Starmer vows to remain prime minister after Labour’s UK local election losses

Keir Starmer has vowed to stay on as British prime minister even after his Labour party was hammered in local elections, a bruising result that has intensified questions over his leadership.

He conceded Labour had endured a “tough” night, but said that “days like this don’t weaken my resolve to deliver the change that I promised”.

Nigel Farage’s Reform UK surged in contests across the country, with hundreds of Labour councillors losing their seats and piling fresh pressure on Mr Starmer.

More damaging results could still lie ahead as counting continues throughout today in English local elections and in races for the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Senedd.

Nearly 25,000 candidates were contesting more than 5,000 seats on 136 councils across England, alongside six local mayoral elections

Early declarations showed Labour shedding hundreds of councillors and losing eight councils in England, while Reform, the Greens and the Liberal Democrats all advanced.

Mr Starmer was already contending with renewed speculation about his future after the Times of London reported that Energy Secretary Ed Miliband had pressed him to outline a timetable for his departure.

But Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy called on Labour figures not to play “pass the parcel” with the leadership in reaction to the results.

Party insiders also pointed to poor local election performances under previous prime ministers, including Tony Blair, who lost 1,100 councillors in 1999 before winning a landslide re-election in 2001.

Nigel Farage cast the results as evidence of a ‘historic change in British politics’

At the same time, Mr Farage said the first wave of results from yesterday’s local elections suggested his party was building toward victory at a general election still as much as three years away.

An elated Mr Farage described a “historic change in British politics,” telling reporters “there is no more left-right” as his party was “scoring stunning percentages in traditional old Labour areas”.

The Reform leader likened the breakthrough to clearing Becher’s Brook, one of the Grand National’s most feared jumps.

“If we cleared Becher’s Brook and landed well, we go on to win the Grand National.

“What is very clear to me is that our voters will stick with us now all the way through.”

With 40 of the 136 councils having declared full results in the early hours of Friday, Reform had gained 270 seats, while Labour had lost more than 200.

Mr Farage’s party also seized its first council of these elections, taking Newcastle-under-Lyme from the Conservatives.

Nigel Farage said the polls suggest Reform is ‘here to stay’

Other key results include:

Reform UK swept all 12 seats up for grabs in Hartlepool, leaving the once Labour-run council under no overall control.

Labour also lost control of eight other authorities, among them Wandsworth, Westminster and Tameside, which includes Angela Rayner’s Greater Manchester constituency.

The Liberal Democrats looked set for an eighth straight year of council gains, taking control of Stockport and Portsmouth and becoming the only party on Richmond upon Thames Council, though they lost their narrow majority in Hull.

The Conservatives suffered further setbacks, but had some brighter moments, reclaiming Westminster from Labour and holding Harlow in Essex and Broxbourne in Hertfordshire.

The Green Party posted modest gains overnight, with expectations of a stronger showing later today as results come in from its London target councils.

Polling expert John Curtice said the outcome underlined “the fracturing of British politics”, telling the BBC that Reform was clearly in front but still “probably not quite at 30% of the vote” while the other parties were “just a little bit below 20%”.

He also suggested the picture may not prove quite as bleak for Labour as some forecasts had indicated, saying the party might lose fewer than 1,500 seats.

Only around a fifth of seats in the English councils had been counted overnight, but the pattern so far matched expectations: a punishing night for Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour party and a strong one for Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, which had captured about a third of the seats declared by then.

With roughly 1,000 seats filled by 7am, Reform was in first place on 327 seats, followed by the Liberal Democrats on 237; Labour was third on 229 after losing 246 seats, the Conservatives were fourth on 196 after dropping 122, and the Greens were fifth on 48 seats. Independents had won 40 seats.

Counting for most of the remaining council seats, as well as the Parliaments in Scotland and Wales, begins at 9.30am.

Polling before the vote suggested the Scottish National Party would keep control of the Scottish Parliament, though likely without an overall majority, long viewed as essential if the SNP were to revive its push for another referendum on Scottish independence.

But the biggest shock, with implications well beyond Wales, could come in the Welsh Senedd, where more than a century of Labour dominance in national elections and 27 uninterrupted years of Labour rule in Cardiff may be under threat, with polls pointing to nationalist Plaid Cymru and Reform UK competing to emerge as the largest party.