The campaign for local elections in England and for the regional in Scotland y Gales on May 7, he has given his starting gun with a big question on the horizon: if the prime minister, Keir Starmerwill survive the Labor Party debacle that the polls predict. The main parties have launched their electoral machines in a scenario that appears more uncertain than ever due to the emergence of formations such as Reform UK o the greenswhich threaten to open a new stage in British politics based on multipartyism.
More than a third of local authorities in England – 134 out of 317 – will take part in the elections, including the 32 boroughs of London. The result in the capital, one of the main Labor strongholds in recent years, it will be a clear indicator of support for the prime minister. His party currently controls 21 of these districts, but polls suggest that the electoral map it will be much more miscellaneous after the appointment on May 7, with the Greens, Liberal Democrats and Reform UK with options to win in areas of the city traditionally controlled by Labor and Conservatives.
On a broader level, the debacle of Starmer’s party in England seems even more evident. According to projections from the PollCheck portal, Labor will lose almost 40% of the more than 2,300 council offices that they defend in these elections, while the Greens will more than double their representation (from 187 to 458 councillors) and the populists of Reform UK will multiply their presence by 15 in the local administrations in contention, going from the current 71 representatives to almost 1,100.
Scotland and Wales
The outlook is not much more encouraging in Scotlandwhere the nationalists of the SNP They aspire to recover the absolute majority in Holyrood Parliament. According to the latest polls, the chief minister’s party, John Swinneyyou would get 67 of the 129 seats in the House, while the labor workers would get 17 representativesfive less than in the previous elections. If confirmed, the failure of Starmer’s team will be especially striking, taking into account that his party was almost tied with the SNP in voting intention in the middle of 2024just a few months before the arrival of the current prime minister to Downing Street.
In the case of Galeswhere Labor has governed uninterruptedly since the creation of the regional Parliament (Senedd) in 1999, the main threat to the current chief minister, Eluned Morganis the left-wing nationalist party Plaid Cymru. According to the latest survey by the YouGov population center, this party would remain close to the absolute majority with 43 of the 96 seats in the House, while the labor workers they would barely achieve 12 representativesremaining the third force behind Reform UK.
Continuity in question
If these results are confirmed, the pressures for Starmer to leave the Government and the party leadership will increase. The Labor leader was already on the tightrope last February following the scandal over the appointment of Peter Mandelsonlinked to pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, as ambassador to Washington at the end of 2024, something that led to his party’s candidate in Scotland, Anas Sarwara publicly ask for his resignation in an attempt to protect himself from the impact that the Mandelson scandal could have on his campaign.
The voices in favor of a replacement at the head of the party will arise again after the May elections, although Starmer is confident that none of the possible candidates to succeed him will generate the enough consensus to remove him. For now, not even the former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner nor the Minister of Health, Wes Streeting,—the two names that are most popular to replace the Labor leader—seem to have the majority support of their own, but the continuity of the prime minister is by no means guaranteed.
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