Boris Johnson has said voters in local council elections have sent a ‘message’ to ministers in a ‘tough night’ for the Tories.
The prime minister said it has been a ‘mixed set of results’ for his party with gains in some places and losses in others.
Asked by broadcasters during a visit to a school in his Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency if he took responsibility for the results, Mr Johnson said: ‘Of course’.
He added: ‘It is mid-term. It’s certainly a mixed set of results.
‘We had a tough night in some parts of the country but on the other hand in other parts of the country you are still seeing Conservatives going forward and making quite remarkable gains in places that haven’t voted Conservative for a long time, if ever.’
While not all the results from yesterday’s election have been declared, the Conservatives are on track to lose more than 200 seats, including key Tory strongholds.
The party lost the flagship Wandsworth Council, Southampton, Westminster and Barnet councils to Labour.
The dismal and humiliating results have led local Conservative leaders from across the country to call for the prime minister to resign.
Mr Johnson said results showed voters wanted the government to ‘focus on the big issues that matter to them’.
He said the ‘big lesson’ was that voters wanted the government to focus on ‘taking the country forward’ and ‘making sure we fix the post-Covid aftershock’.
‘Get us all through the economic aftershocks in the way we got through Covid, fix the energy supply issues, that’s where the inflationary spike is coming, and keep going with our agenda of high wage, high skill jobs,’ he added.
‘That is what we are focused on.’
Asked about the elections in Northern Ireland, Mr Johnson said ‘the most important thing is that we continue to support the balance of the Good Friday Agreement across all communities in Northern Ireland’.
