Local polls could hasten exit of Britain’s embattled PM

London: British voters will cast ballots on Thursday in elections that could hasten the end of PM Sir Keir Starmer’s troubled term and confirm that an increasingly fractured UK has entered an era of messy multiparty politics.

Starmer’s Labour Party is expected to take a battering in elections for local authorities across England and for semiautonomous legislatures in Scotland and Wales.

With the PM’s popularity in the doldrums from a weak economy and repeated questions about his judgment, rival parties are framing Thursday’s midterm votes as a referendum on Starmer and his 2-year-old government. “Vote Reform, Get Starmer Out” is the campaign slogan of the hard-right party Reform UK. Meanwhile, police laun­ched a Community Prote­c­tion Team of an initial tranche of 100 officers to tackle antisemitic hate crimes.

—PTI