Politics

Polling stations open across UK for local elections

London, May 5 (EFE).- Polling stations opened Thursday in the United Kingdom for local elections in England, Scotland and Wales and assembly polls in Northern Ireland.

Stations, which opened at 0600 GMT, will close at 2100 GMT, but the final results are only expected by Friday evening.

In the case of Northern Ireland, however, counting may continue until Saturday evening.

In these elections, the first since a scandal broke out over parties in Downing Street during the pandemic, 4,360 seats are up for grabs on 146 councils in England – out of a total of 333 -, all of Scotland’s 32 councils and all 22 in Wales.

Every seat of London’s 32 borough councils will be up for grabs but there will be no elections to elect the city’s mayor, currently Labour’s Sadiq Khan.

Voters in Northern Ireland will elect the 90 assembly members across 18 constituencies.

Polls predict a historic win for Sinn Féin, the political arm of the inactive Irish Republican Army (IRA).

The polls also indicate that Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservatives will lose seats although most of the positions in contention are already in the hands of the Labour Party.

The elections are also the first since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began at the end of February and the cost of living skyrocketed due to the sharp rise in fuel prices with annual inflation that has already reached 7 percent. EFE

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