London (AFP) – British Prime Minister Keir Starmer promised on Saturday he would “listen to voters” after his Labour party received a historic drubbing in local and regional elections. A disillusioned electorate backed hard-right and nationalist parties in Thursday’s ballots — Starmer’s biggest electoral test since Labour ousted the Conservatives in 2024.
“The right lesson is to listen to voters,” but it “doesn’t mean tacking right or left,” Starmer, who has faced calls to resign, wrote in The Guardian newspaper. The anti-immigrant Reform UK party led by populist politician Nigel Farage made gains across England, Scotland, and Wales — though Scottish and Welsh parties took the biggest share of seats in those elections.
With almost all votes tallied, the results were grim for Labour. Clive Betts, the party’s joint longest-serving MP, urged the cabinet to take decisive action on Starmer’s premiership. “I think there’s now a responsibility on the cabinet to talk to Keir and to recognise, as they obviously are picking up on the doorstep, that this can’t carry on forever,” he told BBC Radio.
“There has to be a timetable. There has to be a way to actually bring in a new leader in a proper and constructive manner in the next few months,” he said.
– ‘Mistakes’ –
Betts, who is not considered one of Starmer’s obvious critics, is among numerous Labour lawmakers to publicly suggest he ought to resign or set out a plan for doing so. Starmer has vowed to remain as Britain’s prime minister but admitted the party had failed to sustain the public’s trust that it was doing enough to deliver change.
His government had “made unnecessary mistakes” and failed to give the public “hope,” he wrote. He also enlisted the help of party heavyweights Harriet Harman and former prime minister Gordon Brown. Harman, a former minister and deputy party leader, will take on an advisor role aimed at combatting violence against women and girls, while Brown will become a special envoy on global finance.
Despite the scale of the electoral mauling, no immediate move was made to challenge his leadership and cabinet colleagues appeared to publicly rally round. But while he has been granted a reprieve, “there’s just literally no example, zero example of a prime minister recovering from the kind of opinion poll ranking he has now,” Robert Ford, professor of political science at the University of Manchester, told AFP.
“The public have decided they don’t like it. I doubt they’re going to change their mind,” he said. Starmer is expected to attempt a reset of his leadership in a major speech on Monday. This will be followed up on Wednesday with the traditional State Opening of Parliament when King Charles III outlines legislation the government is preparing for the next parliamentary session.
– Wales loss –
The election results are particularly crushing for Labour in Wales, where they lost control of the devolved government for the first time since the parliament in Cardiff was established 27 years ago. Nationalists Plaid Cymru, which wants Welsh independence in the long-term, is now the biggest party with Reform second and Labour third.
In Scotland, the Scottish National Party remains the biggest party but failed to get a majority — winning six fewer seats than in 2021. US President Donald Trump congratulated SNP leader and Scottish First Minister John Swinney, calling him a “good man” on his Truth Social platform. He made no reference to Starmer, with whom relations have become strained over support for the president’s war with Iran.
In England, Reform picked up nearly 1,500 of the 5,000 council seats available, and the Greens also fared well, gaining more than 500. Labour lost almost 1,400 council seats and ceded control of several local authorities — though results in London were not as bad as predicted.
© 2024 AFP
