SIR Keir Starmer is waking up to a nightmare – Labour has been thrashed in almost every area across Britain.
Traditional strongholds in the north have cracked, and it is Nigel Farage who has now planted his flag in these working class heartlands.
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Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said his party was on course to win the next general Credit: Reuters
Sir Keir Starmer and his wife Victoria Starmer arrive to cast their votes on Thursday Credit: Getty
From Hartlepool to Thameside to Southampton, the Labour vote has collapsed on a devastating nationwide scale.
The bloodletting has already begun as tired and angry councillors start pinning the blame on their unpopular Prime Minister.
Unfortunately for him the worst is yet to come when counting begins in Wales, where Labour’s fortress for a century is expected to be broken by Plaid Cymru and Reform.
A crumb of comfort for Starmer may be that Zack Polanski’s Greens have so far failed to make the dent they had hoped in London.
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Labour battered as Farage says ‘historic change’ puts Reform on track to win GE
Labour has been thrashed in almost every area across Britain Credit: Getty
Labour has lost more than 200 councillors and surrendered control of eight councils Credit: Reuters
Starmer’s future hangs in the balance following the crushing election defeats Credit: PA
Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives are down 61 seats in the local elections
But it is Farage who is eating Labour’s lunch as Reform councillors mop up seats even Boris Johnson could not have dreamed of.
And of course he is continuing to make inroads in Tory staging posts in the south like Kemi Badenoch’s own Essex backyard.
Farage will today seize on his victories to dismiss criticism he has peaked, and double down his belief he is heading for No10.
Labour ministers are already being wheeled out onto the airwaves to repeat the usual spin: that incumbent governments take a beating midterm.
In normal times that might carry more weight, but these are not normal times.
Was a Thursday vote for Farage really just a mere mid-term show of protest?
We emerge blinking into the Friday sunlight of a new era of five-party politics, with the traditional duopoly – for now at least – in its death throes.
It means voters are now much more mobile, and happy to switch their decades-long allegiances if someone better comes along.
How does Starmer especially stop his 2024 voter base being cannibalised from both left and right?
His muscular Labour MPs will no doubt demand a shift to the Left as the price for keeping him in a job.
It would be an exercise in epic reality denial: that it is Reform who are tearing the biggest chunks out of their block.
And this is also not a normal PM. He is historically unpopular and fighting for his job less than two years after winning a landslide.
Even if he scrapes through the next 48 hours, that fact remains unaltered.
Not least because the Mandelson Files will be the next near-death experience coming down the track.
We know that Starmer is resolved to fight. The question is whether Labour MPs see a way back for him.
