Keir Starmer Faces Calls To Quit Amid Labour Crisis

Keir Starmer is facing fresh calls to quit as a surge in support for Reform UK left Labour facing local election humiliation.

Early results in England showed Nigel Farage’s party making major gains at the expense of both Labour and the Conservatives.

With around one-fifth of council results declared by 5am, Labour had already lost nearly 200 councillors, with Reform gaining nearly 300.

Labour had so far lost control of five councils, including Tameside in former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner’s constituency.

In Wigan, the seat held by culture secretary Lisa Nandy, Labour lost all 22 of the seats it was defending, and Reform gaining 24 of the 25 seats up for grabs.

Even in those councils where Labour have held on to overall control, support for the party has collapsed while Reform have surged.

The early results confirmed Labour’s worst fears that they could suffer close to 2,000 losses in England overall.

Labour MP Jonathan Brash, whose wife was among the party’s councillors to lose her seat on Hartlepool Council, said: “It’s been a terrible night for the Labour Party.

“What I’ve seen here is extraordinarily good, hardworking Hartlepool people lose their seats. I’ve seen canvassers working night and day in this election and it’s all been for nought, and the reason has nothing to do with them.

“The reality is that we need change at the top of the Labour Party. I think the very best thing the prime minister could do now is to address the nation tomorrow to set out a timetable for his departure.

“We can then have an orderly transition, one that ensures that the full breadth of talent of the Labour Party is able to stand should it want to.”

But justice minister Sarah Sackman dismissed Brash’s suggestion.

She told Sky News: “You’ve got to go with the plan, not with the mood. We won a landslide victory [at the last general election] on the promise of change. We have to embody that change, we need to embody the need to modernise our public services, to be on people’s side, to change the status quo.”

With the Tories also on course for major losses, Farage said “what you’re witnessing is an historic change in British politics”.

He said: “Forget left-right, there is no more left-right, it’s gone, it’s out of the window, it’s finished. As you can see we are scoring stunning percentages in traditional old Labour areas.

“We’re way exceeding anything that I thought, this is happening right across the north. What you’ll see tomorrow is the same pattern repeated across the south … It is the most huge change in British politics.”

The early results confirmed that it is going to be a good night for the Green Party, whose leader Zack Polanski also called on the prime minister to go.

He said: “I’ve made it clear that we are here not just to be disappointed by Labour, but to replace them. These early results indicate that voters want to see that change too. That is why Keir Starmer has to listen to the people and go.”

With dozens of English councils still to declare, and counting not even having begun yet in the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Senedd elections, things could still get far worse for Labour.

Polling expert Sir John Curtice told the BBC that both Labour and the Tories “are losing seats at a scale that is towards the higher end of what they feared”.

Labour peer and skills minister Jacqui Smith told the BBC: “We understand the frustration that people feel, and the challenge for us is to keep delivering on that change, building on the things that have already happened … but talk about the future of this country with more optimism than we’ve managed to do up to this point.”

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