LONDON, May 9 — British Prime Minister Keir Starmer ‌named former Prime Minister Gordon Brown as his special envoy on global finance today, ‌turning to a man credited with shoring up banks during the global financial crisis to help bolster his own support.

Starmer is on the back foot after the Labour Party recorded the worst losses of a governing party in local elections since 1995, prompting a growing ‌number of his own lawmakers ⁠to call on him ⁠to quit.

Aiming to reset ⁠his leadership and win ⁠back ⁠party support, his office said Labour grandee Brown would be joining Starmer’s team to ⁠help advise the prime minister on how global finance can boost Britain’s security and resilience.

Starmer vowed to stay on as leader yesterday as ⁠the scale of the election defeat started to emerge.

Labour losses stood at 1,406 ⁠seats as the final votes were counted today, ⁠a bigger defeat than the 1,330 seats lost by former Prime Minister Theresa ‌May’s Conservative Party in 2019. May quit three weeks later. — Reuters

LONDON, May 9 — British Prime Minister Keir Starmer promised today he would “listen to voters” after his Labour party received a historic drubbing in local and regional elections.

Disillusioned voters 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 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 are grim for Labour, particularly 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.

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.

Just two years ago, Labour swept the Conservatives from power in a landslide general election victory, but it has failed to deliver economic growth and has been plagued by policy missteps and scandals.

Insurgent parties have reaped the benefit, as Britons struggle with an enduring cost-of-living crisis.— AFP

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Amid public apathy and frustration, Labour and Reform tie for second behind the SNP, while Greens claim ‘seismic’ fourth place

Long before the final votes were counted in Scotland, veteran Labour politicians said it was a defeat made in Downing Street.

When the Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar, strode into the Glasgow count arena on Friday afternoon flanked by sombre-faced activists, the scene was a mirror image to the same venue in 2024, when his resurgent party won 36 seats from the Scottish National party, playing a significant part in Keir Starmer’s landslide victory.

Keir Starmer’s party lost out to Reform and the Greens, with no respite in Scotland, Wales or England. These maps show the scale of the historic results

• Full results from England, Scotland and Wales

Labour has suffered heavy losses across England, Scotland and Wales, losing ground to opponents on the left and the right in a fragmented political system.

The graphics below show where Labour’s losses were most severe, and how the electoral landscape has changed as a result.

COPENHAGEN, May 8 — Talks to form a government in Denmark after inconclusive elections in March failed yesterday and the king appointed a new negotiator to replace Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen.

The coalition-building process was expected to take weeks, as neither the left nor the right bloc won a majority in the March 24 election that left parliament deeply splintered.

Frederiksen, whose Social Democrats registered their weakest score since 1903 but remained the biggest party by far, had been initially tasked by King Frederik X to lead the negotiations.

The king yesterday asked the head of the liberal Venstre party Troels Lund Poulsen, to “lead the negotiations with a view to forming a government,” the palace said.

His mandate involves negotiating the formation of a government without the participation of the Social Democrats and the Moderates, the palace said.

“The Danes... have composed the (parliament) in such a way that a right-wing government can absolutely be formed. It may very well be that what we are seeing now is in fact the beginning of that,” said Frederiksen, after a meeting with the king on Friday afternoon.

The traditional far-right party, the Danish People’s Party which has heavily influenced policy since the late 1990s but slumped in the 2022 election, more than tripled its result to 9.1 percent of votes.

The three anti-immigration groups together garnered 17 percent, a stable figure for Denmark’s populist right over the past two decades. — AFP

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.