported the Scottish National Party in past ballots. But she is disillusioned by her latest S.N.P. representative, Margaret Ferrier, who was forced out of her seat on Aug. 1 after violating lockdown rules during the coronavirus pandemic.She also thinks the Labour Party has better proposals to cope with a grinding cost-of-living crisis that has left people fed up and exhausted. Ms. Scott signed a petition to recall Ms. Ferrier, which triggered this by-election, and now said she was “leaning slightly toward Labour, based on how proactive they’ve been.”“Their campaign has been brilliant,” said Ms. Scott, as she browsed in a slightly tattered shopping mall off the town’s high street. “Right from the get-go, they’ve been really trying to sway people’s voting opinions.”Cara Scott, 18, thinks the Labour Party has better proposals to cope with a grinding cost-of-living crisis that has left people fed up and exhausted. Emily Macinnes for The New York TimesIf the Labour Party can snatch back the seat, which it lost to the S.N.P. in 2019, it will be viewed as a harbinger of broader Labour gains across Scotland in the next general election, which the Conservative prime minister, Rishi Sunak, must call by January 2025.A Labour revival in Scotland could give the party the margin it needs to amass a majority in Parliament, even if — as most oddsmakers predict — its current double-digit lead in the polls over the Conservative Party narrows. A date for the election to fill the Rutherglen and Hamilton West seat has not yet been set, but it’s expected to take place in early October.“This will become the center of the political world in the U.K. for the next few weeks,” said Ian Murray, who holds the sole Labour seat from Scotland and serves as the party’s shadow secretary for the country.“If Labour wins the election in Rutherglen, you can say Keir Starmer is a prime minister-in-waiting,” he said, referring to the party’s leader, who campaigned in the district earlier this month. “It feels like the wind is at our back,” he added, “but if there’s any party that can fall over in the wind, it’s the Labour Party.”Labour has been reborn in Scotland by the same public distemper that is lifting it above the Tories south of the border (a Tory lawmaker, Nadine Dorries, quit last week in England with a venomous attack on Mr. Sunak, whom she described as leading a “zombie Parliament”). But this is also a story of the breathtaking decline of the Scottish National Party.Long the dominant player in Scottish politics, the S.N.P. has been brought low by scandal, infighting, and voter fatigue. Its formidable leader, Nicola Sturgeon, resigned in February and was later arrested by police in an investigation of the party’s finances (she was released and has not been charged).Children playing in Blantyre, as Labour Party supporters canvas the neighborhood in a campaign to win a Parliamentary seat this fall. Emily Macinnes for The New York TimesThe S.N.P.’s new leader, Humza Yousaf, has stumbled out of the gate, proving unpopular with voters, who have not rewarded him with the honeymoon in the polls that most new leaders get.Like the Tories, the Scottish nationalists, who have controlled Scotland’s devolved parliament since 2007, appear exhausted and internally divided. Their political north star — Scottish independence — seems more distant than ever after Britain’s Supreme Court ruled that the Scots cannot vote unilaterally to hold another referendum after voting against independence in 2014.While support for independence has stayed stable at around 47 percent, polls suggest it will no longer translate reliably into votes for the nationalist party. On a blustery, showery day, people in Rutherglen and the neighboring town of Blantyre said they worried more about the high cost of food and fuel, and long waiting times at hospitals — neither of which, they said, the S.N.P. government had remedied.“For me, independence takes a total back seat at the moment,” said James Dunsmore, 47, who was waiting for a haircut. The manager of the barbershop, Jewar Ali, said business had slowed because several of his cash strapped regulars were putting off haircuts to once a month.Jewar Ali, the barbershop manager, said business had slowed because several of his cash strapped regulars were putting off haircuts. Emily Macinnes for The New York TimesElizabeth Clark, 68, a retired nurse, expressed outrage at a recent newspaper report, based on credit-card receipts obtained and leaked by Labour officials, that said Scottish government officials spent public money on nail polish and yoga classes.“The S.N.P. has brought Scotland to its knees,” Ms. Clark said, her mood scarcely brightened by the flowers in her shopping cart.Feelings toward Ms. Ferrier are even more raw. After traveling by train despite testing positive for Covid — a breach of lockdown rules — in October 2020, she was suspended by the party but fought bitterly to hold on to her seat. The episode was especially embarrassing to the S.N.P. because Ms. Sturgeon had been widely praised for taking a more cautious approach to Covid than Boris Johnson did in England.“Other people were prosecuted” for breaking Covid rules in Britain, John Brown, 75, a mechanic, said over a breakfast sausage in Blantyre.“The S.N.P. has brought Scotland to its knees,” Elizabeth Clark, 68, said. Emily Macinnes for The New York TimesIn fact, Ms. Ferrier was charged with reckless conduct and sentenced to community service. After giving up her seat, she said: “I have always put my job and my constituents first, and I am disappointed that this will now come to an end.”In 2019, Ms. Ferrier was part of a wave of S.N.P. lawmakers who together won 48 seats in London’s parliament, while Labour won just one Scottish seat — Mr. Murray’s. Polls now show that the parties are virtually tied among voters, underscoring the dramatic collapse in support for the nationalist party, with the Conservatives trailing far behind. A poll last week projected that Labour was on track to win 24 seats next year, the same as the S.N.P.