This May 6 is “Super Thursday” in the United Kingdom: Thursday May 6, the British are invited to vote in a multitude of regional and local ballots – in many cases, foreign residents too can participate. These are the renewal of the Scottish and Welsh Parliaments, the direct election of 13 mayors (in London, the West Midlands or Greater Manchester), 5,000 municipal council positions everywhere else in England… without have a by-election in the constituency of Hartlepool, in the north-east of England. The media and political circles are feverish as this first major electoral test for Prime Minister Boris Johnson approaches since Brexit and the start of the pandemic.
In the general election of December 2019, Mr Johnson had won a historic victory, worthy of the Thatcher years. On the promise of ” achieve “ finally Brexit, he had managed to win for his Conservative Party an absolute majority of seats in the House of Commons, benefiting at the time of the great weariness of the British, after four years of incessant divisions since the referendum on the exit from the European Union in 2016. But since then, the reality of Brexit, fully effective at 1er January 2021, began to prevail, with the appearance of restrictive and costly customs controls with the European Union and a worrying destabilization of the province of Northern Ireland, the Unionists (loyal to London) refusing the new maritime border in the Irish Sea which was imposed on them by Downing Street.
Disastrous results on the Covid-19
Moreover, if the national vaccination campaign is an indisputable success, with, as of May 4, 34.6 million Britons having received a first dose and 15.6 million their two doses of vaccine, the Johnson government has failed in its management of the first wave in the spring of 2020. He neglected caution the following fall, badly anticipated the brutal second wave of early 2021. He must now assume the most disastrous toll in Europe: more than 127,500 deaths directly linked to Covid- 19. Finally, in recent days, the revelations have accumulated, calling into question the probity of the Prime Minister and his government: contracts for the supply of masks passed to relatives of the ministers, dubious financing of the redevelopment of Mr Johnson’s private apartments in Downing Street …
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