British leader Keir Starmer under pressure after heavy election losses

Keir Starmer, the British prime minister, is facing increasing pressure to set a date for his departure after elections across much of the country resulted in massive losses for his ruling Labour party.

With the bulk of results now counted after voting on Thursday, Labour had lost more than 1,400 representatives from English councils, the local government structures that deliver many neighbourhood services.

Starmer’s party also crashed to defeat in the election for the devolved parliament of Wales, where it had dominated the country’s politics for a century, and went backwards in representation in the Scottish parliament.

Adding to the panic in Labour, the party lost to a series of challengers, including the righting populist Reform UK party, the leftwing Greens, and pro-independence nationalists in Wales and Scotland.

The elections, the biggest since Starmer won power in mid-2024, showed how the UK’s traditional two-party system of Labour and the Conservatives has been smashed, with Reform taking the most votes, and the Greens, Conservatives, Labour and the centrist Liberal Democrats bunched up behind.

While Starmer does not have to face an election to the national parliament in Westminster for three years, increasing numbers of his MPs want him to announce a timetable for his departure, believing he is too politically damaged to turn things around.

Speaking on Saturday morning, one MP, Debbie Abrahams, who represents an area in the north of England which used to be solidly Labour but has increasingly turned to Reform, said Starmer must “put the country first”.

She said: “We have to recognise the dangers that we’re in now, that on this trajectory it doesn’t look good.” Asked how quickly Starmer should go, she said: “I think it is a matter of months.”

For now, however, Starmer has the backing of his senior ministers, at least in public, including the two routinely named as likely challengers: Wes Streeting, the health minister, and Angela Rayner, who was deputy prime minister until last year.

Complicating matters for any plotters is that the person viewed by many in Labour as the best potential replacement for Starmer, Andy Burnham, is not in parliament. He is the mayor of Greater Manchester and could only return to the House of Commons if another MP stood down and he fought the election to replace them.