The results of the 7 May local elections in England and the assembly elections in Wales and Scotland, set several cats among the pigeons in Westminster. The Labour Party got one of its worst set of results ever. And Keir Starmer, Prime Minister of the country for the past 22 months - after Labour won the 2024 "loveless landslide" by default - is having to pay for Labour's latest disaster, by falling on his sword.
Or, he will eventually have to fall on it, now that there are two candidates in the running for his job - his former Health Secretary, the nakedly ambitious Wes Streeting and party favourite, Andy Burnham, mayor of Greater Manchester, whose main advantage is that he is not contaminated by direct association with the Starmer government.
Immediately after Labour's 7 May election "disaster", Starmer's first reaction was one of denial. He made an "I am staying to get on with the job" speech, claiming that change was coming, the public only needed to be patient. He said "the fundamentals of the economy were sound", no doubt prompted by Labour grandee, Gordon Brown, who he'd brought in as an advisor. And yes, the latest growth figures showed a +0.6% increase. But it was already too late.
Over 80 (maybe it is by now 100) Labour MPs out of the total 403 signed a letter of no confidence. Melodramatic resignations were handed in by ministers in the hope of saving their careers. And "et tu Brute" back-stabbing began. This was quite fitting. "Sir" Keir had, after all, become Labour leader in 2020 over the metaphorically dead body of left-winger Jeremy Corbyn, who he had "killed", not only as leader of the Labour party, but as a Labour MP, by using the false accusation of anti-Semitism against him, and making sure it stuck.
In his 22 months as prime minister, Starmer and his Chancellor Rachel Reeves have managed to break most of Labour's electoral promises. Their worst offence was their attempt to cut pensioners' winter fuel allowance - in the middle of an energy crisis, when gas and electricity costs were soaring (and they still are).
The black hole in government finances left by the Tories may have been real, but they were far too afraid to upset the capitalist class by imposing the corporation tax, income tax and VAT rises which would have been needed to fill it.
All they dared to do was to increase employers' national insurance contributions. And while this couldn't possibly do the trick, it gave the bosses and Tory opposition leader Kemi Badenoch a stick to beat them with. How could there be growth in the economy if the Labour government made it too expensive to employ workers, they asked? To which there is an obvious answer, even in their political world. But they did not have the courage of their convictions, or maybe - and this seems to be the verdict of the 7 May electorate - they did not have any convictions at all.
Starmer was already rated by the opinion polls as "the worst prime minister ever". Labour's defeat was predicted well beforehand, as was the end of his premiership. So the defeat was no surprise to anyone, but the scale of it was.
The worst local election defeat on record
The 5,066 council seats in 136 English local authorities - including all 32 London Borough councils and 6 mayors - which were up for election, hadn't been contested since 2022. In 2022, Labour was still in opposition and the Tories were the most despised party. But this time, the roles were reversed. Labour had already, in the short two years since the 2024 general election, managed to fall 20 points in the polls. So although its expectations in this election were not high, the results were much worse than forecast.
Labour lost 58% of the council seats it had previously occupied. The highest share of votes (26%) was won by Nigel Farage's Reform UK. The Greens, who've now occupied Labour's territory on the "left", got the second highest vote share, with 18%. Labour and the Tories were both relegated to 3rd place, with 17%. The traditional 3rd party, the Lib Dems, came 4th, with 16%. Labour was wiped out in 38 councils, losing 1,498 seats and retaining only 28 of the 66 councils it previously controlled. Reform won 14 councils and the Greens 4. There are now Green mayors in London's Lewisham and Hackney. Labour also lost Sunderland and Barnsley councils for the first time since these were established in 1974. It lost in its historical "heartlands" in the north of England, the West Midlands and Wales and in areas where the electorate had supported Brexit.
However, as is usually the case these days, it was non-voters who had the "majority" almost everywhere. Average turnout was between 40% and 50% and in some places it was in the low 30 percents or less.
Getting their just deserts
The worst result for Labour was in the Welsh Senedd, which Labour had led since devolution in 1999. It lost 21 seats and is left with only 9, beaten into 3rd place by the nationalist Plaid Cymru with 43 seats (from 13 in 2022) and to the dismay of many, by Reform, which now has 34 seats.
Labour's Eluned Morgan, who's been Senedd leader since 2024, said in a speech which was to be echoed by many defeated Labour councillors and assembly members that "We need to go back to being the party of the working class. We need the Labour government nationally to change course".
In Scotland, the nationalist SNP retained a large majority, with 58 seats out of 96. Reform and Labour got 17 seats each. The Scottish Greens won a record 15. What has been pointed out with some alarm by Labour commentators - supposedly devoted to the unity of the "United Kingdom", is the fact that "the nationalists" won so resoundingly in Scotland and Wales. Apparently their own nationalism - and the Union Jack Flags which are their backdrop on every occasion - is somehow different! Of course, they are just trying (and failing) to out-patriot the "natural" party of patriotism, the "Conservative and Unionist Party" and Farage's close-the-borders Reform UK...