“It’s long been argued that unless the Labour Party can gain seats in Scotland, it will have a problem putting together a clear majority,” said John Curtice, a professor at the University of Strathclyde and one of Britain’s foremost pollsters. “It potentially significantly improves Keir Starmer’s chances of getting an outright majority.”He explained the math: With the S.N.P. maintaining its current number of seats in Parliament, Labour would need to beat the Tories by 12 percentage points just to eke out a single-seat majority (it is currently ahead by about 18 points, but Professor Curtice said that was likely to shrink). For every 12 seats that Labour wins in Scotland, it can give up two percentage points to the Tories and still gain a majority.Jackie Baillie, center, Scottish Labour party deputy leader, was among those knocking on doors on a recent afternoon. Emily Macinnes for The New York TimesGiven the peculiar circumstances of this by-election, it is Labour, not the S.N.P., that is feeling the pressure. The district has changed hands regularly since it was created in 2005; Labour won it in 2017 under the polarizing leadership of Jeremy Corbyn.“In a by-election, you’d expect the government of the day to get a kicking,” said Nicola McEwen, a professor of public policy at the University of Glasgow. “If they don’t win this seat, Starmer has bigger problems than he thinks he has.”Labour has left little to chance, mobilizing canvassers to carpet the district with leaflets for its candidate, Michael Shanks. Jackie Baillie, the party’s deputy leader, was among those knocking on doors on a recent afternoon. She played up Mr. Shanks’ roots in the community as a schoolteacher. But party officials did not make him available for an interview, suggesting they are protecting their lead.S.N.P.’s campaign office for candidate Katy Loudon, in Rutherglen.Emily Macinnes for The New York Times“It’s clearly been a difficult few months for us,” Ms. Loudon said.Emily Macinnes for The New York TimesFor the S.N.P.’s candidate, Katy Loudon, standing on doorsteps means getting the occasional tough question about Margaret Ferrier or Nicola Sturgeon. She insisted it happens less than one might expect.“It’s clearly been a difficult few months for us,” Ms. Loudon said. “But we’re in this to win. Our message is a positive one. It is not harking back to the past.” More

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      Tony Blair, Former U.K. Leader, Is Suddenly Back in Favor

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      The former British prime minister, who left Downing Street widely unpopular, is back in favor with his party, Labour, which hopes his political skills can be an advantage as an election nears.A decade and a half after Tony Blair left Downing Street, one issue still defines the former British prime minister in the eyes of many Britons: his disastrous decision to join the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.When Mr. Blair was given a knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II last year, more than a million people signed a petition demanding the honor be rescinded. And within his own Labour Party, he remained a complex figure, detested by those on the far left while grudgingly admired by some who noted that he was the party’s only leader to have won three consecutive British elections.Today, with the Labour opposition sensing rising power under the stewardship of its leader, Keir Starmer, Mr. Blair is suddenly, and rather remarkably, back in favor. For Mr. Starmer, embracing Mr. Blair sends a political message, underscoring Labour’s shift to the center. But the former prime minister also has charisma and communication skills that Mr. Starmer lacks, assets that could be useful as a general election approaches.Last month, the two men appeared onstage together, exchanging compliments at a glitzy conference organized by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change — an organization that works for governments around the world, including autocratic ones, and churns out policies that could help Labour if it wins the next election.Mr. Blair, now 70, is graying, thinner and his face a little more gaunt than when he left Downing Street in 2007. But he still effortlessly held the stage as he told the audience that Britain would be in safe hands if Mr. Starmer won the next election.“It was like the apostolic succession was being declared,” said John McTernan, a political strategist and onetime aide to Mr. Blair, who added that “the chemistry between the two guys made you think they talk a lot and they understand each other.”Mr. Blair and Labour’s current leader, Keir Starmer, exchanged compliments onstage at a Tony Blair Institute conference.Stefan Rousseau/Press Association, via Getty ImagesJill Rutter, a former civil servant and a senior fellow at the Institute for Government, a London-based research institute, said Mr. Blair “has clearly been keen to reinsert himself as a big player in British politics,” but Mr. Starmer “is the first leader who seems prepared to let him do so.”The right-leaning Daily Telegraph newspaper was more blunt. “Tony Blair is preparing to rule Britain again — and Starmer might just let him,” read the headline of an opinion article.Mr. Blair led Labour into power in 1997 in a landslide victory and was prime minister