Winners, losers and a PM on the brink - what to expect in next week's elections

If they are, expect them to make the case loudly that they are not just the most popular party in England, but that they have replaced the Conservatives as the natural party of the right, and become Labour's main opposition around Britain. Nigel Farage may have been around for a long time, but if voters put his party in that position next week, that's a major political moment.

This time last year, the established parties had hoped that once Reform actually had the responsibility for running the local councils, they'd be somehow found out, and their appeal might fade. It doesn't look like voters will make that happen in this election.

For the Greens, it's the first national test of whether Zack Polanski's exuberance and knack for grabbing headlines translates into actual power. He can be confident they'll add seats. There is a particular opportunity to eat into Labour's vote in London, which would spook the more than 50 Labour MPs there.

As with all the parties, even the most expert political pundits are guessing at the numbers of seats the Greens are likely to win, but given their surge in the polls, gaining at least 500 would be a decent ball park. To truly expand their place on the map, though, the Greens would love not just to pile up the number of seats but to take control of individual councils in London. Number crunchers suggest they have a chance of taking a council or two, and voters could put some Green mayors into office, perhaps in east London's Hackney.

But there are nerves in Green circles, jangled in the last couple of days since the attack in Golders Green, that Polanski's blunter politics might alienate some traditional Green voters just as they attract other new ones.

Meanwhile, the Lib Dems seem to love a local campaign more than any other party - not just because Sir Ed Davey loves being on the stump, but because the party's whole strategy has long been based on slow, careful targeting of areas where they reckon they might succeed, rather than concentrating on UK-wide momentum. One party source describes it as "tortoise and hare - maybe one day Ed will even dress up as a tortoise".

The Lib Dems obviously hope for a decent showing in council seats - to add 150 or so, according to some forecasts. But again, it's not just the total, it's whether they build deeper defences in councils they already control, and whether they can win any new ones that matter, too.

From time to time, there are rumblings in Lib Dem ranks, wondering aloud why the party doesn't seem to be the beneficiary of a restless electorate on the hunt for alternatives.

It's important therefore for Davey to be able to show more progress on Thursday, and perhaps, on what would be an incredibly good night for them, even becoming the party with the most seats in England's councils. That would be something to boast about - but a demonstration of how odd politics is these days - that the party that's often not even third in the UK polls could have more local representatives than any other.

For that to come to pass would mean a nasty night for Labour, and the Conservatives. The Tories were second last time round in the 2022 elections in English councils, and second in Wales and Scotland in 2021 too. That means the last time these contests were run was before the mess of Boris Johnson's departure, and the calamity of Liz Truss. So, Tory HQ is braced for another battering, just as they suffered last year when, as one member of the shadow cabinet admits, "we were in a total mess".

But while the party fully expects to lose hundreds of seats, what you don't detect is any sense this could be terminal for the leader, Kemi Badenoch. The Westminster party is still in a pretty awful position in the national polls, but they are much cheerier than this time last year. "We didn't know if Kemi was going to last this time last year," one senior source says, "now we do."

Then there is Labour and the prime minister. MPs, councillors and ministers I've talked to are all frustrated by the speculation, with no little irritation towards the wannabe contenders in a leadership race. But there is no ignoring the fact that a woeful set of results for Labour would put the prime minister's wobbly future in even more doubt.

The party is "dark and desperate in Wales", says one source, and while internal Labour data in Scotland suggests the picture is not as bleak as the public polls suggest, it would take a miracle for them to get close to the SNP.

In England, whether it's migration, making ends meet, or disappointment with Starmer, the mood is generally very glum. Labour is trying to hold on to about 2,500 council seats in England. They may lose more than half of them, with party insiders suggesting they could lose up to three-quarters.

There is (cough) a range of opinion on whether Sir Keir Starmer should be pushed out afterwards. One minute, one minister says: "It's terminal," and another says "I just can't see a way through." The next minute, another says: "I'm firmly of the view we must not doomscroll our way through leaders - we have to wean ourselves off it."

But the eagerness or reluctance to make a move will be shaped by the results - as one government source says: "A lot rests on them – if it's Greens up 500, Reform's up 2,500 and we're down 2,000, well then: holy shit."

Around the country, the party is already hacked off with the chatter around whether Starmer can survive, as one senior councillor tells me: "Every time you check your phones there is another intervention from Andy [Burnham] or some more speculation about Angela [Rayner]. It is demotivating - there is a big, big frustration among activists and voters who see it and just think it's a shambles." But, shambles or not, going into next week, it is not clear if the PM of the day will keep his job.

A new prediction reaches my ears that Burnham and Rayner might "move as one", with the possibility Rayner would be pitched as the person to take over from Starmer now, but that Burnham, in time, could be the person to fight the next general election. I'm told the difficulty is there are "two distinct decisions - who'll deliver the 2024 manifesto, and who could win the next election - they might not be the same person".

Rayner and Burnham are "talking every day", I'm told, although a Team Rayner source told me that suggestion was "nonsense". But neither Rayner or Burnham's ambitions are a secret.

It is also possible that nothing will happen, and that Labour will take a battering but then stumble on, with Starmer trying to relaunch his leadership again, and hoping that better times come. The problem is, as another senior Labour figure says, "how many times can you press the reset button before people realise it's not connected to anything?"

Don't forget, too, the other parties who are trying to hold and take power in Holyrood and Cardiff. The SNP leader told us he is confident he'll get a majority and enter an astonishing third decade for his party in power. That bravado may well not be matched by the result, but they are strongly expected to hang on as the biggest party. And in Wales, as I wrote last week, Plaid Cymru are as bouncy as they've ever been, and hopeful they will end up running the country on their own for the first time.

On this weekend's programme, we'll be joined by Kemi Badenoch, Nigel Farage, Zack Polanski, Heidi Alexander for the government, and the SNP, Plaid and Lib Dems will be on our panel too. Seven parties for the new world of 2026.

Do send us any questions or points that you'd like us to ask at kuenssberg@bbc.co.uk - because the magic of elections, of course, means it's not our fate in politicians' hands, it's their fate in our hands.

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