LONDON (AP) — Prime Minister Keir Starmer insisted Friday that he will not resign after bruising elections that saw his governing Labour Party suffer big losses and the anti-immigration party Reform UK make major gains.
The local and regional elections are widely seen as an unofficial referendum on Starmer, whose popularity has plummeted since he led Labour to power less than two years ago.
Voters have grown impatient for economic growth and dramatic change after 14 years of Conservative government, and many Labour lawmakers have become despairing at the government's failure to deliver.
Starmer said he took responsibility for the “very tough” results but would not quit.
“The voters have sent a message about the pace of change, how they want their lives improved,” he said. “I was elected to meet those challenges, and I’m not going to walk away from those challenges and plunge the country into chaos.”
Reform UK, led by the veteran nationalist politician Nigel Farage, won hundreds of local council seats in working-class areas in England’s north such as Hartlepool that once were solid Labour turf, and also made gains from the Conservatives in areas like Havering on the eastern edge of London.
Farage said the results marked a “historic change in British politics.”
Reform took seats from both Labour and the Conservatives as results were tallied across England. Votes were also being counted in contests for semiautonomous parliaments in Scotland and Wales.
A Labour rout in the elections could trigger restive party lawmakers to call for the leader, who won a landslide victory in July 2024, to announce a timetable for his departure. Even if Starmer survives for now, many analysts doubt he will lead the party into the next national election, which must be held by 2029.
Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy cautioned the party not to topple the prime minister, saying “you don’t change the pilot during the flight.”
Source: WPLG
