Labour faces ‘Starmergeddon’ fears with thousands of council seats at stake

A bruising night awaits UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Labour, with the expected scale of Thursday’s losses already spawning its own grim shorthand: “Starmergeddon”.

The term captures both the depth of the setback forecast for Britain’s governing party and the pressure set to fall squarely on the prime minister.

Voters are choosing members of the devolved parliaments in Scotland and Wales, as well as filling about 5,000 local authority seats across England, and Labour is widely expected to come away wounded.

The uncertainty is not whether Labour will lose ground, but how severe the damage will be.

What does it mean for British politics in general? And what does it all mean for Ireland and the EU?

Because Thursday’s contests are about far more than deciding who controls local budgets and pothole spending.

Parties in government rarely prosper in these kinds of midterm elections. Normally, the main opposition racks up gains in seats and councils, building momentum for the next general election.

Labour itself was a textbook example in 2022, the last time many of these seats were contested.

At the height of the Partygate scandal that helped unravel Boris Johnson’s premiership, Labour took 35% of the national projected vote, seized control of councils and laid the groundwork for its return to power at Westminster in 2024.

This time, however, the political landscape looks markedly different.

The Conservatives are also braced for heavy losses on Thursday. And the Liberal Democrats, long cast as Britain’s third force, are only tipped for limited advances.

Instead, the parties expected to benefit most are the insurgents: Reform UK and the Green Party.

The familiar pendulum swing between Labour and the Conservatives could be disrupted, as a more fragmented politics pushes against the constraints of Britain’s two-party electoral system.

At the last general election, roughly two-thirds of voters did not back Labour, yet the party still secured a commanding Commons majority, taking 63% of the seats.

Discontent happens when people do not get what they voted for.

London offers one of the clearest signs that both major parties are being squeezed from the flanks in ways that could make old power arrangements harder to sustain.

Reform may inflict enough damage on the Conservatives to prevent the party from reclaiming traditional strongholds such as Westminster and could even help bring Tory control in Bromley, in the southwest suburbs, to an end.

Labour, meanwhile, faces pressure from the left and from a revived Green Party that appears to be drawing in activists and voters who once rallied behind former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Green Party leader Zack Polanski speaks during the launch of the local election campaign in London

The war in Gaza, a younger and more ethnically diverse electorate, and the pressures of the housing and cost-of-living crises could all fuel a Green surge, with the party even seen as competitive in Hackney, a traditional Labour bastion.

At the last election there Labour won 45 seats, the Conservatives six and the Greens just three. The fact that the Greens are in with a chance of ending half a century of Labour control in Hackney is a sign of just how much trouble the party is in in some parts of the country.

That shift is even more stark in Wales, where all 96 seats in the Senedd are being contested under a party-list proportional representation system.

For a century, Wales has been Labour territory, and since the devolved parliament was created in 1999 it has always had a Labour first minister.

Now, though, polling has consistently shown Plaid Cymru and Reform UK running neck and neck to emerge as the largest party.

Labour and the Conservatives are now battling over who comes fourth.

A tracking “poll of polls” by Pollcheck.co.uk shows Plaid Cymru on 28%, Reform UK on 27%, Labour on 15%, the Conservatives on 11% and the Liberal Democrats on 6%.

Conservative party leader Kemi Badenoch – her party is defending 1,362 of the available 5,013 seats up for election

At the previous election, Plaid finished third behind the Conservatives. Reform UK did not exist.

For the first time, Wales could produce a nationalist first minister, with expectations that other parties would combine to block a Reform-led administration in the Principality.Such is the radically changing face of British politics.

In Scotland, where the old UK party template was disrupted two decades ago, the Scottish National Party is expected to stay in power.

Even if it does not secure an outright majority, a nationalist majority is expected to be assured with the support of the Scottish Greens, who are tipped to gain a couple of seats in the 129-member chamber.

If the results go as expected, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland could all have nationalist First Minsters – for the first time ever.

For the broader electorate, and for what these elections may signal about national politics, the biggest numbers lie in England, where local authority elections are being held.

Not every council is voting, but several major population centres are.

Among them are all 32 London boroughs, where the Greens are forecast to cut into Labour’s support, alongside the Midlands and many of the Red Wall metropolitan boroughs in northern England, where Reform UK is expected to make substantial gains, mainly at Labour’s expense. Labour had recaptured those Red Wall seats at the 2024 general election, helping deliver its huge Commons majority.

Again, the polls say Reform UK is on track to emerge as the biggest party in the local government seats in play on Thursday.

Of the 5,013 seats up for election, Labour is defending 2,557 of them, the Conservatives 1,362, the Greens 142 and Reform UK just two seats, according to pollsters YouGov.

