UK's Labour calls for general election

LONDON

The U.K.'s main opposition Labour party on May 3 called on Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to call a general election, after seizing another parliamentary seat from the Conservatives and making gains in English local elections.

Labour leader Keir Starmer said its candidate's win in Blackpool South in northwest England sent a clear message to Sunak, who has until January next year at the latest to call polls.

"That wasn't just a little message, that wasn't just a murmur. That was a shout from Blackpool, 'we want change,’" he said on a visit to congratulate the new MP there, Chris Webb.

"Blackpool speaks for the whole country in saying, 'we have had enough now, after 14 years of failure, 14 years of decline, we want to turn the page and start afresh with Labour.’"

Labour, out of power since 2010 and trounced by Boris Johnson's Tories at the last general election in 2019, won Blackpool South with a 26-percent swing, the third-largest margin from the Tories to Labour at a by-election since World War II.

The vote was triggered by a lobbying scandal that saw the area's Conservative MP resign. Polling on May 2 coincided with a mix of council, mayoral and other local contests across England.

The polls represent the last major ballot box test before Sunak faces a nationwide vote expected in the second half of the year.

The Tories are defending hundreds of seats they secured the last time local elections were held in 2021, and are tipped to suffer heavy losses.

Early results showed that Labour was making gains in council seats, but all eyes were on key regional and London mayoral races, the outcomes of which are only expected on May 4.

Tory party chairman Richard Holden described the results so far as "disappointing."

Starmer said it showed that Labour, beset by ideological infighting and claims of anti-Semitism under hard-left former leader Jeremy Corbyn, was once again an electoral force.

Labour was now "a fundamentally different party" than four years ago, Starmer told Sky News television.