LONDON, May 8 (Reuters) – Prime Minister Keir Starmer vowed on Friday to keep fighting to deliver on his promise to bring “change” to Britain after Labor’s crushing defeat in local elections deepened doubts about his ability to govern.
Less than two years after winning a landslide national election, Mr Starmer saw voters punish the Labor government and damage some of his traditional strongholds in the former industrial region of north-central England.
The main beneficiary was Brexiteer Nigel Farage’s populist British Reform Party, which has won more than 350 seats in England and could form the main opposition party in Scotland and Wales to the pro-independence Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru in results later on Friday.
Early results confirm the split of Britain’s traditional two-party system into a multiparty democracy, which analysts say is one of the biggest changes in British politics in the last century.
The once dominant Labor and Conservative parties were losing votes to the Reformers, the left-wing Greens at the other end of the political spectrum, and Scottish and Welsh nationalists.
My resolve has not weakened, says Starmer
Despite the defeat, Mr Starmer’s allies expressed support for him, whose approval ratings are among the worst for a British leader, and the Prime Minister visited one of the party’s brightest constituencies to vow to keep moving forward.
“I’m not going to leave,” he told reporters in Ealing, west London, where Labor maintained control of parliament. He said voters are more concerned about the pace of change than his leadership.
He promised to set out the necessary steps to change Britain, signaling the latest reset by a government struggling to communicate its vision for Britain to voters and deal with a cost-of-living crisis exacerbated by the conflict in Ukraine and Iran.
But there was no denying the scale of Labor’s losses in elections to England’s 136 local councils and the devolved assemblies in Scotland and Wales, the most important test of public opinion ahead of the next general election in 2029.
“Labour’s situation is about as bad as anyone expected, if not worse,” said John Curtis, Britain’s most respected pollster.
Some Labor MPs say Mr Starmer will come under new pressure to leave the party, or at least set a timetable for his departure, if the party performs poorly in Scotland, loses ground in Wales and fails to retain many of the roughly 2,500 seats it holds in England.
Mr Starmer’s allies have warned it is not the time to oppose him, with Defense Secretary John Healy saying the last thing voters want is “potential chaos in the leadership race” and believes the British leader can still deliver.
Armed groups disrupt the two-party system
Reform UK leader Mr Farage said the results so far represented “a truly historic change in British politics”.
Some early results have Labor wiped out.
The party lost control of Tameside City Council in Greater Manchester, northern England, for the first time in almost 50 years, after Reformers won all 14 seats held by Labor.
In neighboring Wigan, which Labor has ruled for more than 50 years, Labor lost all 20 seats held by reformers.
The Reformers also took control of a London borough for the first time, winning 30 of the 43 seats on Havering City Council in the east of the British capital.
Current governments often struggle in midterm elections, but pollsters predict Labor could lose the most seats since former Conservative Prime Minister John Major lost more than 2,000 seats in 1995, when the government was embroiled in endless corruption scandals.
The British Reform Party gained 367 seats in England’s parliament in early results. Labor lost 254 seats, while the Conservatives lost 146.
Most results, including those in Scotland and Wales, are expected to be announced later on Friday.
U-turns and scandals erode Starmer’s authority
Starmer, a former lawyer, brought stability after years of political turmoil and was elected in 2024 with one of the largest parliamentary majorities in modern British history.
But his tenure was marked by policy U-turns, changes in advisers and the appointment of Peter Mandelson, who was sacked after nine months in office, as Britain’s ambassador to the United States over his links to the late convicted American sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
A move to oust him may not be imminent. The two front-runners to succeed him if he leaves, Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham and former deputy prime minister Angela Lynagh, are not yet in a position to stand for the leadership, and his other rivals do not appear to be interested in running against him so far.
(Reporting by Andrew McCaskill and Elizabeth Piper; Additional reporting by Sarah Young and William James; Editing by Toby Chopra)
