British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak admitted for the first time that his Conservative Party could lose in future general elections, after which the winner political force will be tasked with forming a new government. He said this in an interview with the newspaper The Times, commenting on the results of the regional elections held on May 2.
Conservatives suffered heavy losses, losing almost half of the seats in various state bodies - municipal, local and regional councils. The Tories have lost 474 of the 989 seats they held after the 2021 election. The ruling party only managed to retain 515 regional seats. It was overtaken not only by the opposition Labor Party under the leadership of Keir Starmer (1,158 seats, plus 186 seats), but also by the Liberal Democrat Party. (522 seats, plus 104 mandates).
„These results suggest we are moving in the direction of a hung parliament, with Labor as the largest party,” Sunak said. This is the name of the situation when the winner of the election does not get more than half the seats in the House of Commons, the lower house of the parliament, and is forced to form coalitions with other parties.
"Keir Starmer, who will be supported in Downing Street by the Scottish National Party, the "Liberal Democrats" and the Greens would be a disaster for the UK”, Sunack suggested, calling the Conservatives “the only force capable of delivering what matters to the people”.
The date of the parliamentary elections has not yet been announced, but there is a high probability that they will be held in the autumn of this year. Earlier, extrapolating the results of the English referendum to the whole country, the Sky News TV channel predicted that Labor would get 35% of the vote in the general election and the Conservatives 26%. This would give Keir Starmer's party 294 parliamentary seats in the 650-seat House of Commons - 32 short of what is needed to form a government on its own without compromise with other political forces.