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LAST UPDATE | 43 mins ago
KEIR STARMER HAS said he takes responsibility for Labour’s “tough” local election results and vowed to carry on as British prime minister.
With the first 40 of 136 councils declared, Labour have lost more than 200 councillors as well as losing control of eight local authorities.
Reform UK has gained 270 seats and control of one council, the Liberal Democrats have gained 29 seats and a council, and the Greens have gained 23 seats, with the Conservatives down 61, and independents, ratepayer parties and Your Party combined down a total of 59.
Speaking at Kingsdown Methodist Church in Ealing, west London this morning, Starmer said: “The results are tough, they are very tough, and there’s no sugarcoating it.
“We have lost brilliant Labour representatives across the country, these are people who put so much into their communities, so much into our party. And that hurts, and it should hurt, and I take responsibility.”
Starmer said that when voters send a message like this, “we must reflect and we must respond”.
Speaking to local Labour members, he said: “We’ve made some big calls, to stabilise our public finances, to invest in our public services, not to get dragged into a war in Iran.
“But we’ve also made unnecessary mistakes, one of which was that although we were right to level with the public about the scale and depth of the challenges we face, we didn’t do enough to convince them that things will get better, that things will improve, the hope.
“And that is why, in the coming days, I’m going to set out the steps that we will take to deliver the change that they want and that they deserve.”
Asked if he had contemplated resignation, he told broadcasters: “The voters have sent a message about the pace of change, how they want their lives improved.
I was elected to meet those challenges but I’m not going to walk away from those challenges.
Starmer faces further heavy losses as vote counting continues throughout today in the local elections, along with contests for the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Senedd.
Counting in Scotland and Wales got underway at 9am.
In Wales, Labour is expected to lose the national vote for the first time in more than a century while the SNP appears likely to remain the largest party in Scotland after 19 years in power.
Starmer has already faced speculation about his leadership, with the Times reporting Energy Secretary Ed Miliband had urged him to set out a timetable for his departure.
But Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy urged his party not to play “pass the parcel” with the leadership in response to the election results.
Labour sources pointed to poor local election results under previous prime ministers, including Tony Blair who lost 1,100 councillors in 1999 but went on to win re-election in a landslide in 2001.
Reform leader Nigel Farage has heralded a “historic change in British politics,” telling reporters “there is no more left-right” as his outfit was “scoring stunning percentages in traditional old Labour areas”.
Labour went into the local elections expected to lose up to 1,850 councillors, with senior figures describing the contest as “tough”.
Initial results painted a bleak picture for Starmer.
In Halton, in Cheshire, Labour held two of the 17 seats it was defending as Reform UK gained 15 councillors in the first council to complete its count this morning.
In some wards, Reform won with more than 50% of the vote in an area where last year Farage’s party won the Runcorn and Helsby by-election by just six votes.
Although Labour’s starting position means it retains control of Halton Council, the shift in vote share combined with losses elsewhere in the north west kicked off a difficult night for Starmer.
Those results included losses to Reform in Chorley, in Lancashire, and Wigan, in Greater Manchester.
In Hartlepool, Reform won all 12 seats on offer, pushing the previously Labour-held council into no overall control, while Labour also lost control of Redditch, Tamworth and Exeter.
In Tameside, a council in Angela Rayner’s Greater Manchester constituency, Labour lost its majority to no overall control as Reform took 18 of the 19 seats up for election.
While Labour held onto councils in London including Ealing, Merton and Hammersmith and Fulham, the party lost control of Wandsworth four years on from taking over what had been a long-held Conservative authority.
The Greens are expected to do well, with leader Zack Polanski predicting “record-breaking local elections” for the party.
He said it would “take time for the full scale of the Green successes to become clear,” especially in London boroughs to be counted later today, and called for Starmer to “listen to the people and go”.
Ed Davey’s Liberal Democrats, eyeing an eighth successive year of local gains, celebrated taking Stockport and Portsmouth councils, which were previously under no overall control.
They also hold all 54 council seats in Richmond upon Thames, after gaining five from the Greens in the south west London borough.
But the Lib Dems lost their majority to no overall control in Hull, losing three seats as Reform gained 10.
It could be another bad night for the Conservatives despite an improvement in party leader Kemi Badenoch’s approval rating, with the party expected to lose further ground to Reform, although it managed to hold Harlow in Essex and Broxbourne in Hertfordshire.
Almost 25,000 candidates were fighting to be elected to more than 5,000 seats on 136 councils across England, where six local mayoral contests also took place.
In Scotland, all 129 seats were up for election at Holyrood while voters in Wales were choosing 96 members of the Senedd.
Votes in Wales and Scotland are not due to be counted until later today, but both elections are expected to pile further pressure on Starmer.
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