Britons to deliver verdict on PM at polls

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's personal performance and conduct around issues including the cost of living crisis and the pandemic were all put to the national jury on Thursday, as local elections took place for almost 150 councils across England, including all 32 boroughs of London, as well as in Scotland and Wales, and for the devolved Northern Ireland assembly.

Although the local results will not affect the makeup of the Parliament, where Johnson's Conservative Party enjoy a large majority, they will be widely interpreted as a barometer of public opinion about how national issues have been handled, and who the electorate wants to handle them in future.

There have been widespread predictions that the Conservatives will pay the price at a local level for decisions and actions at a national level, and if Johnson is interpreted as being a liability in the buildup to the next general election, which must be held by 2024, his leadership could be questioned.

In some parts of the country, Conservative candidates have billed themselves on election literature as Local Conservatives, in some cases not even using the party's traditional blue color.

In Hartlepool in the North East of England, a strongly pro-Brexit area that voted in its first-ever Conservative member of Parliament at a 2021 by-election, the election leaflet read "Please don't punish local Conservatives for the mistakes made in Westminster", next to a picture of the Conservative logo with a union flag and the Labour Party's name with the flag of the European Union.

Aside from the "Partygate" scandal, which saw Johnson issued with a fixed penalty notice for breaking lockdown restrictions and is still the subject of ongoing inquiries, the Conservatives' handling of the cost of living crisis is likely to be one of the most decisive issues.

Figures published recently by the British Retail Consortium showed that last month's year-on-year shop price increase of 2.7 percent was the highest since September 2011, hitting many householders who are already struggling with rocketing fuel bills.

Johnson said a vote for the Conservatives was best "if you want to help with your family budgets and you want to make sure you've got more at the end of the month", but opposition Labour Party leader Keir Starmer urged voters to take "a chance to send a message to the government about their abject failure".

For Johnson's leadership to be challenged, 15 percent of Conservative members of Parliament would need to submit letters of no confidence. Pressure had been building on him before the conflict in Ukraine broke out, but the outcome of the local elections, which could take some days to become clear, could raise the issue again.