Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party has suffered significant defeats in local elections in the United Kingdom, demonstrating the deep anger of voters towards the president and the growing doubts about his future. Just two years after a landslide victory, he has an absolute majority in Parliament, but scandals related to pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and his lack of response to day-to-day problems have sunk his popularity.
The progressive party yesterday suffered a drastic loss of support in areas that have already published the first results, including traditional strongholds in the former industrial regions of central and northern England, as well as some areas of London.
The main beneficiary was the populist Reform UK party, led by Brexiteer Nigel Farage, a man who is known to have lied in that campaign, who dragged citizens to support leaving Europe with false data, but who has survived. With the crises of the classic parties, both Labor and Conservative (the Boris Johnson era remains in memory), it is knowing how to climb again, as demonstrated by the fact that it has already achieved more than 300 seats in the municipal councils of England and could become the main opposition in Scotland and Wales against the Scottish National Party (SNP) and Plaid Cymru, both pro-independence.
“The outlook for the Labor Party has been as bad as expected, if not worse,” said John Curtice, the country’s most respected pollster, quoted by Reuters.
“The outlook for the Labor Party has been as bad as expected, if not worse”
The elections for England’s 136 local councils, along with the devolved parliaments of Scotland and Wales, are the biggest test of public opinion ahead of the next general election due in 2029.
Some Labor MPs have said that if the party performs poorly in Scotland, loses power in Wales and fails to retain many of the roughly 2,500 council seats it defends in England, as is feared it will, Starmer will face greater pressure to resign or at least set a timetable for his departure.
However, Starmer’s allies have been quick to back the prime minister, declaring that now was not the time to act against him. Defense Minister John Healey said the last thing voters wanted was “the potential chaos of a party leadership election.” “I think he can still deliver, he can still turn things around,” he told Times Radio.
Broken bipartisanship
The first results show the continued fragmentation of the traditional British two-party system towards a multi-party democracy, in what analysts consider one of the greatest transformations in British politics of the last century.
The once dominant, rotating governments were losing votes in early counts to the Reform Party, and at the other end of the political spectrum, to the left-wing Green Party, while nationalist parties were expected to win elections in Scotland and Wales.
Farage said the results so far represented a “historic change in British politics”.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage arrives to cast his vote during the May 7, 2026 municipal election in Walton-on-the-Naze, England.
The Labor Party has suffered a crushing defeat, without anesthesia. To give a couple of examples, it has lost control of Tameside council, in Greater Manchester, for the first time in almost 50 years, after the Reform Party obtained the 14 seats that progressivism defended. In nearby Wigan, a former mining community it has controlled for more than 50 years, Labor also lost all 20 seats it defended to the Reform Party, and in Salford, it retained only three of the 16 it defended. The results are “devastating”, acknowledges Rebecca Long-Bailey, Labor MP for Salford.
Although incumbent governments often struggle in mid-term elections, polls predict Labor could lose the most local council seats since former Conservative Prime Minister John Major lost more than 2,000 in 1995, when his cabinet was embroiled in a host of corruption scandals.
The Reform UK party added 335 seats on councils in England, according to the first results. The Labor Party lost 247 seats and the Conservative Party 127.
Most results, including those for the Scottish and Welsh elections, will be announced later this Friday.
Where is the ‘premier’
Starmer, a former lawyer, was elected in 2024 with one of the largest parliamentary majorities in modern British history, promising to bring stability after years of political chaos.
However, his mandate has been characterized by numerous changes of course in his policies, a constant rotation of advisors and the appointment of Peter Mandelson as British ambassador to the United States, who was dismissed nine months later for his links with the suicidal Epstein, convicted of sexual crimes in the United States.
Starmer insists that he will lead his party in the next elections and, in addition, it is worth remembering that the party has never managed to remove a sitting prime minister in its 125-year history. The prime minister is also helped by the fact that two of the leading candidates to succeed him should he stand down – Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham and former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner – are not yet in a position to put forward leadership bids, and other rivals appear reluctant to move against him at the moment.
Energy Minister Ed Miliband’s team on Thursday denied a report in the newspaper Times. in which it is pointed out directly.
The internal fight, despite this complication of alternative leaderships, is expected to be tough.
