Reform, Greens and pro-Gaza independents make significant gains, although no party has yet won majority

• Full results from England, Scotland and Wales

• Elections mapped: how Labour lost ground in different directions

The Labour party’s 14-year leadership in Birmingham has come to an end after Reform, Greens and pro-Gaza independents made significant gains in the UK’s second-largest city.

No party has yet won an overall majority at Birmingham city council, one of Europe’s largest local authorities, with the results reflecting wider political fragmentation across England.

Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar, concedes his party was comprehensively beaten in election as count puts his party on 17 seats, a tie with Reform

• Election 2026 live: latest news updates

• Full results from England, Scotland and Wales

John Swinney, the Scottish National party leader, has challenged Keir Starmer to show “greater respect” to the Scottish government after winning the Holyrood elections by a comfortable margin.

The Scottish National party secured a record fifth term in office on Friday after securing 58 of Holyrood’s 129 seats.

Exclusive: Co-chair Vula Tsetsi says it is time to trigger debate, as statement is agreed at annual leadership meeting in Brussels

The European Green party has urged the UK to consider rejoining the EU and draw a line under the “political and economic failure” of Brexit.

A text declaring that “the United Kingdom’s future lies in the European Union” was adopted by a large majority of European green parties at the movement’s annual leadership meeting on Friday, the day before Europe Day.

LONDON, May 8 — UK leader Keir Starmer said Friday he took responsibility for “very tough” local election results that saw the insurgent hard-right make big gains, but vowed to carry on as prime minister.

“I’m not going to walk away and plunge the country into chaos,” Starmer said, after his ruling Labour party lost hundreds of councillors in England.

Labour was also braced for humiliating results in voting for the devolved parliaments in Scotland and Wales due to be announced later in the day.

“The results are tough, they are very tough, and there’s no sugarcoating it,” Starmer said.

“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,” he added.

The ballot is the biggest electoral test for the beleaguered Starmer since Labour ousted the Conservatives following 14 years in power in a landslide election victory less than two years ago.

Grim results for Labour predicted by opinion polls appeared to be being borne out in some areas first to declare.

By 8am (0700 GMT), Nigel Farage’s anti-immigrant Reform UK had gained over 350 seats while Labour had lost over 240 across 40 of the 136 English councils to announce results so far.

The vast majority of results will not come until later Friday.

Big losses for Labour could amplify calls for Starmer, 63, to resign or face a long-rumoured party leadership challenge.

He insisted Friday that “days like this don’t weaken my resolve to deliver the change that I promised”.

Reform UK’s Farage said the local election results had demonstrated a “truly historic shift in British politics” and they were now “the most national of all the parties. We are here to stay”.

Before polls closed on Thursday night, The Times reported that Energy Secretary and former Labour leader Ed Miliband had privately urged Starmer to set out a timetable to step down after the elections.

But Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy insisted early Friday that a change of leadership would be a mistake.

“You don’t change the pilot during the flight, you carry on... Sometimes, particularly incumbent governments, have it hard,” he told BBC radio.

He conceded there was a “lot of frustration” but “sometimes our mistakes have been heard more than our achievements”.

Missteps 

The ballot is deciding around 5,000 local council seats, out of 16,000, across England, while in Wales and Scotland voters are electing new devolved parliaments.

Reform and the left-wing Greens, led by self-described eco-populist Zack Polanski, are benefiting as expected from widespread disillusionment with Starmer’s government.

Critics say Starmer has swerved from one policy misstep to another, and he has been embroiled in a scandal over Peter Mandelson, who was sacked as ambassador to Washington over his links to US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

He has also failed to fulfil his main promise of spurring economic growth, with impatient Britons still suffering a cost-of-living crisis, including from high energy prices.

The former lawyer is now one of the most unpopular prime ministers ever.

Surveys suggest Labour will lose control of the devolved Welsh government in Cardiff for the first time since Wales got its own parliament 27 years ago.

Reform or the pro-independence Plaid Cymru are expected finish as the biggest party.

Labour is also fearful of a drubbing in Scotland, where the Scottish National Party (SNP) is expected to extend its 19-year control of the devolved parliament in Edinburgh.

Leadership rumours 

Labour also looks set for big losses in London as the Greens pick up disaffected left-wingers in urban areas with a pro-Gaza message.

Pollster John Curtice suggested Labour could lose around 1,500 of the seats it is defending.

Kemi Badenoch’s right-wing Conservatives were also bracing for the loss of traditional strongholds.

