Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Friday morning acknowledged 'very tough' local election results as he addressed Labour activists at Kingsdown Methodist Church in Ealing, West London, in his first public response to a bruising night at the polls.

Keir Starmer was speaking after early local council returns showed Labour losing ground, whileReform UK was reported to be 'running away' with many of the seats declared so far.

The reverses promptedimmediate questions about Starmer's leadership, with opponents calling on him to resign or, at a minimum, publicly shoulder responsibility for what some within the party have described as 'horrific' results.

"I'm not going to walk away and plunge the country into chaos."Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer reflects on "really tough" results from the local elections in England, with Labour losing hundreds of council seats.Latest 🔗https://t.co/SZHhkmXZUF📺 Sky 501pic.twitter.com/LJVKBhKnVJ

The choice of venue was telling. Rather than a lectern in Downing Street or a Whitehall briefing room, Keir Starmer appeared in a modest church hall in west London, in front of a subdued audience of local Labour members described as 'very dour looking.' There was no attempt at triumphalism, no upbeat music, no staged cheering.

Starmer opened by conceding the scale of the setback.

'The results are tough, they are very tough, and there's no sugarcoating it,' he 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.'

Sir Keir Starmer says he is “hurt” but will carry on as prime minister after Labour lost hundreds of councillor seats, along with control of eight councils, in the local elections on Friday, May 8.pic.twitter.com/nfsT1oL1fs

It was an unusually direct admission for a sitting Prime Minister, the morning after an election test. There was no attempt to reframe the numbers as a partial success or to isolate the damage to a single region. Instead, Starmer cast the results as a painful but necessary reckoning for both party and government.

He linked Labour's position to a series of 'big calls' he said his administration had made since taking office. 'We've made some big calls, to stabilise our public finances, to invest in our public services, not to get dragged into a war in Iran,' he told the room.

Source: International Business Times UK