The prime minister’s Conservative Party lost a seat it had held for more than a century, a loss that could hamper his efforts to address the Omicron variant now sweeping Britain.
In the pre-dawn hours of Friday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson learned that his Conservative Party had crashed to defeat in a district it had represented for more than a century. Twelve hours later, Britain reported more than 90,000 new cases of Covid-19 as the Omicron variant engulfed the country. Each of those events would be daunting enough on its own. Together, they pose a uniquely difficult challenge to Mr. Johnson as he struggles to navigate his nation through the latest treacherous phase of the pandemic. The electoral defeat exposed the vulnerability of a prime minister who built his career on his vote-getting skills. Normally reliable Conservative voters turned on the party in striking numbers, disgusted by a steady drip of unsavory ethics disclosures and a growing sense that the government is lurching from crisis to crisis. The defeat came on top of a mutiny in the ranks of Conservative lawmakers, around 100 of whom voted against Mr. Johnson’s plan to introduce a form of Covid pass in England earlier in the week. Having been politically rebuked, he now has less flexibility to impose new restrictions to curb a virus that is spreading explosively. Mr. Johnson is betting he can avert a full-blown crisis by massively accelerating Britain’s vaccine booster program. But so far, the rate of infections is outrunning the percentage of people getting their third shots. With the variant doubling every 2.5 days, epidemiologists warn that some type of lockdown might ultimately be the only way to prevent an untenable strain on hospitals. “What on earth is the prime minister going to do if the rising Covid numbers means he is getting strong scientific advice to take further restrictive measures?” said Jill Rutter, a senior research fellow at UK in a Changing Europe, a research institute. Mr. Johnson was able to pass his recent measures thanks to votes from the opposition Labour Party. But that dramatized his political weakness, Ms. Rutter noted, and resorting to it again would further antagonize his own rank and file. “That’s politically a terrible place for the prime minister to be,” she added. Indeed, Mr. Johnson needs to worry about fending off a leadership challenge — a once-remote scenario now suddenly plausible as Conservative lawmakers worry that the calamitous result in North Shropshire, a district near England’s border with Wales, could translate into defeat in the next general election.
