Prime Minister Keir Starmer vowed on Friday to fight on to deliver on his promise to bring “change” to Britain after his Labour Party suffered heavy losses in local election that deepened doubts over his ability to govern.
Just under two years after winning a landslide national election, Starmer saw voters punish his Labour government, dealing it a blow in some of its traditional strongholds in former industrial regions in central and northern England.
The main beneficiary was the populist Reform UK party of Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage, which gained more than 350 council seats in England, and could form the main opposition in Scotland and Wales to the pro-independence Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru in results later on Friday.
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The early results confirmed the fracturing of Britain’s traditional two-party system into a multiparty democracy, in what analysts say represents one of the biggest transformations in British politics in the last century. The once-dominant Labour and Conservative parties were losing votes to Reform, to the left-wing Green Party at the other end of the political spectrum, and to the nationalists in Scotland and Wales.
Despite the losses, Starmer’s allies signalled their support for a man whose popularity ratings have sunk to among the worst for any British leader, and the prime minister visited one bright electoral spot for his party to say he would press on.
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“I am not going to walk away,” he told reporters in Ealing, west London, where Labour retained control of the council. He said voters were more concerned about the pace of change rather than his leadership.