UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour Party suffered humiliating defeats in elections across the country, as the populist hard-right Reform UK party surged to victory in the polls.
Labour haemorrhaged hundreds of seats as authorities in England declared local election results, before being humiliated in its Welsh stronghold.
The contests could prove decisive for Mr Starmer’s leadership.
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.
Mr Starmer took responsibility for the defeats, saying there was no "sugarcoating" the “tough” local election results. “Days like this don’t weaken my resolve to deliver the change that I promised," he added.
He promised to listen to voters but refused to shift “left or right” despite pressure to change course and backbench calls for a new leader following Labour’s electoral mauling.
He said the response would mean “being assertive in our values” and “unifying rather than dividing”.
Reform leader Nigel Farage suggested his party was on course for a general election victory after taking council seats from Labour.
Reform’s gains exceeded 1,275 seats and control of one council when results were announced from 129 of the 136 councils in England by Saturday morning, while Labour lost more than 1,000 councillors and control of 31 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.
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."
Despite the heavy losses, a councillor in Crawley, West Sussex, said she was still proud of how the party was working for people. Khayla Abu Mosa, who said she was the first Palestinian-Jordanian to be a councillor in England, told The National: "We did what we can and no matter what the outcome will be, I will be proud for all those who work so hard for Labour."
The pro-Palestine Greens also improved their position, gaining control of four councils and putting on 297 councillors. Leader Zack Polanski said the era of two-party politics “is not just dying, it is dead and it is buried”.
The Greens’ Zoe Garbett became the party’s first elected mayor, ousting Labour in Hackney.
Mr Polanski said his message to Mr Starmer was “it’s time to go” and “the country has clearly rejected you” in the local elections.
It was another bad result for the Conservatives, despite an improvement in party leader Kemi Badenoch’s approval rating, with the party losing further ground to Reform. It suffered a net loss of eight councils and 417 councillors, but did manage to take the London boroughs of Westminster and Wandsworth from Labour.
Parliaments chosen
In Scotland, all 129 seats were up for grabs at Holyrood, while voters in Wales were choosing 96 members of the Senedd. Counting did not start until Friday afternoon.
The Scottish National Party remained the largest party, but failed to win the overall majority it wanted in a bid to force a second independence referendum.
Leader John Swinney declared the SNP has “emphatically” won the election, and a fifth term in power in Scotland, as Labour recorded its worst ever Holyrood result and tied for second place with Reform UK.
Mr Swinney said that the under-pressure Prime Minister has a “lot of listening to do”, and called for respect between the two governments.
When all the results were declared – after more than 16 hours of counting – the SNP had 58 MSPs – seven short of a majority and down from the 64 the party won in 2021.
Labour lost the national vote in Wales for the first time in more than a century.
First Minister of Wales Eluned Morgan was the highest profile casualty as she failed to win a seat in the newly-expanded Senedd, with Plaid Cymru and Reform hammering Labour.
She called for Sir Keir’s Government to “change course” and “go back to being the party of the working class”.
Welsh Labour was reduced from 30 to nine members in the Senedd, which it has dominated politics in Cardiff Bay since devolution in 1999.
Plaid Cymru’s Rhun ap Iorwerth looks set to be the new first minister after his party became the largest in the Senedd, with Reform second.
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.
The national drubbing has reignited 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”.
