British voters are picking a new government in a parliamentary election widely expected to bring the Labour Party to power against a gloomy backdrop of economic malaise, mounting distrust in institutions and a fraying social fabric. A jaded electorate is delivering its verdict Thursday on Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party. It has been in power since 2010. Polls opened at 40,000 stations, including churches, a laundromat and a crematorium. While Labour’s steady and significant lead in the polls would appear to buck recent rightward electoral shifts in Europe, many of those same populist undercurrents flow in Britain.
