UK Elections > With results still coming in it's obvious that Labour is taking a thrashing

 

Starmer’s Labour Party ‘wiped out’ in UK elections

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has hailed the results as “a complete reshaping of British politics”

Published 8 May, 2026 18:29 | Updated 8 May, 2026 19:30

Keir Starmer reacts as he speaks to supporters following local elections at Kingsdown Methodist Church in London, England, May 8, 2026 ©  Getty Images;  Leon Neal

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour Party has been decimated in parliamentary elections in Scotland and Wales, as well as local elections in England. However, Starmer is refusing calls to resign.

Labour was the biggest loser in Thursday’s elections. As results came in on Friday, Starmer’s party had lost more than 1,100 local council seats in England, around 9 seats in the Scottish Parliament, and 21 seats in the Welsh Senedd, as of 7 PM local time.

While full results are not expected until Saturday, Starmer has already admitted that “when voters send a message like this, we must reflect and we must respond.” However, although the PM has been urged to resign by some within his own party, including Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, he has dismissed the idea, stating that he is not “going to walk away and plunge the country into chaos.”

Some 5,066 out of 16,000 local council seats in England and all 129 and 96 seats in the Scottish and Welsh legislatures were up for grabs on Thursday. Labour went into the election holding 5,873 local seats, but looks set to emerge with closer to 4,000.

For the first time this century, Labour will lose control of Wales, with First Minister Eluned Morgan losing her seat and the Plaid Cymru and Reform dominating the Senedd.

Labour’s loss has not been the Conservative Party’s win. While power has typically swung back and forth between both parties for more than 100 years, the Tories are on track to lose 470 council seats, plus 19 seats in Scotland and 9 in Wales.

Nigel Farage’s Reform UK was the big winner in England, picking up more than 1,200 local council seats. In some constituencies, Reform’s gains have come almost entirely at the Conservatives’ expense. Reform picked up 37 seats in Suffolk, where the Tories lost 36. Farage has spent years hammering successive Tory governments over their failure to reduce immigration and lower the cost of living, and as such has drawn the votes of dissatisfied right-wingers who once backed the Tories.

“It’s a big, big day, not just for our party, but for a complete reshaping of British politics in every way,” Farage told reporters, adding that Labour had been “wiped out.”

Zack Polanski’s Green Party has also drawn votes from former Labour supporters abandoning Starmer’s party over the prime minister’s austerity policies and support for Israel. “I said that the Green Party was going to replace Labour,” Polanski told reporters, “and we’re seeing that right across the country. The new politics is the Green Party vs. Reform.”

READ MORE: Why is Keir Starmer’s government so unpopular?

As of Friday evening, Polanski’s Greens had picked up 269 seats in England, and two seats in both the Scottish and Welsh legislatures.

================================================================================================

Politics in the UK > Municipal elections in the UK could be dramatic for Labour government

 

Britons head to polls in key test for ruling Labour government

By Paul Godfrey    

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his wife Victoria on Thursday morning as they arrived to cast their votes at a polling station in his north London constituency of Holborn and St. Pancras. Photo by Neil Hall/EPA

May 7 (UPI) -- Millions of Britons were headed to the polls on Thursday to vote in local, mayoral and parliamentary elections in England, Scotland and Wales in what is being seen as a 'mid-term' referendum on the leadership of Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

Voters in Scotland and Wales are electing lawmakers to their parliaments while in England more than 5,000 seats across 136 local councils are up for grabs, including in all 32 of London's boroughs. Elections for half or a third of the seats are being held in another 73 local voting districts.

Six English municipalities, all but one of them in London, are electing new mayors.

Labour is expected to lose as many as 2,000 seats, mainly to new parties Reform UK and the Green Party, in an historic shift to a multi-party political system from a system dominated for the past century by Labour and the Conservative Party.

Support for both parties is down sharply with Labour polling on about 20%, compared with 35% at the last set of local elections in 2022, and the Conservatives on 18%, down from about 40%.

Labour's numbers are also sharply down from the time of the 2024 general election that brought the party to power in a landslide; the Conservatives much less so.

The worst case scenario for Labour sees it losing control of many of the 60 councils it is defending in the big cities, the party's political heartland.

The Conservatives, who are heavily represented in rural areas, are expected to fare a little better but could lose control of a handful of the 32 councils it runs and as many 1,000 seats overall.

That type of result with a general election only two years away would dramatically ramp up pressure on Starmer, potentially triggering an internal challenge to his leadership of the party and premiership.

Starmer is already under fire for his failure to deliver on his main pledges of his "Change" election manifesto to grow the economy, end the churn and chaos of previous Conservative administrations and tackle illegal immigration, along with his botched appointment of Peter Mandelson as British Ambassador to the United States.

Speculation was mounting that he could face a challenge from an Angela Rayner-Andy Burnham 'ticket' under which former deputy prime minister Rayner, would step in to deliver the party's manifesto before standing aside to let Manchester Mayor Burnham fight the next election, which is due to be held by July 2029 at the latest.

An aide to Rayner, who quit as deputy prime minister in September amid a scandal over underpayment of property taxes on a new home purchase, dismissed the rumors as absurd.

Labour veteran Burnham was blocked by the party from running in a by-election for a Manchester parliamentary seat in February to replace a Labour MP who was standing down. Burnham's request to contest the election was denied by an internal party committee headed by Starmer on grounds he needed to serve out his term as mayor.

Labour went on to lose with the Green Party, beating them into third place with a 4,000-seat majority, and 12 points clear of Reform UK.

In May 2025, a win by Reform UK in an election for the Runcorn and Helsby constituency in northwestern England, another "safe" Labour seat, prompted Reform leader Nigel Farage to declare that Britain's two-party system was "dead."

Read More

• British Deputy MP Angela Rayner resigns over tax scandal
• Greens push ruling Labour Party into 3rd place in key U.K. byelection
• Britain's Labor Party in landslide election win
• U.K. Reform Party leader: Two-party system is 'dead'

================================================================================================