Strikes, polluted rivers, catastrophic health care: just nine months after Rishi Sunak was appointed prime minister, he and his government are as unpopular with the British as the Tories were last under John Major in 1997. There are many reasons for this – one of them is Rishi Sunak himself.
Three by-elections for the House of Commons are due in Great Britain today: a certain Boris Johnson released the constituency of Uxbridge and Ruislip with his resignation in May, and the other two seats – Somerton and Frome in the south-west and Selby and Ainsty in the north-east of England – have also been firmly in the hands of the governing Tories since 2019. According to forecasts, that is likely to change today.