More than 1,460 council seats lost. Third place in Wales. A distant second in Scotland. One of the worst sets of local election results in Labour’s history has triggered an open revolt against Prime Minister Keir Starmer, with around 30 of his own MPs calling for his departure and a former minister threatening to force a leadership contest by Monday.

The speed of the collapse has startled Westminster. Catherine West, a former junior Foreign Office minister, told the BBC on Saturday that if no cabinet minister challenged Starmer by Monday, she would attempt to trigger a formal leadership contest. To do so, she needs signatures from 20 percent of Labour MPs — 81 people. She said she currently had 10 backers and was “confident” more would come forward.

In an interview with the New Statesman, West said she had been “inundated” with support since her announcement, though she acknowledged she had not “even looked at the rules” before launching her bid. She described herself as a “stalking horse” — but noted that “you know what sometimes happens to stalking horses? They become the candidate.”

The Farage earthquake

The principal beneficiary was Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, which seized more than 1,450 council seats and took control of councils in former Labour heartlands, including Sunderland and Barnsley, which had not changed hands in half a century. The party also seized Birmingham and Hartlepool — where, according to the Guardian, Labour lost every single council seat it was contesting.

Reform also made inroads into Conservative territory, winning control of Essex and Suffolk, while the Conservatives lost control of Norfolk to a Reform surge. The party also captured its first-ever London borough in Havering. The party finished second in the expanded Welsh Senedd with 34 seats and tied Labour in Scotland on 17 seats — a result that would have been inconceivable when the party was founded barely two years ago.

In Wales, Plaid Cymru won 43 seats in the newly expanded 96-seat Senedd, pushing Labour into third. First minister Eluned Morgan lost her own seat. In Scotland, the SNP won a fifth consecutive term with 58 seats, while Labour’s ambitions of toppling the nationalists collapsed entirely.

A crisis of competence

Starmer’s predicament fits a broader pattern. Centre-left leaders across Europe who won elections on platforms of managerial competence have found that competence is difficult to demonstrate when voters feel their daily lives are not improving. Starmer’s own diagnosis was blunt. As the BBC reported, “We made unnecessary mistakes,” he said on Saturday, including not doing “enough to convince [the public] about the change that would impact them, how their lives would be better.”

The structural irony is difficult to ignore. Starmer built his public career as Director of Public Prosecutions — a role defined by institutional trust and procedural reliability — then reconstructed the Labour Party along the same lines, positioning himself as the steady hand Britain needed after years of Conservative turbulence. Now one minister has reportedly told the BBC: “It’s terminal - I just can’t see a way through.”

The problem for the rebels is the absence of an obvious replacement. Andy Burnham, the Greater Manchester mayor, is not an MP and would need to find a seat before mounting any challenge. Former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner resigned in September over a tax dispute and is believed to be awaiting the conclusion of an HMRC investigation. Health secretary Wes Streeting has backed Starmer while telling the BBC “we have to take responsibility in government for our mistakes.” West herself acknowledged the gap: “I don’t have a candidate. That’s part of the problem.”

Survival manoeuvres

Starmer has moved to shore up his position. On Saturday, he appointed former prime minister Gordon Brown as an adviser on global finance and former deputy leader Harriet Harman to advise on violence against women — moves that drew withering responses from within Labour’s own ranks. “There is no question to which bringing these two back is the answer,” one normally loyal minister told the BBC. Labour MP Paula Barker said she would have had more respect if both had “declined the offer of, quite frankly, non-jobs” and told Starmer to set out a timetable for his departure.

The prime minister is planning a major speech for Monday, expected to promise closer ties with the EU, followed by the King’s Speech on Wednesday setting out new legislation. Whether rhetorical resets and ceremonial pageantry can shift a conversation that has turned decisively against him is an open question — even among his allies.

“You don’t change the pilot during a flight,” deputy prime minister David Lammy said on Thursday. Perhaps not. But a growing number of Labour MPs have concluded the plane is heading for the mountain, and the pilot shows no sign of changing course.

Sources