Starmer brings in Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman to ease pressure on him to resign

Keir Starmer has brought in Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman as advisers in a move to ease the mounting pressure on the prime minister to resign after the disastrous election results for Labour.Brown, the former prime minister and long-serving chancellor under Tony Blair, has been made Starmer’s envoy on global finance, with a brief to advise on financial partnerships to help with defence-related investments, particularly with Europe.Harman, who was Labour’s deputy leader under Brown, will be the prime minister’s adviser on women and girls, focusing on tackling violence and improving economic opportunities.While the roles are part-time and unpaid, there is deliberate symbolism in Starmer gathering Labour heavyweights around him as he battles to save his job, particularly with the optics of Brown being pictured with him at Downing Street on Saturday morning.With the bulk of the votes now counted from Thursday’s series of elections, Labour lost more than 1,400 councillors across England, shedding support to Reform UK and the Greens in traditional heartlands

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 rightwing 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

The SNP may have won again but Scottish politics has been upended

Long before the final votes were counted in Scotland, veteran Labour politicians said it was a defeat made in Downing Street.When the Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar, strode into the Glasgow count arena on Friday afternoon flanked by sombre-faced activists, the scene was a mirror image to the same venue in 2024, when his resurgent party won 36 seats from the Scottish National party, playing a significant part in Keir Starmer’s landslide victory.Two years later, Starmer’s unpopularity proved an insurmountable obstacle for Sarwar, despite record donations to Scottish Labour and a formidable electoral machine, honed over the past five years. And with only a handful of constituencies declared, he decided to concede defeat before the real scale of Labour losses across the country was known.More than 12 hours later, when the final regional results were declared after 1am, it was clear that Holyrood politics had been upended

Most Labour members think Starmer cannot revive party fortunes, poll finds

The majority of Labour members say they do not believe Keir Starmer can turn around the party’s fortunes, while 45% say the prime minister should step down.The mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, was the first preference for 42% of members, who were asked to rank their preferred successor.Several Labour MPs – especially those who are close to Burnham – have told the Guardian that they would like to see a timetable for Starmer to stand down in an orderly and dignified way, including allowing the mayor time to seek a parliamentary seat.The poll was conducted just before Thursday’s elections, where Labour was fighting on all fronts, in local elections in England and parliamentary elections in Wales and Scotland. Nigel Farage’s Reform UK won hundreds of seats and control of more councils in England, Labour went backwards in Scotland as the SNP claimed a historic fifth victory and Plaid Cymru ended a century of Labour dominance in Wales, unseating the Labour first minister Eluned Morgan

John Swinney urges Starmer to show Scotland ‘greater respect’ after SNP victory

John Swinney, the Scottish National party leader, has challenged Keir Starmer to show “greater respect” to the Scottish government after winning the Holyrood elections by a comfortable margin.The Scottish National party secured a record fifth term in office on Friday after securing 58 of Holyrood’s 129 seats.In a dramatic conclusion to the day’s counting, Labour and Reform UK were left tied on 17 seats each after Highlands council finally finished its regional list count at 1.10am on Saturday, 16 hours after counting began.With Labour enduring its worst result since devolution in 1999, this puts the Scottish parliament in the unprecedented position of having two parties in joint second place, adding to Labour’s humiliation

Labour suffers historic defeat in Wales as Reform surges in English council elections and Greens make gains – as it happened

Plaid Cymru have won 43 seats in Wales’s Senedd election with all constituencies declared, Bethan McKernan reports, putting the Welsh nationalists in a comfortable position to form a minority government and ending more than 100 years of Labour hegemony.Polls consistently suggested Plaid Cymru and Reform UK were neck and neck in the race to become the biggest party under Wales’s new more proportional voting system.As in last year’s closely watched Caerphilly Senedd byelection, however, the contest was not as close as predicted. Reform has come in second, with 34 seats – up from 1% of the vote share in 2021’s election.Labour, for so long Wales’s political behemoth, has limped into third place with just nine seats in a 96 seat parliament

Nigel Farage hails ‘historic shift in politics’ after Reform UK election gains

Nigel Farage hailed sweeping election wins for Reform UK as a “historic shift in British politics” on a day when the populist party made gains at the expense of Labour and the Conservatives.Reform made advances in heartland areas of both parties, clocking up substantial early results in the English local elections by taking control of Essex county council, Havering – its first London local authority – and Sunderland city council.However, the results were not without setbacks, for example in Harlow, a past general election bellwether, while one prominent pollster suggested the party may have peaked and that Farage would have reason to be “privately worried”.Nevertheless, Reform established beachheads for the next general election in areas including Essex, home to the seats of prominent Tory MPs including Kemi Badenoch and James Cleverly, where Farage’s party went from having a single representative to taking control of the council.“It’s a big, big day, not just for our party but for a complete reshaping of British politics in every way,” Farage said as he appeared on Friday outside Havering town hall, in a borough on the eastern border of Greater London where many voters identify more closely with neighbouring Essex

Keir Starmer under pressure to agree exit plan after election mauling

Keir Starmer is under pressure to set out a timeline for his departure after a crushing defeat in elections across Britain prompted senior Labour MPs to call for him to step down within a year.In a disastrous set of results, Labour had lost control of more than 25 councils and more than 1,000 council seats in England by Friday night, many to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, which made large gains across the Midlands and the north as well as taking seats from the Tories in the south.After more than a century of domination, Labour has faced near-wipeout in Wales, where the party’s first minister, Eluned Morgan, lost her seat. Labour could slump to third place in Scotland behind the SNP and Reform. In London, a Green surge meant Labour lost control of councils it had dominated, including Hackney and Waltham Forest

Labour loses control of Birmingham city council after 14 years of leadership

The Labour party’s 14-year leadership in Birmingham has come to an end after Reform, Greens and pro-Gaza independents made significant gains in the UK’s second-largest city.No party has yet won an overall majority at Birmingham city council, one of Europe’s largest local authorities, with the results reflecting wider political fragmentation across England.Labour lost hundreds of council seats in England, many to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, which made big gains across the Midlands and the north as well as taking seats from the Tories in the south.Labour was expected to take significant losses in the all-out elections in Birmingham, where 101 seats were up for grabs. The council has been plagued by a series of problems in recent years, from the declaration of bankruptcy in 2023, subsequent cuts to local services and the ongoing bin strike – images of rubbish piled on the city’s streets have made headlines across the world