LondonThe United Kingdom has a problem; the British Labour Party also does, and Prime Minister Keir Starmer even more so. The first provisional results of the super Thursday election celebrated yesterday in England, Scotland, and Wales indicate that the populist and xenophobic far-right represented by the Reform Party, of the In an initial assessment to the press, Keir Starmer has taken “responsibility” for the Labour Party’s electoral results in England. With these words, the

prime minister

tries to halt any attempt at a coup against his leadership. It is still very early, however, to know the full extent of the defeat and, above all, what the party’s reaction will be. What is certain, however, is that the first voices questioning Keir Starmer’s leadership have been appearing for days and weeks. The Labour leader in Hull (north-east England), Daren Hale, has openly called for a change of direction in the early hours of this morning, after a night that several leaders describe as “devastating”. In the hours and days to come, as the full picture of this super Thursday election, the party will have to ask itself what to do with its prime minister and, above all, what reform program it should propose to the citizens to consolidate the electoral victory of two years ago.of a break in the traditional two-party system of the islands

Keir Starmer and Victoria Starmer yesterday leaving the Westminster polling station.

Another of the initial conclusions that the results show is that of a break with the traditional bipartisanship of the islands. Political fragmentation is increasingly evident in England, and previous polls showed that the same phenomenon would occur in Wales and Scotland, where elections to the national Parliaments have taken place. In these two nations, however, the count has just begun this Friday morning. Nevertheless, sources from the Labour Party are already beginning to admit defeat in Wales, for the first time since the devolution of powers, twenty-seven years ago.

On the other hand, the Greens are also advancing in England, although it is still very early to know if the preferential objectives that the party now seen as being to the left of Labour had set for itself will translate into the expected local power, especially in the 32 municipal districts of London.

Very symbolic defeats

The symptoms of the Labour defeat, which are already glimpsed by both initial results and analysts, have very concrete symbolic indicators in territories linked to prominent figures of Keir Starmer’s government. In Tameside, a metropolitan borough of Greater Manchester, in northwest England, a traditional Labour stronghold and within the area associated with former Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, Labour has lost 16 of the 17 municipal seats they were defending. The party that has benefited is Farage’s. In Wigan, also in Greater Manchester, and the Westminster parliamentary constituency of Culture Minister Lisa Nandy, Labour has ceded the 22 seats at stake, also to the populists and xenophobes of the Reform Party. In Southampton, Labour has lost control of the municipal council and even the local Labour leader, Alex Winning, has been left out.

The Conservatives are also not escaping electoral punishment, although in some places they have resisted better than expected. They have regained control of Westminster City Council (London), with 32 out of 54 seats, after snatching nine from Labour. But in other areas, especially in areas that ten years ago voted overwhelmingly in favour of Brexit, reformism has profoundly eroded the Tory vote. In Dudley (West Midlands, west of Birmingham), Farage’s party has won 23 seats and has become the second force, and in Basildon – 40 kilometers northeast of London – it has burst in with 11 councilors.

The first analyses of these results indicate that support for the Reform Party is concentrated in areas that voted overwhelmingly in favour of Brexit in 2016. Political scientist John Curtice, the great guru of UK demoscopy, has highlighted on the BBC that the party achieves an average of 40% of the vote in districts where more than 60% of electors voted to break with the EU. On the other hand, the Greens achieve their best results in clearly pro-European areas.

, reformism has profoundly eroded the