In this election, despite - or because of - a concerted smear campaign by Labour against their new young leader Zack Polanski, the Greens picked up the anti-establishment youth vote - and also the vote of disillusioned former Labour voters, with their call for more social homes, "workers first", a rent freeze, cuts in bus and train fares, cheaper energy, etc... and their unequivocal support for the Palestinians.
An ungovernable country?
In the light of Labour's political crisis, the conservative mouthpiece, the Economist (among others) asked on its front page: "Is Britain ungovernable?". It argued that Starmer has joined the other "centrist" leaders in Europe, Macron in France and Merz in Germany, in failing to bring about change and failing to "see off" the populist challenge from the right and left. But while all three of them are stuck in a rut, from the point of view of the capitalist class, things are much worse in Britain because, says the Economist, "with five heads of government in six years, [post-Brexit Britain] has gone through prime ministers almost as fast as Chelsea has replaced its managers. Larry, Number 10's chief mouser, has become a furry beacon of stability"! Larry the cat also features on the The Observer newspaper's front page, with the caption "Survival of the fittest".
Getting serious again, the Economist answers its own question, saying that all is not lost: Britain is not ungovernable. But Starmer must go. "He cannot articulate a vision". A new Prime Minister will give the country a chance of "renewal" - just as long, of course, as it's not in a "left-wing direction", since that might upset the bond markets...
Strangely enough, this voice of the capitalist class and the London City, actually accuses Starmer of not having been bold enough, pointing out that "Even before he took power, he pinned his government down with manifesto commitments not to raise income taxes or VAT". So the Economist thinks taxes need to go up? If that's not a misprint, this journal is in good company: Zack Polanski, the new young leader of the Green party, who has just scooped up the votes of Labour's left-wing electorate says very boldly indeed, "tax the rich"! While of course the Tories and their Reform-UK rivals aspire to a totally tax-free Britain...
It's because of the cost of living crisis
Anyway, beyond the personal dullness of "Sir Keir" and his "lack of charisma", which Labour's canvassers say was the reason they got the worst local election result in their history, the biggest issue was the "economy, stupid!" - to be more precise, the ongoing and worsening cost of living crisis.
However, instead of focusing on the concerns of working class families - which include paying energy bills, water bills, rents, the weekly food shop (all gone up), what Starmer and Wes Streeting have been talking about instead, is the increasing cost to the British economy of Brexit! Since 2016 GDP per person has fallen every year by 4%, to as much as 8%. It is certainly significant. But at the moment it's the blockage of the Strait of Hormuz which has resulted in sudden price inflation! The cost of unleaded petrol has risen by an average of 25.3p a litre (£1.15 more per gallon!) and diesel by 44.3p a litre (£2 more a gallon!). An average tank of diesel costs £26 more than it did before the US and Israel attacked Iran. Food is already 38% more expensive than in 2020 according to official figures.
In the meantime, real wages haven't grown in 20 years! In fact the reality for the working class is wage cuts. The bosses make their cuts openly, or by stealth: openly, when new workers are recruited into a "second tier", on lower pay and with fewer benefits than the existing workforce, even if they do the exact same work. Or by freezing wage levels. Or offering below-inflation pay rises. The bosses have several variations on this theme.
And then there are the cuts by stealth, which are in some ways worse: new shift patterns are presented to the workforce which might extend the hours of work, but which are unpaid, since they are counted against lay-offs, e.g., by using the so-called Working Time Account system, which applies, for instance, at BMW's Mini plant in Oxford.
All in all, there is ample reason for workers to be feeling angry and it really doesn't help to be told that there are new employment rights, when in reality these are so watered down, they make no difference at all. The bosses might complain about them - and they most certainly do - but it's just hype.
Playing the anti-immigration card
Ask a right-wing Tory who they'd "like" to see leading the Labour party and they'll say Shabana Mahmood, the new Home Secretary. They see her as someone who is getting the job done in bringing down "illegal immigration" - as the government characterises all of the attempts by refugees and asylum seekers to reach these shores. Her latest measure is a £662 million, 3-year agreement with France's Interior Minister, Laurent Nuñez-Belda to increase the number of French police by 42% (to 1,400) and to train a squad in riot and crowd control tactics. Drones, helicopters, thermal cameras, night-vision goggles etc., are meant to help prevent the refugees from launching dingies from beaches. For those who are caught, a new detention centre is being built.
All of this was meant to appeal to the right (and far-right!) who are obsessed with immigration. But in fact the older voters who have shifted to Reform because they have been told that "Britain is being invaded" (and they believe it) are unlikely to come back to Labour anyway. The polling experts say that the younger 14% who defected to the Greens could come back, provided Labour turned "left"...
