Worried faces on those wearing Labour rosettes told the tale of the count at Crawley in a story that was reflected around Britain on Friday: the UK’s governing party and its leader Keir Starmer are in trouble.
The town, next to London's Gatwick Airport, previously had no Reform councillors, yet by late afternoon there were indications it could take nine or 10 out of the total of 13 standing.
It was a dramatic demonstration of how the hard-right party led by Nigel Farage has surged to power across the country, upending Britain’s traditional Labour-Conservative two-party system.
Walking around the hall at the K2 sports centre, watching the counters pile up the votes by hand, those on the Reform rack quickly began to stack higher than the rest. The contrast must have been telling for Khayla Abu Mosa, who two years ago became the first Palestinian-Jordanian councillor in England, winning one of the Crawley seats that was not contested this year. Election analyst Michael Thrasher said that in the 2024 election, Reform barely stood in any seats, and nobody voted for them.
The sight of Reform ballot piles rising, and Green gains in other parts of the country, greeted Labour candidates across the UK. Reform was on course to take 1,500 council seats out of the 5,000 on offer. It was also a demonstration of the deep fracturing of UK politics, with the hard-left Green Party taking control of its first councils, the Lib Dems progressing, and the Conservatives plummeting with 500 losses, and Labour three times that amount.
That descent, just two years after the party took power in Westminster in a landslide election win, has intensified calls for Keir Starmer to step aside, despite his defiance on Friday in the face of the enormous losses. “That hurts, and it should hurt,” he curtly said.
That has not gone down well in some parts of the party. “It’s hard to say how someone can lose an election in every part of the country in this dramatic fashion and still think they have a mandate to serve five years,” a senior Labour figure told The National.
But a cohort of loyalists remain that may well keep him in power. Among them at Crawley was Ms Abu Mosa, who wanted to advertise the "unity and diversity" in Croydon rather than deride her leader.
With the party’s vote holding in London and with no obvious immediate rival challengers, Mr Starmer may well limp on.
The same goes for the Conservatives. Despite Kemi Badenoch showing resilience and leadership in parliament, there is still a lingering legacy of the chaotic Tory governments under Boris Johnson and the short-lived Liz Truss.
“People want change, I understand that,” said a veteran Conservative. “And to be honest with you, we did make mistakes when in government.” He said he was also worried by the lack of political experience among the brigade of new Reform councillors, and concerned too that Mr Farage was a “Trump 2”.
But despite the heavy Labour losses, a councillor in Crawley said she was still proud of how the party was working for people.
Ms Abu Mosa told The National: “We did what we could, and no matter what the outcome is, I will be proud of all those who work so hard for Labour.”
She also firmly backed Mr Starmer, who might surmount this heavy defeat and continue as Prime Minister despite a huge loss of political capital.
However, these elections for councils, which give local politicians a fair degree of power, from setting budgets to fixing roads, could well prove the pivotal moment when Reform became a national party firmly fixed on the road to power in Westminster.
