LONDON: The magnitude of the challenge facing Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to win a general election in the next two years can be seen in a landslide victory for Great Britain's opposition Labor Party in a vote for a parliament seat in north-west England.
Sajid Javid, one of the governing party's most experienced frontline politicians, announced his intention to resign, which only deepened the doom for the Conservatives, who are trailing in national polls and a national election due in 2024. I am headed for defeat. ,
Javid joins a growing number of Conservative MPs who plan to resign from the House of Commons after the next general election, which could be the first since 2010.
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According to polling experts, the size of the Conservative loss in the Chester by-election was in line with national polls showing a 20-point Labor advantage.
The ouster of Liz Truss as prime minister as markets panicked over her financial plans provided the party's first election verdict since it entered a period of chaos.
Sunak was appointed Prime Minister on 25 October. He inherited a fractured and divided party at a time of economic crisis and was tasked with taming skyrocketing inflation and regaining the confidence of financial markets.
In so-called by-elections, which are held outside the dates of general elections when an MP resigns, the ruling party rarely does well.
Labor candidate Samantha Dixon received 61 percent of the vote in Chester, while the Conservative candidate received 22 percent. Labour's overall majority increased from 6,194 to 10,974.
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Since the 2015 general election, when Labor won the smallest majority in the country—93 votes—in Chester, the seat has been held by the party.
Between 2010 and 2015, the Conservatives held Chester. Sunak was acting honorably despite a challenging environment, according to Charles Walker, one of the Conservative MPs who will step down after the next election, but losing the next general election was probably inevitable.
Walker told Times Radio, "It's almost impossible to see us coming back from this." I hope that Rishi Sunak will prevent Labor from crushing us, allowing us to put together a strong opposition.
According to Javid, the Conservative Party asked MPs to confirm their plans for the upcoming election so that the party could prepare.
He added to the drama of the year by resigning as health secretary in July, before Sunak quit as finance minister and set off an unprecedented ministerial revolt, much to Johnson's dismay.
Then Johnson's predecessor as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Javid announced that he would run to succeed him but withdrew before the election. In 2019, he had a chance to succeed Theresa May as prime minister, but was disqualified halfway through.
Javid said, after some thought, I have decided not to stand in the next general election. According to British polling expert John Curtis, a 13 per cent turn from Conservative to Labor in Chester suggested that Labor would win an absolute majority in Parliament at the next general election, but he cautioned that local votes were rarely a reliable indicator.
"The people of Chester are reminding Rishi Sunak that he has a lot of work to do to get his party back to a position where we can even think about the Conservatives winning the next general election," he said.
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The vote was called following the resignation of labor lawmaker Christian Matheson. According to an independent panel, he breached Parliament's sexual misconduct policy.