Whether it could win back the many who left their fold because of the question of Palestine is another question. Labour has "recognised" a Palestinian state, but for some former Labour voters its aid to "genocide" by supplying arms to Israel and maintaining its relations with the Netanyahu government will never be forgotten or forgiven.
Streeting's NHS crisis, worse than ever
So what about the fight for Starmer's position? The cocky, arrogant and over-neat Wes Streeting wasted no time. He resigned as Health Secretary and announced that he'd stand for PM. But he could not get enough initial support to make a challenge - a required 81 signatures from MPs. Indeed, he's not popular in the party. And his one eye-catching policy, "rejoin the EU" turned out to be a devious way to attack his rival, Andy Burnham (see below).
Obviously Streeting has been, up to now, Starmer's right-hand man, quite literally. He has congratulated himself and been congratulated ad nauseam for "getting NHS waiting lists down" - but this is statistical manipulation. NHS England may have hit its "interim target", i.e., 65.3% of patients starting hospital treatment within 18-weeks... but even officially, it's admitted that "this was largely driven by administrative waiting list validation". There are 4.6 million people still waiting for treatment. So the crisis in the NHS has not been alleviated - it continues, and grows.
The Royal College of Nursing whose annual conference in Liverpool opened on 18 May, has just published a survey of more than 13,000 nursing staff. Nearly a quarter said staffing levels on their last shift were so dangerously low there was a "high risk" of harm to patients and staff. They talk of a "deadly mix" of staff shortages and increasingly complex patient care and being "overwhelmed" by older and sicker patients. There were 16,644 excess deaths in 2024 associated with patients waiting 12 hours or more in A&E before admission to a hospital bed, ~320 deaths every week! They say the risk of death rises sharply after patients wait more than five hours in A&E, and yet 1.15 million patients aged 60 and over waited 12 hours or more, receiving so-called "corridor care" - treated on trolleys in corridors, waiting rooms, cupboards and other makeshift areas because of the continuing bed shortages.
No wonder Streeting sticks to talk of reversing Brexit.
And what about the King of the North?
The other candidate - the current, apparently "well-liked" mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, may have a better chance of winning as long as everyone forgets his failed bids to be leader of the party in the past and his stint as Health Secretary under Gordon Brown in 2009. And much more water has flowed under the bridge since then.
Burnham's problem is that he needs to be an MP to be eligible to stand for PM. And so someone called Josh Simons - who was MP for Makerfield in Greater Manchester, has done the "honourable" thing in trying to save the Labour Party - or at least save it from Keir Starmer's terminal unpopularity.
He stood down from his parliamentary seat, so that Andy Burnham could try to win it in a by-election. Listening to Josh, one can't help recalling Sydney Carton's sacrifice for Charles Darnay (who went to the guillotine instead of his friend) in Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities: "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done... I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss. I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy. I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence..." etc... One could weep.
However there is a slight problem, as Makerfield is one of the very poorest constituencies in GreaterManchester and is Brexit-supporting. Its electorate could well prefer to vote for Reform in this by-election - or so the commentators tell us, to add excitement, money for the Bookies and journalistic hype. Sky News presenters even said this "thrilling contest" was just "like a Hollywood movie". It seems today the capitalist establishment's politics are conducted purely for the benefit of Instagram and the various other screen-apps!
Andy Burnham is said to be on the "left" of the party - which rather distorts the meaning of "left". In the contest for a new leader of the Labour party in 2015, after Ed Miliband stood down, he stood against the left-wing Jeremy Corbyn - but Corbyn beat him in a landslide with 59.5% of the vote (in a 4-way contest). Neither did Burnham show the slightest opposition to Starmer's hands-down support for Netanyahu after the launch of the war to eradicate the Palestinians of Gaza after the Hamas attack in October 2023.
Supporting Starmer's manufactured "crisis of anti-Semitism"
Burnham has gone along - all the way - with Starmer's proto-Zionism and his declaration two days before the 7 May elections of a "Crisis of Anti-Semitism" after the stabbing by a former psychiatric patient of two Jewish men in Golders Green on 29 April. In fact he had stabbed his Muslim "friend" in the NHS rehabilitation accommodation here they both lived...
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood called the stabbings "vile acts of terrorism" and "the biggest national security emergency in almost a decade". This attempt to instil fear in Jewish people was utterly cynical. What's more, it stokes precisely the social divisions which Labour claims to be "fighting"!
Their level of political dishonesty is truly "disgusting" - the word Starmer uses to describe the anti-Semitism which he invents where it does not exist. For instance he finds it in pro-Palestine marches, much to the dismay of the many Jewish supporters of the Palestinians, who regularly attend!
