LONDON (Reuters) - In the biggest political test for British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and the ruling Conservative Party, Britons in different parts of the country went to the polls on Thursday to choose their representatives on local councils.

The election comes after months of chaos in the party since the resignation of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson and then the resignation of former Prime Minister Liz Truss, before settling on Rishi Sunak, who took over a country in one of its worst economic crises in decades.

8,230 candidates will be elected to <> local councils across Britain, as well as new mayors in important areas such as Leicester and Bedford.

The results of the local elections will present a picture of the popularity of the Conservative Party, which is seeking to maintain 3300,8 seats out of 2024,<> contested seats; any decline in the results of these elections will cast doubt on the party's leadership, which knows it faces a tough test to prepare for the general election at the end of <>.

Green Party leader Adrian Ramsay votes in local elections (Getty Images)

Try to minimize losses

The Conservative Party has the largest share in the management of local councils in Britain, and therefore seeks to maintain the largest number of them, knowing that all expectations - including the party's own expectations - indicate the possibility of losing hundreds of seats, while the worst-case scenario set by the party is the loss of more than a thousand seats out of 3300 it has in this election.

The Conservative Party is behind Labour by a wide margin in terms of voting intention, with 40% of respondents announcing that they would vote for the opposition Labour Party, while 30% said they would vote for the Conservative Party, a large difference compared to the 2019 local elections when the two parties were equal in the distribution of votes (31% each), yet the Conservative Party lost about 1300,<> seats during that election.

Labour is expected to win around 700 more seats in the current election, which is good news for the opposition party, as it will make it almost equal to the Conservative Party in the number of local councils run in Britain.

Labour leads the Conservatives in opinion polls ahead of the 2023 British local elections #ArabsInBritain AUK https://t.co/UzvzIlNtoH

— AUK Arabs in Britain (@AlARABINUK) April 30, 2023

A gift to the Labour Party

The opposition Labour Party enters this election ecstatic with opinion polls giving it a lead over the Conservative Party by at least 10 points, a much better figure than the 2019 election, when the gap was only 6 points.

In 2019, Labour lost dozens of seats to the Liberal Democrats, mainly due to the split within the party under former leader Jeremy Corbyn, the boycott of his campaign activities by a number of party leaders, and even seeking to inflict electoral losses on Labour in order to embarrass Corbyn, as shown by a number of leaks and press investigations.

The leaders of the Conservative Party are trying to pre-empt the losses that may be inflicted on the party in these elections by stressing that they do not give a real picture of the next scene in the general elections to be organized in a year and a half, and they infer that in 2019 the party lost 1300,<> seats, but it achieved a historic victory in the general elections held in the same year and obtained an absolute majority in parliament.

However, the political context this time is very different from 2019 after the Conservative Party lost much of its popularity due to the scandals and mistakes of its officials that embroiled the country in unprecedented economic crises, observers say.

Driving Exam

Both Labour leader Keir Starmer and Conservative leader Prime Minister Rishi Sunak know this election is their biggest test ahead of the general election.

For Starmer, any timid loss or victory in this election would give a boost to dissenting voices within the party, rejecting Starmer's policy of completely getting rid of the legacy and supporters of former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, to the point of barring the latter from running on behalf of Labour.

The same applies to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who is running in his first election as leader of the Conservative Party, and although Sunak succeeded in restoring calm to the ruling party, losing a thousand seats during the current election will put him in a difficult position.

Treasury Secretary Jeremy Hunt in Waverley and senior Conservative Party leader Michel Cove in Suri Heath are both involved, and if these two houses are lost, this will give an image of the popularity of the Conservative Party leaders and ministers, and may force Sunak to make government reshuffles to attract new faces and remove faces that are no longer popular with Britons.