London Correspondent
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The labor suffered in the call ‘ Superjueves‘a historic defeat: the election of a Conservative MP for the first time in the northern English town of Hartlepool since 1964. Jill Mortimer, the conservative candidate, won the seat by 15,529 votes against 8,589 of Labor, a majority of almost 7,000 votes in one of the last pillars of the call ‘Red wall‘, which is becoming more and more blue, like some of the mayoralties that were disputed in England. Keir Starmer, leader of the Labor Party, admitted this Saturday that his formation had “lost the confidence of the workers” and dismissed his second, Angela Rayner, from her positions as president and campaign manager, although she will continue to be his deputy, since she was chosen by the party’s rank and file.
The decision opened a fracture in the line-up, and Rayner’s followers accused Starmer of using her as a scapegoat in what they called a “cowardly evasion of responsibility.”
In the midst of this dark panorama, what party sources justify saying that due to the pandemic of Covid-19 The new leader has not had the opportunity to present his plan for the country to the population, two local leaders of the formation are the only hope: on the one hand, Andy Burnham, re-elected mayor in Manchester, Y Sadiq Khan, who was expected to revalidate as mayor of London, beating conservative candidate Shaun Bailey, whose performance exceeded expectations.
The ‘king of the north’
Burnham, with an emotion that he was unable to contain, thanked his family, the campaign team and his colleagues for having won the victory with 69.7% of the votes. “I will continue to be a voice for all people and all communities,” he said, adding, “I will continue to take an approach where the community comes first, not the party first.”
The mayor took center stage in October last year when he held a pulse for several days with Boris Johnson for the unilateral imposition of the prime minister to place the city at the highest level of risk of coronavirus infections, a decision with which the Labor Party disagreed. Burnham, baptized at that time by the local press as the ‘king of the north’, alluding to a character from the series ‘Game of Thrones’, made self-criticism yesterday in an interview with Sky News saying that the party of which he is part needs “A substantial change”, and did not rule out presenting himself as Starmer’s successor in the future, although he clarified that he is not campaigning against what he described as “his friend” with whom he has worked side by side. “The party has to make a great examination of conscience to understand these results,” he said.
In London, the mayoral race was much closer than expected, despite polls predicting a comfortable victory for Khan in the first round, due to voters’ preference for candidates from smaller parties and low turnout.
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