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:double quotation markThe 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,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:double quotation markI 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:double quotation markThe 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.double quotation markThe 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:double quotation markWhat 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.double quotation markVery early days but John Curtice and Michael Thrasher both say Labour are so far performing less badly than expectedCurtice 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 pictureSo 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 threatThere is more from Curtice at 6.52am and from Thrasher at 6.16am.

James Cleverly, the shadow housing secretary, has been the main Tory voice on the airwaves this morning.He said that, although his party had had a “tough night”, it had made some gains.He said:double quotation markAs predicted, it’s been a tough night for us, but we’ve made some real gains, against expectations.I’ve just heard we’ve taken control of Westminster council.We held Fareham in Hampshire, Harlow in Essex, Broxbourne in Hertfordshire, and so we have got real pockets of good news in what we always knew was going to be a tough night.

I think Labour have had a disastrous night, and we can see why, with the terrible situation they’ve created at a national level.This is from Luke Tryl, the More in Common pollster, on the election campaign in Angela Rayner’s constituency.Over the last year or so pollsters have argued that the main changing in voting behaviour is because of switches within the right bloc (Tories moving to Reform UK) or within the left bloc (Labour supporters, or Lib Dems, moving to the Greens), and that the balance between the two blocs is relatively stable.Tryl says these results challenge that theory.double quotation markIn both cases this isn’t just Labour splitting on the left and the Tories eating Reform, though that’s part of the story.

The right bloc is growing through some combination of Labour defections and differential turnoutAnd this is from the politics professor Ben Ansell on the same theme.double quotation markWe will know much more about [intra-] and inter-bloc switching over the course of the day.But ultimately if you are losing in both directions it’s because people think you are crap.Pivoting one way or another won’t help you if the total consensus is you’ve stuffed it.John Healey, the defence secretary, is doing an interview round for the government this morning.

Speaking on Times Radio, he said Keir Starmer could still “turn it round”.He said:double quotation markKeir Starmer won the mandate for five years from the public.We’re not even halfway through that parliament.I think he can still deliver, he can still turn it round.Asked if Starmer was the right person to lead the change, Healey said he was.

He went on:double quotation markI’m not dismissing how bad these results look set to be, but we have had difficult nights before, and we have worked our way back.On the Today programme Richard Parker, the Labour West Midlands mayor, has just been interviewed.Asked what his advice would be for Keir Starmer in the light of these results, he replied:double quotation markI’m a serious politician.The prime minister is too.We need to reflect on the results.

That will take a bit of time, but … we do need a serious, meaningful material reset.We need to ensure that the great work we’re doing has a real resonance and is really tangible, making a real, tangible difference to people in our communities.With a reset, Labour could recover and win the next election, he claimed.When pressed whether that could happen with Starmer still as leader, Parker said yes – provided there was “a reset and a refocus”.Karl Turner, who was elected as a Labour MP but who is currently suspended, has told Sky News that Keir Starmer’s unpopularity has been a significant reason for Labour losing seats.

He said:double quotation markI mean it sincerely: Keir Starmer is more toxic on the doorstep in East Hull than Jeremy Corbyn ever was …You can’t really say there’s nothing to see here...There’s got to be significant change in my view.So far John McDonnell, the leftwinger who was shadow chancellor under Jeremy Corbyn, is the most senior figure in the party to say publicly that Keir Starmer should consider standing down in the light of these results.

In an interview with Times Radio, he said that a discussion about the leadership in the party was now “inevitable”.He said he did not want to see Keir Starmer ousted in a coup.But he said that, if there was going to be change, there should be “an orderly transition” over a period of months.And he said Starmer himself might accept that was a good idea.McDonnell has never been a Starmer fan, and he had the whip suspended for many months over a rebel vote in 2024.

If by the end of the day he is still the most senior figure calling for Starmer to go, then the PM will probably be safe, at least for the next few months.At one point No 10 were worried about ministerial resignations.Jonathan Brash, the Labour MP for Hartlepool, has also said Starmer should resign.But that’s not new; he has said that before.The Times report claiming that Ed Miliband has privately urged Starmer to consider a timetable for his resignation does potentially undermine the PM’s authority