LONDRES (AP) — Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour Party suffered a staggering defeat in local and regional elections across the United Kingdom on May 9, 2026, losing more than 1,100 council seats in England and control of the Welsh government after 27 years. The anti‑immigration Reform UK, led by veteran nationalist Nigel Farage, gained more than 1,300 seats in England and made significant breakthroughs in legislative elections in Wales and Scotland. Farage called the outcome a “historic change in British politics,” insisting that the voters who had swung behind his party were not engaged in “a short‑term protest.”
The elections, which covered councils across England, the Scottish Parliament, and the Welsh Senedd, delivered a bruising verdict on a government grappling with a sluggish economy, a cost‑of‑living crisis, and internal strife over welfare cuts. The results not only imperiled Starmer’s premiership but underscored the accelerating fragmentation of the two‑party system that had dominated British politics for decades.
Starmer insisted he would not resign. “The right thing is to rebuild and show the way forward,” he said Saturday, according to the Associated Press. “That’s what I’m going to do in the coming days.” His cabinet colleagues publicly backed him, and none of the high‑profile Labour politicians seen as potential rivals—Health Secretary Wes Streeting, former Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, and Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham—immediately moved against him.
But a growing number of Labour lawmakers urged the prime minister to set a calendar for his exit this year. “There has to be a timetable,” MP Clive Betts told the BBC. Another MP, Tony Vaughan, said there should be an “orderly transition of leadership.” Labour MP Catherine West told the AP she would attempt to run for the leadership if the cabinet did not remove Starmer by Monday, though she acknowledged she was nowhere near the support of 81 colleagues required to force a contest.
In an effort to regain momentum, Starmer reappointed two figures from previous Labour governments: former Prime Minister Gordon Brown as a special envoy for global finance, and former deputy party leader Harriet Harman as an adviser on women and girls. He is scheduled to deliver a speech on Monday, and the government will then lay out its legislative plans when King Charles III opens the new session of Parliament on Wednesday.
The night belonged to Reform UK, Farage’s latest right‑wing vehicle. Campaigning on an anti‑establishment, anti‑immigration message, the party won hundreds of council seats in working‑class areas of northern England—places like Sunderland that had been solid Labour strongholds for decades—while also eating into Conservative territory in Essex, east of London. It increased its vote share in Wales and Scotland, terrain where the party had previously been marginal. “I’m convinced that the voters who have come with us are not doing so as a short‑term protest,” Farage said. Reform currently holds just eight of the 650 seats in the House of Commons, however, and it remains unclear whether it can replicate its local success in a national election.
The elections produced a more disunited kingdom. In Scotland, the Scottish National Party, which has governed in Edinburgh since 2007, won another term but fell short of a majority, making an independence referendum unlikely. Labour and Reform tied for a distant second place. In Wales, Plaid Cymru—the Welsh nationalist party—won the most seats in the Cardiff‑based Senedd, toppling Labour after nearly three decades. Plaid Cymru, which seeks Welsh independence but has no immediate plans to pursue it, is expected to form the next government, though it lacks an outright majority. Reform finished second, and Labour fell to a distant third; outgoing Labour First Minister Eluned Morgan lost her seat.
The economy lay at the heart of Labour’s troubles. Since ending 14 years of Conservative rule marked by austerity and the COVID‑19 pandemic, Labour has struggled to ease the cost of living and revive an economy weighed down by the war in Ukraine and, more recently, the conflict in Iran. Starmer has also angered his supporters by attempting to curb welfare spending, some of which backfired amid rebellions within the party. Several Labour figures say the government’s achievements—including protections for renters and a higher minimum wage—are going unnoticed. Many blame Starmer, an uninspiring leader distracted by scandals, notably his disastrous decision to appoint Peter Mandelson, a friend of Jeffrey Epstein, as Britain’s ambassador to Washington.
But Stephen Houghton, the outgoing Labour leader of Barnsley council in northern England—where Labour lost to Reform—said the problem “goes beyond the prime minister.”
“This has been building for 30 years across the country, in post‑industrial communities, coastal communities, that have been left behind,” Houghton said, according to the AP. “You can change the prime minister all day. If you don’t change the policy, no change will come.”
The results also reflected a broader splintering of British politics after decades of Labour‑Conservative dominance. The centrist Liberal Democrats made gains, while the Green Party—led by the self‑described “eco‑populist” Zack Polanski and increasingly focused on social justice and the Palestinian cause alongside the environment—won hundreds of council seats at Labour’s expense in urban centers and university towns, taking control of several local authorities.
Tony Travers, professor of government at the London School of Economics, told the AP that the outcome suggested the next national election, expected in 2029, would fail to produce a majority for any single party. “So after the election, you enter the world of two or three big minority parties trying to figure out how they would govern,” Travers said—a situation traditionally considered “very un‑British.”