British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his ruling Labour Party have suffered heavy early losses in local and regional elections, counting shows so far, demonstrating deep voter anger with his government and raising new doubts about his future just two years after a landslide general election victory.
The anti-immigration Reform UK party, led by Nigel Farage and whose popularity has soared over the past two years, is the main beneficiary of Labour losses so far.
Elections for seats on 136 local councils in England, as well as in the devolved parliaments in Scotland and Wales, are the United Kingdom’s most significant test of public opinion before the next general election, which is due in 2029.
Here is a closer look at the results so far, and why they are significant.
What are the election results showing so far?
As counting continues, the populist, anti-immigration Reform UK Party led by Nigel Farage has been sweeping up council seats across the country. It has gained 382 council seats in England, and could form the main opposition party in Scotland to the pro-independence Scottish National Party (SNP) and in Wales to Plaid Cymru.
While it has gained seats on many councils, it only has overall control of two so far – Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council in the north and Havering council, east of London.
With 45 out of 136 councils having declared results by 9am (08:00 GMT), the Labour Party had already lost 258 council seats, leaving it with a total of 253 so far. Labour has so far maintained overall control of 10 councils, but has lost control of eight.
Significantly, Reform has made major progress in “Red Wall” areas of northern England and the Midlands – traditionally Labour heartland seats – including Wigan, Bolton, Salford and Halton.
In Hartlepool, Tameside, Redditch and Tamworth, Labour has lost overall control of councils as Reform takes seats.
“The picture has been pretty much as bad as anyone expected for Labour, or worse,” John Curtice, the UK’s most respected pollster, told the Reuters news agency.
The former ruling Conservative Party has also taken heavy losses – losing 158 seats so far, mostly to Reform candidates, in several areas – leaving it with a total of 250. It has taken back control of Westminster Council from Labour, however.
The Green Party has gained 27 seats, giving it a total of 51, while the Liberal Democrats have gained 35 seats, giving them a total of 241.
How significant are these results?
Early results underscore the continued fracturing of the UK’s traditional two-party system into a multi-party democracy, in what analysts say is one of the biggest transformations in British politics in the last century.
The once-dominant Labour and Conservative parties are losing large numbers of votes to Reform and, at the other end of the political spectrum, to the left-wing, pro-environment Green Party, while nationalist parties are expected to win elections in the Scottish and Welsh parliaments.
Farage said the results so far were “way exceeding” his expectations for Reform and represented a “historic change in British politics”.
Labour has been wiped out in some of the most closely watched early results.
The party lost control of the council of Tameside in Greater Manchester for the first time in almost 50 years, after Reform picked up all 14 seats Labour was defending.
In nearby Wigan, a former mining community that Labour has controlled for more than 50 years, it also lost every one of the 20 seats it was defending to Reform, and in Salford, the party only held on to three of the 16 seats it was defending.
The results were “soul-destroying”, said Rebecca Long-Bailey, Labour member of parliament for Salford.
While incumbent governments often struggle in mid-term elections, pollsters forecast that Labour could lose the most council seats in local elections since Conservative former Prime Minister John Major lost more than 2,000 in 1995, when his government was mired in endless corruption scandals.
Will Starmer have to resign as prime minister over this?
Labour Party MPs have indicated that if the party performs poorly in Scotland, loses power in Wales, and fails to hold many of the roughly 2,500 council seats it is defending in England, then Starmer will face renewed pressure to quit or set out a timetable for his departure.
Starmer, a former lawyer, was elected in 2024 with one of the largest parliamentary majorities in modern British history, on the premise that he would bring stability, rather than mere charisma, after years of political chaos and 14 years of Conservative rule.
But his time in office has been marked by numerous policy U-turns, a rotating cast of advisers and the disastrous appointment of Peter Mandelson as the UK’s ambassador to the United States. Mandelson was fired nine months into the job over his links to the late convicted US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The dispute over Mandelson’s appointment has rumbled on for months.
Critics say Starmer has not done enough to counter the rise of right-wing party Reform UK, which a YouGov poll put in the lead of all parties in terms of popularity with voters this time last year.
Starmer insists he will lead Labour into the next election, however, and the party has never successfully removed an incumbent prime minister in its 125-year history.
The prime minister is helped by the fact that two frontrunners to succeed him if he goes – Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham and former Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner – are not yet in positions to mount leadership bids, analysts say, and other potential rivals seem unwilling to move against him for now.
On Thursday, Energy Minister Ed Miliband denied a report in The Times newspaper that he had advised Starmer to consider setting out a timetable for his departure from Downing Street.
What happens next?
Most of the election results – including the seats in the Scottish and Welsh elections – are due to be declared on Friday afternoon and in the evening. The overall result will probably not be known before about 18:00 GMT.
As Labour stumbles, the Greens have gathered momentum since Zack Polanski became leader in September and shifted the party further to the left. However, Polanski is currently fighting allegations of anti-Semitism within his party over its stance on Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.
Moving beyond the party’s traditional environmentalist agenda, Polanski has called for higher taxes on the rich, rent controls and the legalisation of drugs, and for the UK to withdraw support from Israel.
Polanski, 43, has positioned himself as a progressive alternative to Keir Starmer’s governing Labour Party.