(Bloomberg) --

Boris Johnson’s Conservatives shed seats across England and lost control of three London strongholds in Thursday’s local elections, leading to a backlash against the prime minister from local party leaders.

In the capital, the Tories lost control of Wandsworth Council, an iconic seat of U.K. local government which has been Tory-run since 1978, as well as in Westminster -- where the Houses of Parliament are based. They also also ceded power to the main opposition Labour Party in Barnet and in the southern city of Southampton. With about half of councils reporting results by Friday morning, the governing party had lost about one in six of its seats. 

@CllrSimonHogg! pic.twitter.com/RQT1KvZZyn

— Sadiq Khan (@SadiqKhan) May 6, 2022

Council seats are being counted Friday in Scotland, Wales and many parts of England, while there are also elections to Stormont Assembly in Northern Ireland. The unionist DUP and republican Sinn Fein are vying for the chance to nominate the next first minister.

While mid-term elections are always a chance for voters to protest against a governing party, Conservative losses were not as bad as some pre-election forecasts. Electoral Calculus had projected they would lose about a third of their seats. 

The elections take place following a succession of missteps by Johnson, including the partygate scandal in which he became the first sitting premier to be fined for breaking the law, after celebrating his birthday in breach of pandemic lockdown rules. That’s alongside voter concerns about a cost-of-living crisis underlined by gloomy economic forecasts from the Bank of England on Thursday’s polling day.

BOE Sees 600,000 U.K. Job Losses as Price for Taming Inflation

“It is not just partygate, there is the integrity issue,” John Mallinson, the Tory leader of Carlisle City Council told BBC News. “I just don’t feel people any longer have the confidence that the prime minister can be relied upon to tell the truth.” The Carlisle council will be replaced by the new Cumberland authority won by the Labour Party.  

The loss of Wandsworth is likely to be felt most keenly by the Tories. The seat of local government was described as former Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s favorite council for having the lowest rate of local taxes. Outgoing Tory leader Ravi Govindia told BBC News “consistently on the doorstep the issue of Boris Johnson was raised” by voters during campaigning. 

‘Look in the Mirror’

In Portsmouth, where the Tories lost four seats, the leader of the Conservative group Simon Bosher said Johnson should “take a good, strong look in the mirror” because “those are people that are actually bearing the brunt on the doorstep of behavior of what’s been going on in Westminster”.

The Tories also lost control of Worcester, where the Greens and Keir Starmer’s Labour Party gained seats. 

Still, many of the English seats up for grabs were last contested in 2018 during a period of Brexit chaos. That was the high-water mark for Labour under previous leader Jeremy Corbyn, leaving them with more limited scope to make gains this time, because they’re defending far more seats than the Tories. 

While Labour won control of Southampton Council from the Tories, the party is making only modest gains in other parts of England, outside of the capital. 

‘We Can Win’

The U.K. media has speculated for weeks that a bad set of local election results -- alongside any further revelations about lockdown-busting parties -- could see more Tory Members of Parliament submitting letters of no confidence to prompt a leadership election. 

But Cabinet minister Brandon Lewis on Friday insisted Johnson remains the right person to lead the Conservative Party.

“I absolutely think we can win the next election, and I do think Boris Johnson is the right person to lead us into that,” Lewis told Sky News. 

The Liberal Democrats led by Ed Davey have focused their campaign on making further inroads in Tory heartlands in swathes of southern England following recent by-election successes in North Shropshire and Chesham and Amersham.

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.