UNITED Kingdom voters go to the polls tomorrow in a bellwether local election that could make it clear just how serious a challenge Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives face at the next general election.

The vote in the Mid-Bedfordshire constituency follows the resignation of MP Nadine Dorries, a key ally of ousted ex-prime minister Boris Johnson.

Dorries held the seat, a Tory stronghold since 1931, with a huge 24,000 majority in the 2019 general election.

If the Conservatives lose it this week, it will be one of the biggest collapses of support in English by-election history.

Sunak’s party – battered by a bruising cost of living crisis, stubbornly high inflation and the fallout from a series of political scandals under Johnson – is currently trailing in the polls behind Keir Starmer’s main opposition Labour Party.

But with recent surveys showing Labour’s polls lead narrowing after Sunak announced populist policies, the poll was being closely watched.

Retirees in the mainly rural constituency in central England told AFP they expected the Conservatives to hold the seat, but that without Johnson, they would flounder in the national election due next year.

Some younger voters said they were so fed up with politicians of all stripes they wouldn’t be voting in either election.

‘Red wall’

Labour was hoping tomorrow’s result would mirror the drubbing meted out to the Conservatives in July in the northern Selby and Ainsty local elections, where the opposition overturned a 20,000 majority.

Voters on the same day, however, narrowly backed the Tories in Johnson’s former Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency in a local poll dominated by contentious plans by London’s mayor to extend a scheme taxing the use of the most polluting vehicles.

Retired museum worker Maureen Dunlop, 75, said she thought “getting rid of Boris” had been a mistake for the Tory Party.

“I know he was an idiot,” she said referring to controversies over Covid-19 rule-breaking in his Downing Street office, “but I don’t think they’ll win (next year) without him.”

Johnson won a landslide election victory in 2019 with an 80-seat majority in parliament.

The resounding win was partly due to so-called “red wall” voters, former Labour supporters who backed the Conservatives for the first time.

“All the people who voted Conservative instead of Labour because of him will just go back to Labour, won’t they?” Dunlop said.

Disillusioned

The Tories were seeking to persuade voters the economy was back on track after short-lived prime minister Liz Truss’s disastrous mini budget a year ago sparked economic turmoil.

The vote was being held on the same day as another local election in the central Tamworth constituency, where the Conservatives also have a large majority.

“The cost of living crisis is a mess,” said one Mid-Bedfordshire voter, a retired accountant, who asked not to be named.

“I like to vote Conservative, and I probably will, but they’ve not been achieving much recently,” the 76-year-old said.

“I think Boris did a good job,” he said.

For 26-year-old Niall Barnaville, however, the election remains of little interest.

“It makes no difference to me at all. I’ll just deal with the cards I’m dealt,” the engineer from the village of Stewartby said.

“For me to vote in something, I’d have to have some level of faith in it, and I don’t,” Barnaville said. – AFP, October 18, 2023.