Soul-searching For UK's Labour After Johnson Triumphs

London, May 7 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 7th May, 2021 ) :The "crushing" election rout suffered by Britain's Labour party has reopened internecine fighting as the centre-left opposition struggles to dent the vaccine-boosted appeal of Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Conservatives.

Results so far from "Super Thursday" regional and local polls indicated the coronavirus pandemic and Brexit have remade the normal rules of politics, with the centre-right government building on its triumph from the 2019 general election.

Labour leader Keir Starmer took over a year ago after the party under hard-left predecessor Jeremy Corbyn crashed to its worst result since 1935, and has faced the near-impossible task of opposing Johnson during a national emergency.

He has struggled to break through when the public has wanted a sense of common purpose during the pandemic, and the elections came just as a new mood of optimism is swelling thanks to Europe's most successful inoculation campaign.

More fundamentally, Britain's 2016 referendum on EU membership eroded old party loyalties, and continues to bring the Tories unprecedented success in Labour heartland seats such as Hartlepool.

The constituency in the rust-belt port in northeast England, which was strongly pro-Brexit, voted for a Conservative MP on Thursday for the first time since its creation in 1974.

Polling expert John Curtice said that in "Leave" areas where the last local elections were held in 2016, the swing from Labour to Conservative was averaging 12 points.

Decaying industrial areas in Labour's old "Red Wall" of northern England went decisively for Johnson's pro-Brexit campaign in 2016, and he has since promised a "levelling up" agenda of economic opportunity in forgotten places.

"These figures illustrate the lack of progress that Labour has made in reconnecting with working-class voters since the (2019) general election," Curtice told the BBC.