Keir Starmer has said that the results for Labour have been “very tough”, that he takes responsibility, and that the party must “reflect and respond”.
Speaking at Kingsdown methodist church in Ealing, west London, he said:
The results are tough, they are very tough, and there’s no sugarcoating it.
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.
When voters send a message like this we must reflect and we must respond.
I think the vast majority of people do understand that we face huge challenges as a country.
We’ve had a series of economic shocks in recent years and there’s a very difficult international situation at present, they know that.
But they still want their lives to improve, they still want to see the change that we promised, they know the status quo is letting them down and they’re frustrated, they don’t feel the changes.
It is customary for leaders to issue statements like this after bad election losses. It may quash any claims that Starmer is in denial. But he did not say anything about how the party “must respond”. There are reports that he is planning a big speech that will address this next week.
This statement also confirms that Starmer has no intention of taking the advice of John McDonnell and others and announcing a timetable for his departure.
In her final question, Sky’s Beth Rigby told Keir Starmer that a member of his “top team” had messaged her to say that Starmer was the problem for Labour and that if he stayed they risked handing the country to Reform UK.
Asked what he would say to people who thought that, Starmer replied:
What I say to that is we won a landslide victory in July 2024. I led our party to that victory. That is a five year mandate to change the country.
Yes, there are difficult conditions. The inheritance was terrible. The international context is very, very difficult. But we need to inject that hope and convince people that things can and will get better.
And that’s why in coming days, I’ll set out the further steps that we will take.
Asked if he would stand as PM at the next election, Starmer replied:
Yes. There’s a five-year term I was elected to do. I intend to see that through.
This question is significant because, while many Labour MPs do not want Starmer to resign now, there is a widespread view that he should not lead them into the next election.
(Rigby asked if Starmer would be Labour’s leader going into the next election. Starmer said yes, but in his fuller answer he just talked about serving a full five-year term. In truth, though, no prime minister can easily say they don’t intend to fight the next election, because as soon as they do, they lose all authority.)
Rigby also asked Starmer about the Times report claiming that Ed Miliband has privately urged him to set a timetable for his resignation.
Starmer replied:
I think Ed Miliband has dealt with this and made absolutely clear that he supports me.
That is not an absolute denial. Miliband has also dismissed the story, but without saying it is wholly unfounded. (See 00.27am.)
The Times report, by Steven Swinford, Patrick Maguire and Geraldine Scott, says:
Ed Miliband has privately suggested to Sir Keir Starmer that he should consider setting out a timeline for his departure amid concerns he will be forced out of No 10 in the wake of the election results, The Times has been told.
Two sources familiar with the discussion said that the energy secretary and former Labour leader made the suggestion during a private meeting with the prime minister about a fortnight ago …
[Miliband] is understood to have raised his concerns during a private discussion with Starmer during which the two men talked about potential options for the aftermath of the elections.
Miliband is supporting a return to Westminster for Burnham as the left-of-centre candidate best positioned to restore Labour’s fortunes. Starmer remains intent on blocking a Burnham comeback and has made clear that he will not set out a timeline for his departure.
Sky’s political editor, Beth Rigby, interviewed Keir Starmer after his short speech at Kingsdown methodist church in Ealing. (See 8.40am.)
Starmer said:
The voters have sent a message about the pace of change, how they want their lives improved. They was elected to meet those challenges. And I’m not going to walk away from those challenges and plunge the country into chaos.
Rigby put it to Starmer that the voters wanted to get rid of him. Starmer replied:
They’ve sent a message that the change that we promised isn’t being delivered in a way they can feel. And also, frankly, they’re fed up with years of the status quo. But we were elected to deal with those challenges, and I’m not going to walk away from that.
Rigby tried again, got much the same answer, and then she asked again: “To be clear, you are not going to resign?”
Starmer replied:
No, I’m not going to walk away and plunge the country into chaos. We were elected to deal with these challenges and that’s what we will do.
Farage took some questions after his short speech.
Asked what he would do for people who voted for the party, he said Reform UK now had a track record in local government. He said that it was keeping council tax lower than other parties.
And he said that the Institute for Fiscal Studies had backed up this claim.
Another reporter said that, since Farage was talking about council funding, he would like to talk about Farage’s own funding. He was referring to Farage taking an undisclosed £5m donation from the crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne.
Farage shut that down. He said he would talk about than on any other day, but not today.
Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, has been speaking in Havering.
He said he was delighted to be outside Havering town hall, “which is under new management”.
He said Labour were being “wiped out by Reform in many of their traditional areas”.
And later today we would see the Tories wiped out in some of their heartlands, he said.
He went on:
I think overall what has happened is a truly historic shift in British politics.
We’ve been so used to thinking about politics in terms of left and right, and yet what Reform are able to do is to win in areas that have always been Conservative. But equally, we’re proving in a big way we can win in areas that Labour have dominated, frankly, since the end of World War one.
At the moment, we’re winning one in three of all the seats that are up.
But I genuinely think the best is yet to come. I’m very excited about the north-east results, the Yorkshire results, some more to come in the West Midlands. [In] Essex we’re feeling supremely confident and that’s significant given that half of the shadow cabinet have seats in Essex. So it’s a big, big day.
Keir Starmer has said that the results for Labour have been “very tough”, that he takes responsibility, and that the party must “reflect and respond”.
Speaking at Kingsdown methodist church in Ealing, west London, he said:
The results are tough, they are very tough, and there’s no sugarcoating it.
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.
When voters send a message like this we must reflect and we must respond.
I think the vast majority of people do understand that we face huge challenges as a country.
We’ve had a series of economic shocks in recent years and there’s a very difficult international situation at present, they know that.
But they still want their lives to improve, they still want to see the change that we promised, they know the status quo is letting them down and they’re frustrated, they don’t feel the changes.
It is customary for leaders to issue statements like this after bad election losses. It may quash any claims that Starmer is in denial. But he did not say anything about how the party “must respond”. There are reports that he is planning a big speech that will address this next week.
This statement also confirms that Starmer has no intention of taking the advice of John McDonnell and others and announcing a timetable for his departure.
Reform UK has gained control of Havering in London. It is the first time they have won control of a council in the capital.
Havering was under no overall control. It is a very unusual council. This is how Dave Hill and Lewis Baston describe it in their London Decides guide to the local elections.
The local politics of Havering are novel on a heroic scale, baffling to outsiders and probably to some insiders too. Seen in isolation, the 2022 result was quirky. Seen in historical context it was routine – a No Overall Control outcome with Conservative and Residents’ Association candidates taking the lion’s share of seats between them.
There was a difference, though: this time, the bulk of the Residents’ Association councillors agreed to work together as a Havering Residents’ Association (HRA) group and formed a partnership with Labour to run the council. Ray Morgon, a Residents’ Association councillor for 20 years, took the helm of this arrangement. It was undisturbed by the sole by-election in the borough since 2022, but lasted only until June 2024 …
The 55 Havering councillors [were aligned before this week’s election] as follows: HRA 25, up five since 2022; Conservatives 14, down seven; Labour eight, down one; East Havering Residents’ Group, three; Reform, three; Residents’ Association Independent Group, two. It still adds up to 55, but in a very different way from how things started. The Havering kaleidoscope will now be shaken up again.
In Hull Labour lost seven council seats. Reform UK gained 10 seats and the council, which had been Lib Dem, is now under no overall control.
Daren Hale, the Labour group leader on the council, told the BBC that it was “time for leadership change at the top”. He said Keir Starmer was not the right person to take the party forward.
Hale said:
What we were getting on every doorstep… was not about the Labour Party per se – certainly not about local councillors – it was about the leadership of the Labour party.
I’m afraid councillors up and down the land, in Hull tonight, have paid the price for that.
Keir Starmer needs to look at these results, reflect upon them and do the right thing and go.
Labour’s results are bad – but perhaps not as bad as feared. This is from Bloomberg’s Alex Wickham, quoting the lead psephologists used by the BBC and Sky News.
Very early days but John Curtice and Michael Thrasher both say Labour are so far performing less badly than expected
Curtice tells BBC: “Labour’s rate of seat loss were to continue to the end of tomorrow, they could be looking at losses of just over 1200 seats, rather less than some forecasts anticipated.
And Thrasher tells Sky he also forecasts about 1200 losses on current numbers (down from his previous 1800 forecast)
Long way to go until we get a fuller picture
So far it looks like Reform are the big winner – perhaps a reminder to some in the Labour Party who have said the Greens are their bigger threat
There is more from Curtice at 6.52am and from Thrasher at 6.16am.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: theguardian.com