Curtice said the results confirmed “the fracturing of British politics”.

Britain’s media is full of rumours that ex-deputy prime minister Angela Rayner or Health Secretary Wes Streeting could try to oust Starmer after the results.

Neither is universally popular within Labour, however, and would need the backing of 20 percent of the party’s MPs to launch a contest. — AFP 

Guess the Party challenges players to pin candidates’ politics to their appearances, with guess rates varying wildly

Is a bristly grey moustache a telltale sign of a Reform candidate? Is pink hair a giveaway for the Greens? Perhaps a sharp suit is the best telltale for the Tories – or spectacles and a rucksack for Labour?

Players of a viral politics game have been finding out that it’s never that simple to judge the colour of a candidate’s rosette just by how they look. The game, invented by Sam Hamill-Stewart, challenges players to look at pictures of local election candidates and guess their party affiliation.

LONDON, May 8 — British Prime Minister Keir Starmer suffered ‌heavy early losses in elections today, showing the depth of voter anger with his government and raising fresh doubts about his future just two years after a landslide general election victory.

Starmer’s Labour Party haemorrhaged support in areas reporting results overnight, including traditional strongholds in former industrial regions of central and northern England, along with some parts of London.

The main beneficiary ‌was the anti-immigration populist Reform UK of Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage, which gained more than 200 council seats in England, and could form the main opposition in Scotland and Wales to the pro-independence Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru.

“The picture has been pretty much as bad as anyone expected for Labour, or worse,” said John Curtice, Britain’s most respected pollster.

The elections for 136 local councils in England, alongside the devolved parliaments in Scotland and Wales, represent the most significant test of public opinion before the next general election due in 2029.

Lawmakers in the governing Labour Party said 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.

A sign supporting the Green Party political party is displayed in a residential street on the eve of local and mayoral elections in England and devolved parliamentary elections in Wales and Scotland on May 7, in London May 6, 2026. — AFP pic

Insurgent parties fracture two-party system

The early results showed the continued fracturing of Britain’s traditional two-party system into a multi-party 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, ‌and at the other end of the political spectrum to the left-wing pro-environment Green Party, while nationalist parties were expected to win the elections in Scotland and ⁠Wales.

Farage said the results so far were “way exceeding” his expectations and represented a “historic ⁠change in British politics”.

Labour was 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 it has controlled for more than 50 years, Labour also lost every one of the 20 seats it was defending to Reform, and in Salford, the party only held three of the 16 seats it was defending.

The ⁠results were “soul-destroying”, said Rebecca Long-Bailey, a 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 former Prime Minister John Major lost more than 2,000 in 1995, when his government was mired in endless corruption scandals.

The Reform UK party added 253 council seats in England with results in more than 4,200 seats still to be counted. The Labour party lost 185 seats and the Conservative party was down 93 seats.

Most of the election results — including the seats in the Scottish and Welsh elections — are due to be declared this afternoon and evening.

Britain’s Liberal Democrat party leader Ed Davey poses for a photo with supporters speaks during a local election tour in Redhill, Surrey, south of London on May 6, 2026, a day before British local elections. — AFP pic

U-turns and scandals erode Starmer’s authority

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 charisma, after years of political chaos.

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 Britain’s ambassador to the United States who ⁠was fired nine months ⁠into job over his links to the late convicted US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Starmer insists he will lead Labour into the next election, 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, and other potential rivals seem unwilling to move against him for now.

The energy minister Ed Miliband denied yesterday a report in the Times newspaper that he had advised Starmer to consider setting out a timetable for his departure from Downing Street. — Reuters

No 10 prepares for battle as party loses seats in heartlands and control of councils in Hartlepool, Tameside, Redditch and Tamworth

• Election 2026 live: latest news updates

• Full results from England, Scotland and Wales

Hartlepool once nearly triggered Keir Starmer’s resignation; local election results overnight mean it may yet do so in the coming days.

Five years ago, Labour crashed to a humiliating defeat in a byelection for the city’s Westminster seat, prompting Starmer to consider resigning as opposition leader.

Anthony Albanese rejects calls for her to resign over the breaches, saying she had done the right thing and had also apologised

The communications minister, Anika Wells, has repaid more than $10,000 for incorrect travel claims, identified amid controversy about her use of taxpayer-funded entitlements.

In a statement released on Friday, Wells said an audit by the Independent Parliamentary Expenses Authority identified four mistakes in her claims dating back to Labor’s 2022 election victory, worth a combined $8,092.89.