British Prime Minister Keir Starmer moved quickly to acknowledge a bruising local election result for his governing Labour Party on Friday, appearing before cameras before the final votes were counted in a contest widely seen as a referendum on his leadership.
Not even two full years after leading Labour to one of the largest parliamentary majorities in recent British history, Starmer watched his party haemorrhage seats at the municipal level to opponents on both the left and right of the political spectrum.
Votes were also being counted for devolved parliaments in Scotland and Wales.
“They are tough results. I accept that,” Starmer told reporters in London. As he spoke, Labour supporters waited for results to come in for more than 5,000 seats across 136 municipal councils in England.
But he also sought to quash any doubts about his determination to remain at the helm, amid ongoing speculation about potential challenges to his leadership from unhappy Labour MPs.
“The voters have sent a message about the pace of change, how they want their lives improved,” he said. “I was elected to meet those challenges, and I’m not going to walk away from those challenges and plunge the country into chaos.”
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage speaks to the media, during a visit to Havering Town Hall, in Romford, England, on Friday, a day after the local elections. (Yui Mok/The Associated Press)
Reform UK gains as Starmer’s problems mount
The right-wing populist Reform UK party, led by former Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage, was one of the main beneficiaries of Labour’s collapse.
It was also helped by an equally dismal showing by the once-mighty Conservative Party. Labour’s 2024 victory in the national elections put an end to 14 years of Conservative government in the UK.
But Starmer’s premiership has been marked by a series of U-turns, political gaffes and scandals that have called his judgment into question.
The most persistent has been his 2024 decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as Britain’s ambassador to the United States.
A former Labour cabinet minister under Tony Blair, Mandelson had a reputation as a skilled, but sometimes dubious, political operator.
Starmer fired Mandelson from the ambassador’s post last fall after revelations about his friendship with the late Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted pedophile.
Starmer came under renewed pressure this year after allegations that Mandelson had shared confidential government information with Epstein, prompting renewed questions about his vetting process.
Britain’s Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch meets supporters in Westminster after the Tories took control of Westminster City Council from Labour in the local elections, in London on Friday. (James Manning/The Associated Press)
Analysts say outside factors also to blame for Starmer’s troubles
Political analysts say blame for Labour’s woes can’t be placed entirely on Starmer’s shoulders, although personal approval ratings of just 22 per cent don’t help.
“What you’ve got to understand about the politics of the United Kingdom, at the moment, is that we’ve had very little in the way of economic growth for the best part of 20 years,” said Anand Menon, a professor of European politics and foreign affairs at King’s College London.
“And I think the problem with the role of prime minister at the moment is you are the object of years of accumulated dissatisfaction with politics and our economic performance.”
Tony Travers, a professor and expert in local government at the London School of Economics agreed.
“The Labour Party is now suffering the problem of incumbents in many countries,” he said.
“They’ve been in power for two years. And separately Keir Starmer and his party in government haven’t really shown much of a sense that they know how to govern with a consistent way that allows the electorate to understand who they are and what they’re doing.”
Travers said the election results — which also saw gains for the Green Party to the left of Labour — signal a potentially profound shift in British politics.
“What it suggests really is that Britain, which has had a two party system, effectively two and a half party system for most of the period since 1945, is going to end up with a five or six party system and that makes it look more like the Netherlands or Scandinavia.”
Menon said local elections are also more likely to be viewed as protest votes by many people casting ballots.
“People tend to vote differently in these elections than they do in general elections. These are what political scientists call second order elections, where people tend to feel more free to experiment with their vote,” he said.
“The problem for Labour, I think, is that Keir Starmer’s personal brand now appears so tarnished that many MPs simply cannot conceive of a situation in which he leads them into the next election because he’s seen as a broken brand. He’s seen as toxic.”
Starmer and James Murray, chief secretary to the treasury, background left, meet Labour Party members at Kingsdown Methodist Church Hall, in Ealing, west London, on Friday, a day after the local elections. (Stefan Rousseau/The Associated Press)
Labour MPs weigh what comes next for Starmer
Farage, celebrating his party’s gains, quipped to reporters that Starmer was Reform UK’s “greatest asset,” implying the prime minister’s lack of popularity was a valuable tool on the doorstep and at the voting booth.
The main question for Starmer now is not how the country has voted, but how his own caucus will interpret the results — and whether calls for him to resign, which surfaced at the height of the Mandelson affair, will return and grow.
Menon doesn’t believe there is enough internal party momentum for a move against Starmer at present. But that doesn’t mean it won’t return.
“[Starmer] is more unpopular than the party is,” Menon said. “So that’s the thing that’s compelling [some rebel MPs] to think that at some time before the next election we might want to think about a change of leadership.”
“It’s a mugs game to try and predict what will happen next. In so far as I’m willing to try, what I will say is my hunch is that these elections have weakened Starmer and have lessened the chance of him leading Labour into the next election.”