Burnham has a special role in Starmer's campaign, given the attack by Jihad Al Shamie outside Manchester's Heaton Park synagogue last October, when he tried to drive his car into the congregation, armed with a knife. Al Shamie wasn't a member of any terrorist group. He was known to be involved in petty crime, exhibited erratic behaviour and was on bail after an alleged rape. In a botched police operation, the cops shot him (and a Jewish member of the congregation) dead. And since it's impossible to question a corpse, it can't be confirmed that Al Shamie like the others (e.g., in Golders Green) was yet one more mentally ill lone actor, "incited" not by pro-Palestine marches, but by the real and ongoing war against the Palestinians which everyone can see on their screens every day.
Since time immemorial, there have been those who have blamed a whole people for the crimes and mass killings perpetrated by one of their members. Prejudice against Germans has lasted up until today here in this "green and pleasant land", because of Hitler's fascism, his concentration camps and his final solution of mass murder against Jewish people, communists, socialists, trade unionists, and Romany Gypsies. But for Starmer's government, since its job is to serve the interests of imperialism and support US/Israeli policy, being rational or truthful is not an option. Far better to twist the meaning of words and forget facts and history. All the more so, when the immediate cause of these attacks is so close to home: NHS psychiatric services which are hopelessly - and dangerously - inadequate.
In the end no doubt Burnham will look more "radical" than his rival; his support for a closer relationship with the EU - is "in the longer term", as is his support for proportional representation and changes in political "structures". The renationalisation of water and energy - after sewage in the rivers and sea and the overt profiteering of the privatised energy companies - are popular policies even among the right and far right. Whether Burnham as a Labour PM will bring "change" is highly unlikely, of course. But creating illusions - and delusions - if they sound "progressive" helps the whole sorry system continue.
The end of two-party politics?
Is two-party politics finished as election experts claim? With the rise of Reform and improved results for the Greens the psephologists talk of the "fragmentation of British politics". Maybe the election results do mean there is a new situation. But as long as "first-past-the-post" remains the deciding factor for Westminster seats and local councils, it's not likely that smaller parties are going to get much of a look in, in the future.
Anyway, Reform's rise was almost wholly due to defections from the Tories and because it took the Tory vote in the constituencies where it won or almost won. The fact that the Tories are now in opposition to the government means that the Tories' unpopularity is declining and they may recapture their vote. One solution for both parties in order not to split the right-wing vote would be to merge.
The success of the nationalists (and now the Greens) in the devolved assemblies is thanks almost entirely to the single transferable vote - a form of proportional representation which is used only in these elections and was introduced to prevent the domination of one party!
What all of this shows, in fact, is that the "change" everyone needs is unachievable through any ballot box. They can welcome a new boss, as the song by The Who goes, but he/she will look just like the old boss.
Party of crisis: meet the new boss...
The Labour Party has always been the "party of crisis" - the capitalists' alternative, only "allowed" into government whenever their natural party, the Conservatives, runs out of steam. So Labour has always had the unpopular task of implementing austerity. It's presumed it will be better at forcing the necessary cuts down the throat of the working class. It is, after all (still!) paid for by the trade union apparatus and officials have permanent seats on the national executive. But of course this also means that Labour will have to take the blame for the poverty, unemployment, lack of everything... as the crisis gets worse - and be duly "punished" by the electorate allowing the Tories, or their Reform substitute, back in.
It may be surprising, but counting the number of years Labour has had to serve as the capitalist class's hatchet-man, this comes to only 29 years out of the 127 years since the party was "born" in 1900! There have been just 14 Labour governments under 7 Labour Prime Ministers. In fact that's few enough to provide a reminder here: Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931; Clement Attlee, 1945-1951; Harold Wilson, 1964-1970 and 1974-1976; James Callaghan, 1976-1979; Tony Blair, 1997-2007; Gordon Brown 2007-2010... and Keir Starmer 2024..?
In the end, of course, the capitalists don't really care too much which party is in power as long as it rules in their interests. And even if it's their preference for the Tories to rule for them, today's surrogate, Reform UK, would also do fine. Indeed, if the Tories were the capitalists' "natural" party yesterday, Reform can fit their bill tomorrow.
In conclusion, therefore, we can say that the Labour government got into trouble with its electorate in this set of local elections just because it was doing its job for the capitalist class, albeit amateurishly!
A party representing the true interests of the working class can't and won't win elections because the system would always be weighted against it. After all, we live under "bourgeois" democracy, not workers' democracy! There is no use in any hand-wringing over Labour "losing its working class roots" either. These roots got cut off the first time Labour entered government - and that was during the First World War - a very long time ago, already!
To represent workers' interests, a party would have to advocate the overthrow of the class system and all its trappings and replace capitalism with socialism. The revolutionary party which can help the working class to achieve this doesn't exist yet. It needs to be built.
18 May 2026