UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour Party is on course to suffer humiliating defeats in elections across the country, as early results show the populist hard-right Reform UK party surging to victory in the polls.
Labour was haemorrhaging seats as authorities in England began declaring local election results overnight, after a set of contests that could prove decisive for Mr Starmer’s leadership.
Mr Starmer said there was no "sugarcoating" the “tough” local election results, saying he took responsibility. “Days like this don’t weaken my resolve to deliver the change that I promised," he added.
“We have lost brilliant Labour representatives across the country, these are people who put so much into their communities, so much into our party. And that hurts, and it should hurt, and I take responsibility.”
Reform leader Nigel Farage suggested his party was on course for a general election victory after taking council seats from Labour when the first results were announced. Reform’s gains exceeded 330 seats and control of one council when results were announced from 42 of the 136 councils in England in the early hours of Friday, while Labour lost more than 230 councillors and control of eight local authorities, including in its traditional northern heartlands.
A jubilant Mr Farage heralded a “historic change in British politics", saying “there is no more left-right”. Reform was “scoring stunning percentages in traditional old Labour areas”, he added.
With 1,200 council seats already declared, Sky News made a “national equivalent vote” prediction which showed Reform on 31 per cent, Conservatives on 19, Greens 16, Labour 15 and Liberal Democrats 13.
On that basis, if there was a general election, Reform would win with a 60-seat majority, with Mr Farage as prime minister. But Labour MPs have insisted there should not be a “panic” among colleagues leading to a leadership challenge against Mr Starmer “expressed by the misplaced hope in the panacea of a new leader”.
“The PM has my support in that and I urge colleagues to rally behind him,” Rugby MP John Slinger told The National.
While he admitted the result was “very disappointing”, he also accused parties such as Reform of “weaponised anger and false promises” that did not fix anything “and risk tearing our community apart”. But a Labour official told The National it was a “disastrous result”, adding: “I don’t know where we go from here."
The pro-Palestine Greens are also expected to do well, with leader Zack Polanski predicting “record-breaking local elections” for the party. He said it would “take time for the full scale of the Green successes to become clear", especially in London boroughs to be counted later on Friday, and called for Mr Starmer to “listen to the people and go”.
There was some hope for Labour, though, with polling expert John Curtice saying a stronger-than-expected performance in London, and a struggle by the Greens to convert votes into seats, may lead to the party avoiding a humiliating defeat.
“It may well be now that Labour lose rather less than the 1,500 seats that some people said was potentially the tipping point for attempts to try to unseat Keir Starmer," Mr Curtice said.
Tory woe
It could be another bad night for the Conservatives, despite an improvement in party leader Kemi Badenoch’s approval rating, with the party expected to lose further ground to Reform. It did manage to take the London borough of Westminster from Labour, however.
Almost 25,000 candidates were fighting to be elected to more than 5,000 seats on the councils across England, where six local mayoral contests also took place.
In Scotland, all 129 seats were up for grabs at Holyrood, while voters in Wales were choosing 96 members of the Senedd. Votes in Scotland and Wales are not due to be counted until later on Friday, but both elections are expected to pile further pressure on the Prime Minister.
Labour faces losing the national vote in Wales for the first time in more than a century, while in Scotland the SNP appears likely to remain the largest party after 19 years in power.
Farage jubilant
Baghdad-born former chancellor Nadhim Zahawi, who defected from the Conservatives to Reform in January, said it was a historic night that proved there were no longer left or right traditional heartlands for Labour or Conservatives. He said Mr Starmer was a “lame duck prime minister” after a “catastrophic night” for Labour.
Mr Farage compared the substantial gains to clearing Becher’s Brook, a famously difficult jump in the Grand National horse race.
“If we cleared Becher’s Brook and landed well, we go on to win the Grand National," he said. “What is very clear to me is that our voters will stick with us now all the way through.”
Reform's East Sussex councillor Aidan Fisher told The National that his party’s victory was in part down to people “feeling betrayed by the traditional parties”. Those parties "seemingly don't listen and that has created the desire for a new broom, which we are seeing unfolding today with the meteoric rise of Reform UK", he added.
Labour went into Thursday’s local elections expected to lose up to 1,850 councillors, with senior figures describing the contest as “tough”. Initial results painted a bleak picture for Mr Starmer. In some wards in Halton, in Cheshire, Reform won with more than 50 per cent of the vote in an area where last year Mr Farage’s party won the Runcorn and Helsby by-election by just six votes.
Labour losses to Reform followed in Chorley, Lancashire, and Wigan, Greater Manchester.
A national drubbing is likely to reignite speculation about Mr Starmer’s leadership of the party and the country. Before polls closed, The Times reported that Energy Secretary and former Labour leader Ed Miliband had privately urged the Prime Minister to set out a timetable for his departure after the elections.
Labour's Hartlepool MP Jonathan Brash, whose wife Pamela Hargreaves lost her seat in Reform’s clean sweep, said Mr Starmer should step down. “It’s clear to me that the Prime Minister should take this opportunity to set out a timetable for his own departure, and then allow for the widest possible leadership election that includes all the talents of our party," Mr Brash added.
But Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy urged Labour to refrain from playing “pass the parcel” with the party leadership in response to the election results. He told the BBC there were “questions we have to answer”, but there were “no circumstances in which the answer to the questions that the British people are raising is to change the leader yet again”.