for a decade, shifting the party to the center, helping to negotiate a peace deal in Northern Ireland and presiding over an economy strong enough to invest in health and education.But by the end of his tenure, and as Iraq descended into chaos, the public had soured on Mr. Blair, who, along with George W. Bush, the United States president, had justified the invasion with never-substantiated claims that the country had weapons of mass destruction. The invasion led to years of sectarian violence in Iraq and the rise of Islamist militant groups that became precursors to the Islamic State.Mr. Blair’s reputation post-Downing Street was further damaged by lucrative consultancy work for governments with dubious human rights records, seeming to confirm his affinity for wealth. Such questions have also been raised about his institute. London’s Sunday Times recently reported that the institute continued to advise the government of Saudi Arabia after the slaughter of the writer Jamal Khashoggi and still received money from the kingdom.The awarding of a knighthood to Mr. Blair last year prompted a street protest.Antony Jones/Getty ImagesIn a statement, the institute said, “Mr. Blair took the view then and is strongly of the view now — as he has said publicly — that whilst the murder of Mr. Khashoggi was a terrible crime that should never have happened, the program of social and economic change underway in Saudi Arabia is of immense and positive importance to the region and the world.”“The relationship with Saudi Arabia is of critical strategic importance to the West,” it added, and “therefore staying engaged there is justified.”None of these criticisms have stopped a rehabilitation that would have been inconceivable while Labour was led by Mr. Starmer’s predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, a left-winger and a fierce political adversary of Mr. Blair’s. At the time, Mr. Starmer worked alongside Mr. Corbyn, and when Mr. Starmer became party leader in 2020, he initially kept Mr. Blair at arm’s length.Now, their ties are so warm that when the former prime minister recently celebrated his birthday at a London restaurant, Mr. Starmer dropped by to wish him well.“Tony has just kept going after a period in which it was almost like the Labour Party didn’t want him to be around,” said Alastair Campbell, Mr. Blair’s former spokesman. “I think people eventually think, ‘Say what you like about the guy, but he’s good at what he does; he’s still the most credible explainer of difficult situations.’”Some see a modern-day political parable in Mr. Blair’s return.“A lot of politics has now taken on the narrative of celebrity,” said Mr. McTernan, the political strategist, adding, “Tony, as a political celebrity, fell in the eyes of the public but he has earned his way back.”“It’s not about forgiveness about Iraq, but there is an arc of a narrative around Tony,” Mr. McTernan said, with Britons starting to “be ready to listen again.”Mr. Blair addressing British troops as prime minister in Basra, Iraq, in 2003.Pool photo by Stefan RousseauMr. Blair’s political rehabilitation has been helped by comparisons with a governing Conservative Party that has presided over political turmoil. Years of deadlock over Brexit were broken when Boris Johnson won a landslide election in 2019 — only to be driven out of Downing Street last year under a cloud of scandal. He was replaced by Liz Truss, the British prime minister with the shortest stint in history, before Rishi Sunak restored some stability.“We have had such a succession of failed prime ministers that, to look at someone who did command the stage, you do look back and say, ‘He was quite a big dominating prime minister,’” said Ms. Rutter.The institute’s output has also helped change Mr. Blair’s image, Mr. Campbell, his former spokesman, said. The former prime minister saw a gap for relatively nonideological research focusing on technocratic policymaking and tackling challenges such as artificial intelligence, digital policy and relations with the European Union.With about 800 staff members scattered around the world in Abu Dhabi, Accra, San Francisco, Singapore and New York, and a sleek, modern office in the West End of London, the institute has even had influence over the Conservative government, Ms. Rutter said, pointing to Mr. Blair’s proposal during the coronavirus pandemic to structure its vaccine program around giving as many people as possible a first shot.Mr. Campbell, his former spokesman, added that the work of the institute showed Mr. Blair in a new light, making money not just for himself but also “to build an organization, the fruits of which people are now seeing.”Perhaps the biggest question is: Now what?Mr. Blair, on the left of the second row, sat with other former prime ministers at the coronation of King Charles III this year.Pool photo by Richard Pohle“In the campaign, does an intervention from Tony help?” Mr. Campbell said of the coming election. “In my mind, it would; it would be big news. But that’s a tactical question.”If Labour wins power, more possibilities for influence would open up for Mr. Blair.Ms. Rutter suggests he has built up his institute in part because, when he was in Downing Street — which has relatively few staff members compared with government departments — he believed he had too few experts at his disposal.“The question is whether Blair is content to have an institute churning out reports that a Labour government may or may not want to look at, or will he be looking to be more of a power behind the throne,” she said.Mr. Blair, she added, “has tried to amass a huge piece of policy capability — the only problem for him now is that he’s not prime minister.” More