British Prime Minister Keir Starmer promised this Friday (8) to continue fighting to fulfill his promise to bring “change” to the United Kingdom, after his Labor Party suffered heavy defeats in local elections, which increased doubts about his ability to govern.
Just under two years after winning a landslide national election, Starmer saw voters punish his Labor government, dealing it a blow to some of its traditional strongholds in former industrial regions of central and northern England.
The main beneficiary was Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. The populist party won more than 350 seats in municipal councils in England and could form the main opposition in Scotland and Wales against the Scottish National Party (SNP) and Plaid Cymru, both pro-independence, according to the results that will be released later this Friday (8).
The first results confirmed the fragmentation of the traditional British two-party system into a multi-party democracy, in what analysts consider one of the greatest transformations in British politics of the last century.
The once-dominant Labor and Conservative Parties were losing votes to the Reform Party, the left-wing Green Party at the other end of the political spectrum, and the nationalists in Scotland and Wales.
“My resolve hasn’t been shaken,” says Starmer.
Despite the defeats, Starmer’s allies signaled their support for a man whose popularity ratings have fallen to some of the worst among British leaders, visiting a bright spot for his party in the election, saying he would press on.
“I’m not giving up,” he told reporters in Ealing, west London, where the Labor Party maintained control of the council. He said voters were more concerned about the pace of change than his leadership.
He promised to lay out the steps needed to change Britain, signaling the latest shake-up for a government that has struggled to translate its vision for the country to voters or to deal with a cost-of-living crisis that has been worsened by the fighting in Ukraine.
But the scale of Labor’s losses in elections to 136 local councils in England and regional parliaments in Scotland and Wales – the most significant test of public opinion ahead of the next general election, scheduled for 2029 – was undeniable.
“The outlook has been pretty much as bad as anyone expected for the Labor Party, or worse,” said John Curtice, the UK’s most respected pollster.
Some Labor MPs have said that if the party performs poorly in Scotland, it will lose power in Wales and be unable to retain many of the approximately 2,500 county council seats it is defending in England, or at least set a timetable for its exit.
Starmer’s allies warned that now was not the time to act against him, with Defense 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 on his promises.
Insurgent groups fragment the two-party system
Reform UK leader Farage said the results so far represent a “truly historic shift in British politics”.
The Labor Party suffered a crushing defeat in some of the early results.
The party lost control of Tameside council, in the Greater Manchester region of northern England, for the first time in almost 50 years, after Reform won all 14 seats that the Labor Party defended.
In neighboring Wigan, which it has controlled for more than 50 years, the Labor Party lost all 20 seats it defended to the Reform Party.
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 the British capital.
While incumbent governments often face difficulties in mid-term elections, opinion polls predict that the Labor Party could lose the most seats on local councils since former Conservative Prime Minister John Major lost more than 2,000 in 1995, when his government was mired in numerous corruption scandals.
The Reform UK party won 367 city council seats in England, according to early results. The Labor Party lost 254 seats and the Conservative Party 146.
Most results — including those from the Scottish and Welsh elections — are expected to be released later this Friday.
Changes of course and scandals
Starmer, a former lawyer, was elected in 2024 with one of the largest parliamentary majorities in modern British history, offering stability after years of political chaos.
But his tenure was marked by sudden policy changes, a constant turnover of advisers and , who was fired nine months later over his links to the late American sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
An attempt to remove him may not be imminent. Two of the main candidates to succeed him if he leaves — Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham and former deputy first minister Angela Rayner — are not yet in a position to launch leadership bids, and other rivals appear reluctant to oppose him for now.
