Historic Defeat for UK Labour in Local Elections as Reform Gains Momentum

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has pledged to remain in office with the aim of “delivering change,” despite his Labour Party experiencing significant setbacks in the recent local elections in England, as well as parliamentary elections in Scotland and Wales. These results have intensified concerns about his capacity to effectively lead the country.

Starmer, who secured a sweeping victory for his party less than two years ago, witnessed a dramatic decline in support for Labour. The party faced setbacks across its traditional strongholds, including London, former industrial hubs in central and northern England, and in Wales.

The political landscape appears to be shifting, with the populist Reform UK party, led by Brexit advocate Nigel Farage, emerging as a major beneficiary of the elections. The party secured over 1,000 council seats in England and is poised to become the main opposition force against the pro-independence Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru in Scotland and Wales, respectively.

The election results highlight a fragmentation within Britain’s long-standing two-party system. Both the Labour and Conservative parties have seen a loss of votes, not only to Reform UK but also to the left-wing Green Party and nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales.

‘I am not going to walk away’

In spite of these electoral challenges, Starmer’s supporters have expressed their backing for him, even as his popularity ratings have plummeted to historically low levels for a British leader.

“I am not going to walk away,” Starmer told reporters in Ealing, west London, a rare bright spot where Labour retained control of the council.

To Labour activists, he showed a moment of contrition when he said he took full responsibility for the losses and admitted his government had made some “unnecessary mistakes” including failing to offer hope to Britain when the party took power.

But he argued voters were more frustrated with the pace of change than with his government, and vowed to set out “the steps that we will take to deliver the change that they want and that they deserve”.

In what seemed to be a nod to the latest government reset, Starmer said he would double down on efforts to tackle a cost-of-living crisis compounded by conflicts in Ukraine and Iran.

That message seemed to cheer investors. The sterling strengthened against the US dollar and UK government borrowing costs fell — outperforming against US and German debt.

But even for Starmer, there was no denying the scale of the terrible 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.

While an immediate challenge to his leadership looked unlikely, more than 20 Labour lawmakers publicly and privately called on Starmer to consider his position and set out a timetable for his departure.

“The prime minister cannot take our party into the next election,” Simon Opher, a Labour lawmaker from southwest England said in a statement.

Defence minister John Healey rejected this, saying the last thing voters wanted was “the potential chaos of a leadership election”.

“He’s not going to go, and he’s not going to set a timetable,” technology secretary Liz Kendall told BBC News.

Two-party system fracturing

Starmer may struggle to turn things around after Labour lost control of a swathe of councils, responsible for services ranging from adult social care to rubbish collection, and prospective nationalist governments in Scotland and Wales.

The party lost power in Tameside in Greater Manchester in northern England for the first time in almost 50 years and in nearby Wigan, which it has controlled for more than 50 years, Labour lost all of its 20 seats to Reform.

Reform also took control of a London borough for the first time, winning in Havering in the east of Britain’s capital, while the Greens won the mayoralty of traditionally Labour-supporting Hackney in east London.

In the town of Romford in Havering, retiree Gary Orford summed up the mood of many, by saying he wanted to give Farage a chance after being fed what he called a “pack of lies” by other politicians.

“You can only give him a chance,” he said.

While incumbent governments often struggle in midterm elections, pollsters forecast that Labour could lose the most council seats since 1995.

The Reform UK party had added 1,151 council seats in England by Friday evening, local time.

Labour had lost 1,015 seats and the official opposition Conservative Party was down 466 seats. Plaid won the most seats for the Welsh Senedd assembly, followed by Reform, and the SNP was well ahead in the Scottish parliament election.

The results showed how far the British political system had changed since as recently as 2017, when the two traditionally dominant parties — Labour and the Conservatives — gained a combined 82 per cent of the vote in a general election.

They also showed how quickly voters have turned against Starmer.

Since 2024, his time in office has been marked by several attempts to reset his agenda, policy U-turns, a rotating cast of advisers and scandal over the appointment of Peter Mandelson as Britain’s ambassador to the United States.

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