Labour Party suffers heavy losses Anti-immigrant Reform

Prime Minister Keir Starmer yesterday vowed to fight on to deliver on his promise to bring “change” to Britain after his Labour Party suffered heavy losses in local elections that deepened doubts over his ability to govern.

Just under two years after winning a landslide national election, Starmer saw voters punish his Labour government, dealing it a blow in some of its traditional strongholds in former industrial regions in central and northern England.

The main beneficiary was the populist, anti-immigrant Reform UK party led by Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage, which gained more than 350 council seats in England. It could also emerge as the main opposition in Scotland and Wales to the pro-independence Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru, according to results declared late yesterday.

The early results confirmed the fracturing of Britain’s traditional two-party system into a multi-party democracy, in what analysts say represents one of the biggest transformations in British politics in the last century.

The once-dominant Labour and Conservative parties were losing votes to Reform, to the left-wing Green Party at the other end of the political spectrum, and to the nationalists in Scotland and Wales.

Despite the losses, Starmer’s allies signalled their support for a man whose popularity ratings have sunk to among the worst for any British leader, and the prime minister visited one bright electoral spot for his party to say he would press on.

“I am not going to walk away,” he told reporters in Ealing, west London, where Labour retained control of the council. He said voters were more concerned about the pace of change rather than his leadership.

He promised to set out the steps needed to change Britain - signalling the latest reset by a government that has struggled to translate its vision for the country to voters or tackle a cost-of-living crisis that has been compounded by conflicts in Ukraine and Iran.

But there was no denying the scale of the losses for Labour in elections for 136 local councils in England, and the devolved parliaments in Scotland and Wales - the most significant test of public opinion before the next general election due in 2029.

“The picture has been pretty much as bad as anyone expected for Labour, or worse,” said John Curtice, Britain’s most respected pollster.

Some Labour lawmakers have said if the party performs poorly in Scotland, loses power in Wales, and fails to hold many of the roughly 2,500 council seats it is defending in England then Starmer will face renewed pressure to quit or at least set out a timetable for his departure.

Starmer’s allies warned it was not the time to move against him, with Defence Minister John Healey saying the last thing voters wanted was “the potential chaos of a leadership election” and that he believed the British leader could still deliver.

Reform UK leader Farage said the results so far represented a “truly historic shift in British politics”. Labour was wiped out in some early results.

The party lost control of the council of Tameside in Greater Manchester in northern England for the first time in almost 50 years after Reform picked up all 14 seats Labour was defending.

In nearby Wigan, which it has controlled for more than 50 years, Labour lost every one of the 20 seats it was defending to Reform.

Reform also took control of a London borough for the first time, winning 30 of the 43 council seats in Havering, in the east of Britain’s capital.

While incumbent governments often struggle in mid-term elections, pollsters forecast that Labour could lose the most council seats since Conservative former Prime Minister John Major lost more than 2,000 in 1995, when his government was mired in endless corruption scandals.