Polling-based projections suggest Reform could leap from two seats to somewhere around 1,500.

Labour could lose well over 1,000 seats. In the bleakest scenario, it could forfeit as many as three quarters of those it currently holds. The Conservatives are expected to suffer losses as well.

Reform leader Nigel Farage, a veteran of 27 years in electoral politics, wrote in the Mail on Sunday that “the famous ‘Red Wall’ of safe Labour seats in the north of England is about to be reduced to a smouldering pile of rubble”.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said things have gotten worse under Labour’s leadership

Mr Farage wrote that Labour’s Red Wall breakthrough had been built on promises of change, but that “almost two years later, the main change people have noticed under Labour is that things have gotten even worse”, citing crime, immigration, tax rises and the cost of living.

Read more: Will Nigel Farage and Reform’s run continue in England’s local elections?

Mr Starmer himself sought to seize back the argument in a major BBC interview on Saturday, setting out both his explanation for the public mood and the broader direction he wants Labour to pursue.

Critics say the intervention has come far too late.

Conservative-leaning Sunday newspapers were full of speculation about a possible leadership challenge after Thursday’s results, although most concluded there was little sign that any rival would perform better.

Mr Starmer argues the backdrop is an economy only just beginning to recover when the UK was struck by the consequences of the Israel/USA war on Iran, especially through oil trade disruption.

Voters ‘frustrated’ that they haven’t seen changes they want, Starmer says

“My strong view”, Mr Starmer told the ‘Today’ programme, “is that many, many voters, many people across the country, are frustrated that they haven’t seen the change they want to see”.

“In this country, we flatlined for the best part of 20 years, and I’ll tell you why I think that is: because each time we have a crisis like this, whether it’s the financial crash, whether it’s Brexit, Covid, the government of the day aspires to get back to the status quo as quickly as possible,” he said.

“But the status quo wasn’t working, and therefore we cannot do that again. We have to take a different course in response to this crisis.”

The interviewer intervened: “Let me be clear. You are comparing this crisis with Covid, with Brexit, with the crisis caught by Ukraine. It is that big.

“You’re warning people now because we saw the Bank of England warn the other day that inflation could be more than 6% by the start of next year.

“Now a lot of that depends exactly what happens when the Strait of Hormuz opens or doesn’t, but that’s what you’re preparing for?”

“I am”, replied the UK Prime Minster.

Keir Starmer said the world is ‘going to get more volatile, not less volatile’

He added: “And the reason is because we’ve got a war on two fronts, I think we obviously have to pull together countries to get the Strait of Hormuz open, and that’s what I’m doing in the coalition I’m leading with [French] President [Emmanuel] Macron.

“But even when that happens, I don’t want anybody to think that once the Strait of Hormuz is open, it all returns to normal. It won’t be like that. There’s then the war in Ukraine, and all the indicators are that the world is going to get more volatile, not less volatile.”

After laying out the diagnosis, Mr Starmer also sketched what he sees as the remedy: “The response, then, has to be, not the status quo, I’m absolutely clear in my mind about that, but a changed Britain, a stronger Britain and a fairer Britain.”

In practical terms, Mr Starmer says that means three priorities.

They are closer ties with the EU, stronger collective European defence and an expanded UK energy sector to drive down the cost of what he views as the economy’s most basic input.

That agenda closely echoes priorities likely to matter during Ireland’s EU presidency from July onward, including a European Political Community meeting in Dublin in the autumn that would involve the UK prime minister.

But political instability in Britain, on top of the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and an increasingly irascible US President Donald Trump, is hardly a prospect Irish or other EU leaders would welcome.

Mr Starmer’s broad diagnosis may be right, but to many voters in Britain’s crowded retail politics it risks sounding remote from their immediate concerns.

And the core message of that diagnosis – things are going to get worse – is scarcely what voters want to hear. That is one more reason “Starmergeddon” has become such a popular phrase among the political class.

And we have not even mentioned the Epstein Files, Peter Mandelson and the former Prince Andrew.

Keir Starmer survived a bid last month by opposition politicians to subject him to a parliamentary probe over his controversial appointment of Peter Mandelson as envoy to the US

That point was raised by one of Mr Starmer’s predecessors. Former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown has written the cover article for the latest edition of the Labour-leaning New Statesman, headlined ‘The Cover Up? The prince, his protectors, and the questions that must be answered’.

Mr Brown said nine UK police forces should investigate information from the Epstein Files concerning alleged sex trafficking into or through the UK, including claims involving Epstein’s private jet and two RAF bases.

With further parliamentary reports on Mr Starmer’s appointment of Mr Mandelson, a friend of Epstein, as US ambassador expected after the election, the path into summer looks especially turbulent for the British government and its leader.