Some respite for Labour leader after UK polls

LONDON: Britain's opposition Labour party held its ground and won back the London mayoralty Friday following regional elections, offering some respite for embattled leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Thursday's polls were not the disaster predicted by some critics in the media and perhaps even wished for by a section of the party that remains unhappy with the veteran socialist's election in September and would like to see him go.

With results from 118 of 124 councils in England, Labour had lost control of one, shedding 17 seats, while Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservatives lost 23 seats and kept its tally of councils steady at 34.



In Wales, Labour lost one seat in the 60-seat assembly but maintained its grip on power -- although the story of the night was the election of the first assembly member for the anti-immigration UK Independence Party (UKIP).

In the most symbolic victory, Labour won back London's City Hall, with Sadiq Khan, the 45-year-old son of a Pakistani bus driver and a practising Muslim, ending eight years of Conservative rule under Boris Johnson.

Khan's win was well-trailed in opinion polls and for many, unsurprising in a city that has tended towards the centre-left of politics for decades and voted Conservative mainly because of Johnson's personal appeal.

"London is natural Labour territory, so it's a return to a post-Boris Johnson normal," said Iain Begg, professorial research fellow at the London School of Economics (LSE) European Institute.

By contrast in Scotland, one of Labour's traditional heartlands, the party was knocked into third place behind the Conservatives and the Scottish National Party, which secured a third term in government.

Losing the role of official opposition to the Tories, which once held pariah status in Scotland, proved Labour had done little to address the decline that saw it punished in general elections in May 2015.

Corbyn insisted that despite Scotland, in which Labour lost 13 seats to hold 24 in the 129-seat parliament, "we hung on and we grew support in a lot of places".



But his optimism was not shared by some members of his party, who warned Labour has much to do to win the next general election in 2020.

"Jeremy needs to set out more clearly his vision for the country, but also how he is going to reach out to those voters who we have lost to the Tories and UKIP and the SNP," said Labour MP Emma Reynolds.

For Begg too, Labour should have done better against a Conservative government that is divided over the forthcoming referendum on European Union membership on June 23 and has imposed unpopular spending cuts.

"The government should have been in difficulty because of the debate over Europe, over reform in social security benefits, maybe a slight slowdown on economic growth," he said.

If the results of Thursday's elections did not strengthen Corbyn's position, neither did they damage him enough to spark a leadership challenge, according to centre-left The Guardian newspaper.



"There's no more pressure on Jeremy Corbyn than there was yesterday," said Tony Travers, another political expert from the LSE.

For all that the Scottish result was bad for Labour, it was also not entirely good news for the SNP.

Despite winning a third term in office, Nicola Sturgeon's party lost its overall majority.

The result will perhaps reduce slightly the likelihood that the nationalists will organise a second independence vote, after Scots voted to stay in the United Kingdom in a 2014 referendum.

"The SNP may well be interpreted to have peaked," said Travers.